Madame Sibila Petlevski

Small form in the new Croatian dramaIn: Revue des études slaves, Tome 77, fascicule 1-2, 2006. Le théâtre d'aujourd'hui en Bosnie-Herzégovine Croatie,Serbie et Monténégro. pp. 43-54.

Mala forma u novoj hrvatskoj drami

Spontani, ali i programatski motiviran izbor relativno kratke dramske forme s malom glumačkom podjelom (ponekad s minimalnimscenarističkim zahtjevima, kao u takozvanom 'bare stage' žanru, a ponekad s preobilnim 'nepostavljivim' scenskim uputama kojeasociraju na ekspresionizam) proširen je fenomen kad je riječ о hrvatskoj novoj drami, posebno u dramama mlađih autorarođenih sedamdesetih. Bilo bi pogrešno postmoderni fenomen - koji u obrađivanim primjerima ima veze s poratnom rezignacijomdevedesetih i namjernim odbacivanjem ideologema vezanih uz 'veliku dramu' - svesti isključivo na kvantitativne argumente itehničke karakteristike u čisto formalnom opisu naziva 'jednočinka' ili 'drama male glumačke podjele'. Štoviše, povijest jednočinkeu hrvatskoj drami i kazalištu od početka dvadesetoga stoljeća do danas, pruža nam dobru izliku za proširenje definicije 'maleforme' u suvremenoj hrvatskoj dramskoj književnosti.

Citer ce document / Cite this document :

Petlevski Sibila. Small form in the new Croatian drama. In: Revue des études slaves, Tome 77, fascicule 1-2, 2006. Le théâtred'aujourd'hui en Bosnie-Herzégovine Croatie, Serbie et Monténégro. pp. 43-54.

doi : 10.3406/slave.2006.6989

http://www.persee.fr/web/revues/home/prescript/article/slave_0080-2557_2006_num_77_1_6989

SMALL FORM IN THE NEW CROATIAN DRAMA

PAR

SIBILA PETLEVSKI Université de Zagreb

I. INTRODUCTORY NOTES

In the 1980s the décline of semiotic approach to théâtre and drama as 'communicational art' seemed to be inévitable. The emphasis shifted from the study of meanings and messages to phenomenological examination of cognition. Could it be that the change in the research stratégies happened as a result of some scholarly 'fashion'? How can it be explained that Interculturalism and Body Politics suddenly became so popular, or that - let us také just one example - Peggy Phelan's critique of the ideology of the visible provoked so many fervent discussions within at least three différent but related fields: cultural studies, performance studies and feminist theory?

It has become impossible in our postmodern age to analýze dramatic genres and discuss particular play s without being aware that the development of théâtre influenced the poetics of drama. One of the most intriguing topics of récent théâtre studies is the dynamics between the national and the international in drama and théâtre. It confronts us with the big dilemma: will the ever-growing globalization, with the décomposition of national myths, result in the décline of a national drama and théâtre? What language should drama and théâtre speak, in order to maintain a dialogue with other cultures and nations without losing their national identity? Other questions follow. Will drama and théâtre be able to keep pace with the accelerating social processes in the 21th century? What are the relations between tradition and avant-garde in the postmodern world drama and théâtre? Will not the assault of masš culture and new technological media mean a graduai extinction of (high) culture drama and théâtre? How does the literary and critical-theoretical discourse of the postmodern age relate to drama and théâtre?

The application of hermeneutics to drama and théâtre studies resulted in the ground-braking works of Erica Fichtes-Lichte and Kirsten Gram Holstrôm. On the other hand, prolifération of various interprétations of theatrical events as

Revue des études slaves, Paris, LXXVII/2-3, 2006, p. 43-54.

44 SIBILA PETLEVSKI

'texts of performance' - some of them inventive, stimulating and challenging but not always well-grounded - only proves famous Gadamer's famous thesis from Truth and Method that interprétation could not be but historie because it is related to a spécifie time and spécifie mode of understanding. Indeed, as Fichtes- Lichte says: every theory explains différent kind of micro-history. However, within the course of history théâtre has often been perceived as something socially perilous, and it certainly is dangerous in the way that the implied danger always goes beyond the risk of a single aesthetic choice.

From the mid fifties to the eighties, Croatian playwrights invested much créative energy into defining the position of an individual who fights the circum- stances of an over-politicized reality. Dramaturgical analysis of the political code differed from one author to another. The Purpose of Freedom [Svrha slobode] by Ivan Kušan, Nightmare [Noćna mora] by Tomislav Bakarić, Master ofthe Shadows [Gospodar sjena] by Dubravko Mačić Bužimski, The Horsemen ofthe Apocalypse [Jahači apokalipse], Croatian Literature Ехат [Ispit iz hrvatske književnosti], Authentic Events With Dogs [Autentični događaji sa psom] by Ivan Bakmaz, and quite a number of other play s dealt direetly or obliquely with political ideograms through dramatization of the relationships between subjectivity and identity indomestic culture. Politically provocative new- expressionism of Slobodan Šnajder's plays Kamov's Necrography [Kamov. Smrtopis], The Croatian Faust [Hrvatski Faust], and The Snake's Slough [Zmijin svlak], a unique allegorization of contemporary history that had pushed this author off Croatian stages for political reasons for more than a décade, co- existed with the sharp social irony of Ivo Brešan's grotesque dramaturgy of Hamlet in the Village of MrduŠa Donja [Hamlet u selu Mrduša Donja], or The Prince of Darkness at the Faculty of Philosophy [Nečastivi na Filozofskom fakultetu]. Miro Gavran, one of the most prolific Croatian playwrights, the author of George Washington' s Loves [Ljubavi Georgea Washingtona], Chekhov Says Goodbye to Tolstoy [Čehov je rekao Tołstoju zbogom], and Creonťs Antigone [Kreontova Antigona], deliberately shun eurrent political events. Even when he wrote about the conflict between politicians and artists - as in Night of the Gods [Noć bogova] - Gavran opted for the France of Louis XIV as the historical setting.

Lada Kaštelan, in her much acelaimed play The Last Link [Posljednja karika], dramatized the eternal relationship between female subjectivity and patriarchal culture that - in spite of différent historical and political circum- stances - always repeats the same set of patterns of human suffering. Three women, a daughter, a mother and a grandmother, meet on their 36th birthday in the dining room, somewhere on the thin border between life and death. They telí to each other stories from 'their times' - from the forties, the 1970s and the 1990s, the three most troubling periods in the récent history of Croatia. Lada Kaštelan articulâtes a critique of domestic culture through a rejection of the ideological tenets which permeate the major thèmes and dominant structures both of society and of typical Croatian drama after World War II in which the political code was the dominant one. Her theatrical références remain pre- dominantly those of Classical Greek théâtre. It is the playwright who speaks behind the mask of Mother. The Mother from The Last Link finds politics to be extremely boring:

SMALL FORM IN THE NEW CROATIAN DRAMA 45

Boring! Boring! Always the same! Exactly the same. There's always somebody doing something to somebody else in the name of something that is not really what it seems to be but something completely différent that, exactly at the moment you think it is like this proves to be like that, the real reason for that actually being rather this than that, what was already known by everybody, so that those who said it was like this now prétend that they had never said that, and everyone is surprised at how they had changed in the meantime, especially those who changed most, and then others take advantage of the fact, and then they lose power and the others make profit of it again, and so it goes all over again, eternally

so!1

In the introduction to his anthology of New Croatian Drama, Jasen Boko made an attempt to define the social background for the aesthetics of dis- illusionment typical of Croatian ne w drama of the 1990s. Не mentioned several sociological factors that might háve led to young playwrights' indifférence in regards to daily politics. The war of the 1990s and its atrocities provoked thematic escapism as a psychological reaction to the war trauma. There are few exceptions. Politics remained as an important issue in some plays of the middle- aged génération authors; for example in Whiskey for His Excellency [Viski za njegovu ekselenciju] by Tomislav Bakarić and Welcome to the War [Dobrodošli u rat] by Davor Spišić.

Ivo Brešan approached social and political issues with black humor and irony. Mate Matišić built his aesthetics of farce and 'new primitivism' on the exploration of sociograms inscribed deep in the language of différent social groups. His plays titled Cinco and Marinho [Cinko i Marinko] and Angels of Babylon [Anđeli Babilona] are paradigmatic in that sense. The Return of the Warrior [Povratak ratnika] (1997) by Ljubomir Kerekeš and Bricky [Cigla] (1998) by Filip Šovagović are quite exceptional in the context of Croatian drama of the 1990s because they are practically the only plays dealing explicitly with social repercussions of the war in Croatia.

What the youngest génération of playwrights refused to accept was the simplistic aesthetics of the Nation and neo-romantic grandeur of national history reinterpreted to fit the issues on stage. There is a set of wide-ranging drama- turgical solutions for expressing the same aesthetics of disillusionment characterized by social cynicism and total indifférence in regard to daily politics. That symptom of postmodern mind links the youngest génération of Croatian playwrights less to their predecessors in the history of Croatian drama, than to some trends in European théâtre like the new dramaturgy, the post-mainstream, post-porn modernism, the 'noble dilettantism', and many other tendencies in the current development of théâtre and drama styles.

Many Croatian playwrights of the new génération opted for a 'smali form'. Their preference for the 'smali' was not motivated solely by technical reasons - in spite of the obvious convenience of small-cast plays and the shortness of one-

1. 'Dosadno! Dosadno! Stalno jedno te isto! jedno te isto. Uvijek netko nekoga u ime nečega što zapravo nije to, nego nešto sasvim drugo, a kad misliš daje ovako, onda se pokaže da je onako, a pravi razlog je u stvari ovi, a ne ono, što su ionako svi znali, pa se sada oni koji su rekli prave da nisu, a ono koji nisu da jesu, i svi se čude kako su se to preokrenuli, pogotovo oni koji su se najviše preokrenuli, a onda to iskoriste jedni, pa izgube moć, pa to opet iskoriste oni drugi, i onda opet ispočetka, i tako stalno!'

46 SIBILA PETLEVSKI

act plays that makes the path from the text to its stage production much shorter. It is important to emphasize that the preference for the 'smalľ is much more obvious on the thematic level than on the le vel of the drama structure: the most common choice of a typical 'new' Croatian playwright is the choice of seemingly unpretentious subjects that range from the staging of poetic identity and gender in the plays by Ivana Saj ko to brutally realistic urban conversational topics (Welcome to the Blue Hell [Dobrodošli u plavi pakao] by Bořivoj Radaković, Culture in the Suburb [Kultura u predgrađu] by Robert Perišić, and Y ou сап' t Escape Sunday [Nemreš pobjeć od nedjelje] by Tena Stivičić). Disil- lusioned and devoid of ambition to express any sort of ideological statements, young playwrights désire to articulate new stratégies of writing. They are not even interested ín the dramatization of the conflict between social responsibility and personal survival, which was the favorite topič in the plays by post- totalitarian authors. Almost all young Croatian playwrights, although they write in a range of différent styles, are aware of the dynamics between the national and the international in drama and théâtre. These dynamics hâve become an integral part of their aesthetical programs. The décomposition of national myths is a global phenomenon. The décline of the idea of 'national' drama and théâtre seems to be inévitable.

The affinity between politics and théâtre is a favorite topic of drama- turgically oriented media theory: TV wars like the Gulf War or Kosovo crisis, global dramas like collapsing of the Twin Towers, internationally famous national dramas as Watergate and many new national 'Watergates' in our own countries keep on producing theatrical pièces of Embarrassment, Sentiment and Cruelty.

Although mobilization and mystification of masš audiences and manipulation of the emotional impact by the event for political purposes are clear indicators of governmental repression, démocratie administrations also trans- form ideology and cultural politics into performative language. Problems crop up at the Intersection of Eastern and Western Théâtre. For example: Chinese spoken drama imported from the West soon degenerated into a political tool. Plays were used as vehicles for political propaganda provoking abhorrence of theatrical realism. Chinese audiences - traditionally going to théâtre not to see real life on stage but expérience real émotions - could not possibly appreciate Ibsen. The core of misunderstanding was not in Ibsen, however. Another example: The Théâtre of the Oppressed, a concept of Augusto Boal that con- stitutes part of the festival in Rio. People from the given community - for instance, a group of 80 laid-off street cleaners, a contingent from 800 that the city had fired earlier in the year - décide what issues are important at the moment. Actors enact a dramatization of a spécifie problem. After 15 minutes a Joker or facilitator reminds the spectators, that they are encouraged to enter the action and become spect-actors. Great idea, but what works in Rio does not necessarily work in Zagreb. An attempt to apply the same schéme to the milieu of Croatian capital (Nataša Govedić as theoretician and Vili Matula as actor- facilitator) did not bring the expected benefit to local theatrical life. Social benefits were negligible. The question is whether it is possible for a théâtre scholar and a théâtre critic to co-create or analýze such performances impartially. Is it, perhaps, just another role to play for or against the Théâtre of

SMALL FORM IN THE NEW CROATIAN DRAMA 47

the Oppressed, for or against the Théâtre of the Establishment, for or against the Théâtre of the Alternative, etc?

At the end of the 1970s, Dietrich Steinbeck, pointed to methodological conséquences of the scholarly approach that combines sociology and théâtre studies. What makes it interesting for some of the aspects of the subject treated in this paper is the analysis of intentional acts of spectators and of their social background. Croatian new drama builds up its aesthetics in deep awareness of so called 'dramaturgy of the audience'. For each author there is a spécifie group of spectators - and e ven before the play i s ready the author can predict what might be her or his 'people' in the auditorium. Steinbeck dénies value to the type of théâtre criticism that gives a simple description of the production and makes a mère 'reconstruction' of what he calls 'the real meaning of a theatrical piece'. In his Introduction into the Theory and System of Théâtre Studies, Steinbeck claims that the principle aim of théâtre criticism is, 'to give insight into the active power of a certain group of spectators.' A performance in itself is not innovative - says Henry Schoenmaker - it is only innovative in the context of the background the spectator has brought with him into the théâtre. American reader response criticism and authors like Fish, Culler or Holland, although on the basis of différent premises than German réception theory, came to rather similar conclusions about théâtre audience: for example Stanley Fish, in Why No One 's Afraid of Wolfgang Iser? insists that the reader as a subject should not be approached as a separate entity, but rather as a social construct. In other words, ail the meanings ascribed to the text by a particular reader hâve their source in his or her 'interpretational community'. The impact of the réception theory and the theory of 'interpretational community' on théâtre studies is obvious.

When the youngest génération of Croatian play wrights opted for ' small form' it was in silent protest against neo-romantic grandeur of the national théâtre. Their escapism was a spontaneous reaction against an ancient institution

that kept on ignoring the reality of everyday life and preferred to historically 'important' subjects. They wrote their plays knowing what their 'interpretational

community' might be. This community consists mainly of their colleagues and young théâtre professionals fresh from the Academy of Drama Art who had already received some national and international acclaim. It would be naïve to think that young Croatian playwrights could remain unaffected by the polarization of Croatian théâtre circles, that they could ignore the clash between the Croatian théâtre mainstream represented by the théâtre magazine Glumište and the new theoreticians clustered around the editorial board of Frakcija', that they could participate in Croatian théâtre life without being aware of the repeated scandais connected to Dubrovnik Summer Festival and of the conflict in différent festival conceptions, where the international festival Eurokaz prefers new tendencies, while The Days ofMarul represent middle-of-the-road national sélection. Finally, it would be impossible for young Croatian playwrights to be unaware of the serious mess in the repertory policies of Croatian théâtres.

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II. 'SMALL FORM' DEFINED AND DEFENDED IN THE HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE OF CROATIAN MODERNISM

Before analyzing of some représentative examples of 'smali form' in contemporary Croatian drama, let us throw light on possible theoretical définitions in relation to the vague, cross-field term 'smali form'. The spontaneous and programmatic choice of a relatively short dramatic form with a small cast (sometimes requiring minimum properties, as in so-called bare stage genre, sometimes introducing over-elaborate 'non-producible' poetic stage directions reminiscent of Expressionism) is a common phenomenon in Croatian new drama, especially in the plays written by young authors of the génération born in the 1970s. As it was already put forward in our introduction, it would be a mistake to reduce this post-postmodern phenomenon - which has much to do with post- war résignation of the 1990s and deliberate rejection of the ideological tenets connected to 'great drama' - exclusively to quantitative arguments and technical characteristics in the purely formai description of the term 'one-act play' or 'small-cast play'. Furthermore, the history of one-act play in Croatian drama and théâtre from the beginning of the twentieth century gives us a good excuse for broadening the définition of 'smali form' in contemporary Croatian dramatic literature.

The term one-act alludes to the text of a dramatic performance entity short enough to stand alone or given as part of a larger program onstage or in other media. It sometimes also alludes to the recording in images of such an entity for any transmission or playback medium (which opens the field of half-hour TV dramas). Its relationship to the full-length play is analogous to the short story- novel relationship. The term small-cast herein means four or fewer actors. It ignores supernumeraries, that is, extras or chorus necessary or unnecessary for production. The one-act play offers an interesting spectrum of possible genre distinctions. Croatian authors - from the time of early modernism and proto- expressionism to the current period in contemporary drama - had always known how to take advantage of multiple genre options, choosing a wide spectrum of generic names in subtitles of their plays.

The period of modernism lacked unified ideological orientation as much as style nouveau lacked congruent stylistic idiom. As the resuit of the perturbation in the hierarchy of literary criteria in the period of modernism, the différence between the 'respecteď and the 'less respecteď genres became invisible. The shift in the aesthetic criteria that moved the focus of the reader's attention from a particular genre and its position in the system of literary formš to the skill and fame of a particular author. A good réputation could compensate for the use of simple, small forais, and that is how the process of the affirmation of modem one-act plays started. Modem ideas found their expression in literature but it was also the other way around. Unpretentious in its dramatic structure, the modem one-act play reformulated some of the ideas typical of the time that had brought its genre to popularity.

Reading dramatic works written between 1906 and 1913 by a Croatian playwright Mirko Dečak (1880-1938) and leafing through periodicals of the

SMALL FORM IN THE NEW CROATIAN DRAMA 49

epoch in search of the reviews on théâtre productions of his plays one could easily notice that the author's choice of smali form and his preference for syncretism in his approach to media captured the spirit of the time in which he lived. His one act plays translated nervous coexistence of mutually exclusive modem styles into an ail-inclusive tendency typical of Modem Style. Не combined différent impulses received from visual arts, art déco and musie to create a peculiar atmosphère introduced both on the level of motives and in stage-directions. Ail one act plays showed the author's extensive reading and knowledge of German, Austrian and French modem literature. Dečak apparently relinquished the naturalistic platform from which he started as a playwright. In fact he opened up the dramatic structure of his plays to some sort of décorative stylisation leading to what Georg Lukács would hâve termed 'lyrical natural- ism'. Dečak's preference for mentally disturbed dramatis personae -most frequently suffering from pathological neurosis - was in harmony with the new subjectivism of the beginning of the century. The mixture of naturalistic éléments and stylization in the work of this Croatian author was highly symptomatic of Modem Style in Eastern Central European drama. In most European cultural centers the Sécession as a Modem movement ceased to exist after 1904. By that time the new, décorative style in painting melted into abstract art. Once the focus had been shifted from the collective aspect of human existence back to the personal one - the crisis in modem society found its créative expression in the drama of an individual. According to Jacques Le Rider Art Nouveau was the ultimate manifestation of intellectual disillusion- ment, which was, nevertheless, very far from résignation. The modem intellectual was no longer certain about the importance of the sensé of identity and that uncertainty, quite surprisingly, resulted in the radical shift towards aesthetic individualism. The Humpback [Grbavac] (1908), the first in the séries of Dečak one-act plays produced by Josip Bach in Zagreb, appeared on the stage of Croatian National Théâtre in 1906. The plot takes place in the art- studio of the protagonist who is portrayed by the author as 'a hump-backed genius'. Obsessive sensuality leads the protagonist from stupéfaction to violence. The rhythm of his manie dépression imposes rhythm to dramatic action. The tragédy in Dečak's drama is the resuit of a neurotic split in the mind of the maie character. It does not resuit from the plot of the play. Pathology of the protagonist' s mind makes him a paradigmatically Modem figure.

The not very great but, for the history of Croatian dramatic literature, exceptionally important work of Janko Polic Kamov, aroused disapproval and rejection during the author's life that were motivated, above all, by the dramaturgie novelties and the avant-garde spirit of Kamov' s work. In the European context, Kamov' s very consistently executed poetics comes very early and spontaneously, and with respect to the dramatic body of work of this author it is quite reasonable to talk of stylistic features of proto-expressionism (a term ušed by Henryk Markiewicz when splitting Polish literature up into periods). Kamov created a dramatic vision that, with enormous inner backing and at the right time with respect to kindred European movements in the arts, expressed just the type of sensitivity deseribed and interpreted by Wilhelm Worringer. When the dramatic œuvre of J. P. Kamov appeared, it was a spontaneous expression of the necessary feeling of unease that a civilized man, as a modem individual, felt

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when faced with the structure of society. This type of feeling is compared by Worringer to the fundamental unease experienced by a primitive man when faced with nature. Abstraktionsdrang would accordingly be an expression of the spiritual state of the modem, and modernist subject who can no longer manage to recognize himself within the framework of the world in which he is submerged. Kamov's personae sensé themselves in a trap; their actions are the resuit of a panicky encounter with the external surroundings; they do not háve the consistence of the psychological causality of actions. In general in the center of his plays there is the figure of a young intellectual who provokes a conflict, probing in long sarcastic monologues below the surface of family and social relations. Kamov does not put the generic désignation 'dramatized studies' without deep dramatic and poetic reasons. Не wishes to emphasize the délibération and the consciousness of the act in which as author he steps outside the limits of conventional drama. Не replaces the realistic and the naturalistic cause and effect motivation of the dramatic action by an action which is overtly the resuit of a procedure that the Expressionist authors called the battle of ideas. Kamov's dramatized study attempts to be a dramatized battle of ideas, while managing to remain dramatic because of the intensity of the inner action. Long expressionistically toned and rhythmical monologues are dominant, from time to time, they are phantasmagoric in the complex of realistic détails that are dis- tinguished and skillfully arranged by the author in such a way as to suggest the troubled state of the psyche of the character. The failure of the surrounding world to recognize the modem subject, the resulting sensé of unease and the draw of abstraction, suggests aesthetic implications of Kamov's world view. Two plays with the generic désignation 'dramatic studies' in the subtitle prove exceptionally suitable for use in a textual and dramatic analysis of Kamov's composition of the Expressionist type of a one act play. The most représentative example would be his short play On Native Ground [Na rodnoj grudi] (1907) - a one-act play, with the réservation that Kamov avoided terminology that would suggest the classic form of writing for the stage and the psychology of réception it gives rise to, and was more attracted to a division into scènes within which the rhetorical topic of the dramatized study developed. The grotesquely enlarged finger that waves above the main character and draws him from the stage bringing Kamov's one act play to its close is ultimately depleted of ail its symbolic fullness and reduced to a pure gesture of démonstration. On Native Ground is perhaps the purest example of Croatian dramatic expression which is its own purpose and its own most interesting thème. The Expressionist ideal of the interesting action is derived from stasis, and if its source of it is not precisely at the still point of events, then it is at least in the statement that XY is dead. The spiritual action begins where the dramatic action is supposed to end. Of course, always assuming that XY of the beginning of the twentieth century was 'greať, 'humanlike' and 'ideal'.

Croatian stage director Branko Brezovec who started working as a théâtre director in the company Coccolemocco, one of the most important alternative groups of the 1 970s in ex-Yugoslavia, inaugurated a postmodem approach to drama, so called 'patent-dramaturgy' which juxtaposes différent, and often at first sight incompatible texts as in the show Ormitha macarounada and a few chefs from the ear 1982. Brezovec was the first director who reintroduced to the

SMALI FORM IN THE NEW CROATIAN DRAMA 51

national stage the work of Slobodan Šnajder — the playwright who opted for a sort of a créative and spiritual exile in the 1990s. Brezovec directed Kamov, Necrography, one of the best plays by Slobodan Šnajder, from the theoretical platform of his 'patent dramaturgy'. Не approached the play from the drama- turgical perspective that relates différent texts, cultural contexts, seemingly disparate media and genre solutions, and merges différent acting styles in a musical show titled Kamov, Necrography / Moulin Rouge. The basic idea was to deconstruct the romantic myth of the doomed national poet. Šnajder' s neo- expressionistic interprétation of the life of Kamov - who was for him a para- digmatic figure of rébellion - introduced pathos in the context of Croatian contemporary drama. This neo-expressionist 'engaged pathos' is introduced in the moment when the search for the Absolute comes to a dead end in the process of the disillusionment of the main character who is in constant rejection of the metaphysical category of Salvation.

III. SMALL IS BEAUTIFUL : POSTPOSTMODERN PERSPECTIVE

For his black comedy Assassins [Atentatori] subtitled 'a grotesque', Tomislav Zaječ (1972) received the most prestigious state award for playwrights - Marin Drzić Award. The bizarre subject summarized as 'a crazy attempt to square accounts with the old neighbor' is imagined in just one scene. The place of action is a smali apartment in Zagreb, the time of action is 'now', that is to say in 1999, the year in which the play was completed. Although it seems that the playwright' s fïrst objective is to settle old scores in the tradition of the 'salon play' and to subject some formai éléments of 'bourgeois drama' to irony, the true intention of this young author might as well be to prove that it is possible to depict the social problem of the suburb in a large city, and to portray its marginal characters without lamentation and docility. This excellent play succeeded in being brutally realistic without realism. No matter how determined the critic might be to link the world of Tomislav Zajec to authentic avant-garde tradition of Alexander Vvedenski and Daniel Harms, or to some more récent avant-gardism, for example the one of Dario Fo, it is wise to read this play without 'reading into' it. Post-postmodernism sometimes prefers simple solutions.

The nationally awarded and successfully produced play by Dubravko Mihanović, titled Colour White [Bijelo] describes an hour during the working day of two house-painters: the sixty-year old Master Tradesman and his twenty- year-old Apprentice. There is not much action in the play: watching a girl in the building opposite, two characters with nothing in common and with very little to speak about, open up to each other for a moment. Réduction on all levels is the principle that makes the structure of this one-act play différent from all other plays written in the 1990s. The dialogue in this bare-stage drama requiring minimum scenery is scarce, yet well-balanced, sharp, witty and heartbreakingly simple. Characters, portray ed with seemingly little means of 'dramatic production', are masterly depicted. The Colour White is a play that balances on the edge of absurdity, yet it succeeds in producing unexpected catharsis in the short moment when human warmth comes out from behind the white wall of existential stupor, in spite of the deadlock in conversation.

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An Orange In the Clouds [Naranča u oblacima] by Ivana Sajko, subtitled 'A One-Act Messing-About in the After-Life', informs its reader that both the place and the time of action are irrelevant. Two dead people accompanied by their guardian angels meet in some limbo-land. Oscar, the first one, has become completely indiffèrent to his former life because of the prolonged death he endured. Schilla, who has committed suicide to follow him, is haunted by the taste of oranges which makes her hungry - an unacceptable wish in the world of the dead. When she meets Oscar, who has changed from the Oscar she knew, Schella realizes that nothing, not even the sacrifice of her life, could open the path to his heart. She remains alone with her guardian angel, tortured by hunger for love. This play - in its German translation and in the production of Theater der Stadt Heidelberg with Hubert Habig as stage director - received excellent reviews. The poetic rhythm of Sajko's monologues contributes to the dreamlike atmosphère of her plays. Her strategie use of the theatrical form remains anchored in exploration of the writing process which is at the same time the process of self-exploration. Sajko is deeply engaged in the relationships between female subjectivity and poetic identity.

I will conclude with two authors whose dramatic simultaneously maintain doubt and irony toward Freudian psychoanalysis, Jungian interprétation of dreams and the Heideggerian model of the author as bearer of essential truths. While the dead Mother rests in the wardrobe, the Groom proposes to her Daughter and waits for winter when the girl will drown herself in the river and be accommodated in the remaining space in the wardrobe. This is the short summary of Dead Wedding [Mrtva svadba] by Asja Srnec Todorović. This quantitatively rather small work, deseribed as a play 'in two acts with a Prologue and an Epilogue', actually offers to its reader two possible endings - the first that concludes the plot 'tragically' with the reál funeral scene, and the second one which subjects to ghostly irony the happy end of a family union.

Milica Lukšić subtitled her play The Huntfor the Bear-Rug Bear [Lov na medvjeda tepišara] as the 'anthropological melodrama'. Her authorial intention was to dramatize the clash between the mythology of urban life and the mythology of the national past with its set of canonic values represented by well-known literary models ready for parody. The clash is primarily on the linguistic le vel. This playwright satirizes the archetypal situation of the hunt somewhere on the imaginary Wild Border. She confronts two 'archetypal' hunters - one from Musland, somewhere in the West, and another called Rakija (Plum Brandy) who cornes from the Wild East, and sets them hunting a genetically modified bear called the Bear-Rug. The parody of Milica Lukšić is not for its own sake. This play, that is partly a theatre-of-the-absurd play, uses comédie éléments in a nihilistic vein denying the existence of any basis for knowledge or truth. Written in the 1990s, The Hunt for the Bear-Rug Bear represented the clear example of the 'engaged escapism' of Croatian playwrights who thought that it was possible to speak about the war trauma without speaking about it directly , through a set of ideological tenets.

Complète distrust in one 'true' code of belief is the common characteristics of the plays that had opted for the 'smalľ, thus denying 'greať historical truths.

SMALL FORM IN THE NEW CROATIAN DRAMA 53

REFERENCES

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54 SIBILA PETLEVSKI

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SAŽETAK MALA FORMA U NOVOJ HRVATSKOJ DRAMI

Spontani, ali i programatski motiviran izbor relativno kratke dramske forme s malom glumačkom podjelom (ponekad s minimalnim scenarističkim zahtjevima, kao u takozvanom 'bare stage' žanru, a ponekad s preobilnim 'nepostavljivim' scenskim uputama koje asociraju na ekspresionizam) proširen je fenomen kad je riječ о hrvatskoj novoj drami, posebno u dramama mlađih autora rođenih sedamdesetih. Bilo bi pogrešno postmoderni fenomen - koji u obrađivanim primjerima ima veze s poratnom rezignacijom devedesetih i namjernim odbacivanjem ideologema vezanih uz 'veliku dramu' - svesti isključivo na kvantitativne argumente i tehničke karakteristike u čisto formalnom opisu naziva 'jednočinka' ili 'drama male glumačke podjele'. Štoviše, povijest jednočinke u hrvatskoj drami i kazalištu od početka dvadesetoga stoljeća do danas, pruža nam dobru izliku za proširenje definicije 'male forme' u suvremenoj hrvatskoj dramskoj književnosti.