It was terribly cold in the theatre hall. The audience were muffled up nose high, warm gloves on their hands, and you could hardly see their eyes beneath the fur caps. Let?s not forget the coats. So at the end of the show your were given hearty rounds of muffled, if standing, applause. At first it was eerie. The curious thing that it was just as cold at home. But people preferred to tremble with cold in the theatre halls, which were literally packed out. The tickets were really cheap. We couldn?t actually keep our gloves on while performing, but wore three pairs of socks instead. I?ll never forget (says IT) that we were doing this French comedy ?The Family Tomb? where in the first act I had to wear this gorgeous bareback dress made of an exquisite thin silk. But from one point onwards I simply couldn?t do it; bareback dresses were just one fad too many in that cold. So I started wearing three pairs of socks, a turtle neck sweater the same color as the dress, beneath the dress. And on top of all that a really thick shawl. We just pretended that that was how it had been designed, but it was really pathetic.

We just hated the situation and were terrified when a play was set in summer. We had clothes cut out for the cold season and decided that the play should be set in winter. For Everac?s ?The Living room? we all had dresses made of thick curtain fabric, that kind of corduroy to keep us warm. When the season opened in October we were sweating. But we coped with heat more easily than with cold. There was this Hungarian comedy where I was wearing a very chic empire dress, which was doubled by another turtleneck and, can you believe that, I felt my brains were going to go numb with cold.  You really couldn?t do anything about the head, could you? I am loath to remember all that.

The next day we met for recordings at the Radio, at 8 in the morning, before the rehearsals. And our colleagues from the Odeon told us that the night before water had frozen in the glass on the stage. Before they had drunk the water it was all ice.

After all the cold was not all that bad. I think the worst thing that befell this country was that in that period it lost so many brilliant minds and talents who chose to go abroad. A whole gallery of them skipped the sinking boat: Pintilie, Penciulescu, Ciulei, Giurchescu, Andrei Serban. I think Romanian theatre would have looked so much different now had they stayed. Their exodus was about the gravest thing that could happen to us (P. P., 152, 143)