Lucia Demetrius

Considered too affected in her style to realize her ambition of becoming a successful actress,[2] she left the stage after performing one last role in a play by Ferdinand Bruckner.

A promised scholarship had not arrived and she lacked the means to support herself, and was also disillusioned and ill.[2] From 1936 to 1941 she was a clerk at the offices of Nicolae Malaxa,[1] who facilitated a trip to Italy for her.

Although her name was removed from a theatrical poster where she was listed as translator, she was allowed to join a large group of writers attending the inauguration of the Romanian theatre in Odessa, capital of the Transnistria Governorate.

Over the course of the war, she worked as a nurse at a hospital for wounded soldiers, located in her former high school building; the activity would later draw criticism from the Romanian Communist Party.

[1] Published with help and encouragement from Camil Petrescu, it was favorably reviewed by Eugen Lovinescu but received a decidedly negative note from George Călinescu.

She would become among the most prolific Romanian playwrights of her day, with Cumpăna (1949), Vadul nou (1951), Premiera (1952), Oameni de azi (1952), Trei generații (1956) and Vlaicu și feciorii lui (1959), among others, as well as a large number of one-act works.