Hvar City Theatre Days, Vol. 50 No. 1, 2024.
Original scientific paper
Mediterranean Square – the First Communal Theater of Hvar and Dubrovnik
Ivana Krtinić
Abstract
This paper analyses the Mediterraneanism of the stage space and compares Martin Benetović’s comedy Hvarkinja with the anonymous comedies of the 17th century written in Dubrovnik. In addition to the genre connection, the aforementioned comedies are also connected by their stage space, which is also the subject of this study. Hvar and Dubrovnik build their theatre spaces on the Arsenal, another picturesque and symbolic element of the Mediterranean habitus, but this type of comedy was created before the move to enclosed spaces. And while recently voices have been raised questioning the thesis of 1612 as the year of the Hvar theatre’s origin, the question arises whether the attribution of communal and Mediterranean can be attributed not only to the closed building but also to the open space, specifically the area of the central square. Through the »memory of space«, the organic connection of Hvar and Dubrovnik with the rest of the Mediterranean, the architectural function of the square and its social role will be analysed. With the above approach, the focus is placed on the interdependence between the formation of reception expectations and the spatial design of the performance, i.e. how the mentality of a particular audience, in this case Hvar and Dubrovnik, influences the design of the performance space.
Keywords
Hvarkinja; smješnica; Mediterraneanism of the space; Mediterranean square
Hrčak ID:
316960
URI
Publication date:
8.5.2024.
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