Hvar City Theatre Days, Vol. 50 No. 1, 2024.
Original scientific paper
Documentary Theatre and the Struggle for Memory: Rižarna by Filibert Benedetič and Miroslav Košuta in Trieste in 1975
Natka Badurina
orcid.org/0000-0001-6486-3911
; Sveučilšte u Udinama, Italija
Abstract
In 1975, the play by Filibert Benedetič and Miroslav Košuta Rižarna, directed by Jože Babič and Marij Uršič, was performed at the Slovenian Theatre in Trieste. It is a documentary drama based on archival material and testimonies from the Nazi camp San Sabba Rice Mill (in Italian: Risiera di San Sabba, in Croatian: Rižarna San Sabba, in Slovenian: Rižarna pri Sveti Soboti), which operated in Trieste from 1943 to 1945. The concentration camp with a crematorium was created to fight the partisan movement in the Operational Zone of the Adriatic Littoral and to deport Jews. Former fascist organisations and citizens of Trieste collaborated eagerly with the Nazis. After the war Trieste belonged to the Western bloc: the San Sabba camp was an unpleasant memory that had to b e incorporated into the new Cold War order. The play Rižarna belongs to the niche of Slovenian and anti-fascist memory of the camp. In addition to an analysis of the play, the contemporary amateur theatre group SAG is also described in the paper. Drawing on the revolutionary ideas from 1968, SAG considered the whole production of Slovenian professional theatre, including the play Rižarna, as obsolete and inefficient. This generational conflict within the »left wing« of the Slovenian minority in Trieste is here interpreted in the wider context of the Cold War struggles for memory.
Keywords
Risiera San Sabba; the play Rižarna, Slovenian Theatre in Trieste; documentary theatre; Cold War
Hrčak ID:
316989
URI
Publication date:
8.5.2024.
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