“Leavening” of Slovenian drama and theatre

Wednesday 10th March 2010 from 10 am to 1.30 pm and from 3 pm to 7 pm

Slovenian Youth Theatre, Slovenian Theatre Museum and AGRFT Academy in cooperation with Kino Šiška Centre for Urban Culture present a day symposium on one of the key figures in Slovenian post-WWII drama, theatre and culture, Peter Božič.

Peter BOŽIČ
Peter Božič is considered the pioneer of absurd drama in Slovenia alongside Jože Javoršek. His drama pieces for the Stage 57 (as well as the pieces by his colleagues, particularly Smole, Strniša and Zajc, Taufer, Rožanc) in 1960's and even more noticeably in the following decade (as well as drama pieces by Jovanović, Šeligo, Jesih, Lužan, Rudolf) provided the Slovenian theatre scene with an opportunity to establish the revolution in forms, although with a great delay, which was mastered in painting, sculpture and music much earlier. He suffered the same fate as all young post-war intellectuals who rejuvenated the Slovenian drama in 1950's and 1960's, thus presenting the first wave of cultural opposition. Despite his internment to Germany during the war and his post-war belief into a renovated country and a better tomorrow his dreams shattered in 1951 as he was convicted of anti-state activity. He was expelled from the Maribor grammar school where he associated with the authors of the school bulletin Iskanja and prohibited from continuing his studies for five years. Although his penalty was annulled a year later, his political label remained. Being a member of Stage 57, he provided it with his three most remarkable drama pieces (Zasilni izhod / Fire exit, Križišče / Crossroads and Vojaka Jošta ni / Private Jošt is Gone). He remained socio-critical and active until his premature death.

The symposium aims at shedding light from various viewpoints on the rich and intriguing oeuvre of Peter Božič with regard to formal, conceptual and political issues. It aims to show how the revolution of forms that was often disputed within politics as well as the new dramaturgy of the post-war Slovenian theatre, largely encouraged by Peter Božič, have led to the triumph of another equally imperative concept of stage writings: on the one hand they increased the leading position of the text, at the same time denouncing its contamination with literature and the literary. Even more, their antirealist orientation paradoxically yet no less fatally contributed to extremely detailed descriptions of practically uninhabited realms of reality, which remained unconquered both in bourgeois as well as social-realist mimetic-realistic drama.
And so it remains today. Even Božič' latest and unfortunately the last dramatic and (due to its special structure) already staged matrix, Šumi, remains bound to the original postulates of typical anti-realist i.e. realist-cubist orientation. Utopian as it sounds, these orientations remain topical in the post-democratic globalist Slovenian reality.
The findings of the symposium will be published as a special issue of Slovenian Theatre Museum Documents also featuring a wide range of previously unpublished documentary materials from the author's legacy.


Draft symposium programme:

Part one: treatises (10 am–1.30 pm)

Prof Dr Janko Kos, introductory treatise,
Dr Denis Poniž,
Ivo Svetina,
Dr Gašper Troha,
Dr Tomaž Toporišič,
Mojca Kreft,
Dr Krištof Jacek Kozak.

Part two: discussion, book presentation and film screening (3 pm–7 pm)

Discussion: Peter Božič and theatre
(likely speakers: Žarko Petan, Mija Janžekovič, Veno Taufer, Ivo Svetina, Kristijan Muck, Matija Logar, Vinko Möderndorfer, Simon Kardum, Uršula Cetinski and dramaturgy students from AGRFT Academy)

Presentation of the book featuring two plays by Božič (Denis Poniž and Ivo Svetina)

Screening of the film by Vinko Möderndorfer: Človek v šipi / A Man in Glass, portrait of the writer Peter Božič, TV Slovenia 1999

Organising committee: Dr Tomaž Toporišič (Slovenian Youth Theatre), Ivo Svetina (Slovenian Theatre Museum), Dr Denis Poniž (AGRFT Academy) and Simon Kardum (Kino Šiška Centre for Urban Culture)