Croatology, Vol. 10 No. 1, 2019.
Original scientific paper
Religious Themes in Croatian Drama and Theatre from 1945 to 1990, or how the margins preserved the light
Sanja Nikčević
orcid.org/0000-0003-1877-0946
; Akademija za umjetnost i kulturu u Osijeku, Ulica kralja Petra Svačića 1/f, 31000 Osijek, Hrvatska
Abstract
The theatrical mainstream in Europe always reflected the basic worldview of the society and the ruling ideology. After the Second World War and the establishment of domination of the secularist worldview in Europe, many of the genres are banished from the mainstream theatre (for example mistery plays) if they affirmed the Christian worldview and its values hierarchy (love, serving, obedience), and transmitting the Christian message (the world is ruled by a good God; there is a difference between good and evil; the hero has a free will; if the hero chooses wrong he has a possibility to correct his wrongdoings). In Croatia the process was further strengthened by the ruling openly atheistic ideology. From 1954 to 1990 the mainstream theatres showed in total 52 premiers of religious thematic written by Croatian authors, of which 45 were subversive towards the Christian worldview, mostly written programmatically against the faith and the Church. Those included “old” Krleža’s expressionist texts (Golgota, Adam i Eva), but also 13 new texts (R. Marinković’s Glorija, S. Šnajder’s Dumanske tišine, M. Matišić’s Legenda o sv. Muhli. Some authors (N. Fabrio, M. Grgić, A. Šoljan, I. Supek, I. Bakmaz, I. Brešan) used the representation of the Catholic Church as a totalitarian institution which is destroying the rebellious heretics as a metaphoric critique of totalitarianism and unfree character of the communist society, but that does not belittle their subversion of Christian worldview as it is the only thing that remains after the end of the policies they were criticizing. In that 45 year the professional theatres showed only 7 plays affirmative of the Christian worldview. Those were exclusively the old plays previously showed at the summer festivals as a research of the Renaissance heritage, and they have been shown only from the end of the 1960s. Beyond the margins of the professional theatre, almost in the illegal setting, there was alive theatre of the amateur productions in Catholic parishes, where the old and the new plays were shown. The new ones were written by both priests (R. Kupareo, I. Peran, I. Zirdum, A. Marić, Š. Šito Ćorić) and laymen (K. Tičić, M. Nardelli, N. Škrabe). Those texts were played across the world because through their high-quality theatrical expression they affirmed Christian worldview and sent to the public the message that the world has a meaning because it is part of the God’s plan, and that the happiness is not achieved by the selfish self-care, but by giving the love to others.
Keywords
Hrčak ID:
240649
URI
Publication date:
16.3.2020.
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