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Народният театър – глобално-локални проблеми
The National Theatre – Global-local Problems

Author(s): Violeta Decheva
Subject(s): Theatre, Dance, Performing Arts, Fine Arts / Performing Arts, Music, Visual Arts
Published by: Институт за изследване на изкуствата, Българска академия на науките

Summary/Abstract: The article analyses the meanings of the name national, which the National Theatre embodied as a nationally representative institution through the course of its development in the 20th century. The article aims at pointing out the historical characteristics of Bulgarian national theatre in the context of its sibling European institutions: The definition “popular” outlived many changes and collisions in the fate of the theatre and represents a surviving consensus realization that the “national” is based out- side any institutions in a community immanence “travelling through time” and being a symbol of the Bulgarian “spirit”. The performance of that “spirit” is always collective, not civil; it is “popular”. The National Theatre also embodied the realization of “cultural institution” (rendered in the beginning of its existence by Pencho Slaveykov). This cultural institution presented the works of the greatest artistic figures of the nation and thus the national culture became a step towards the universal world of artistic culture. From the very beginning o​f its existence and later in its being in Bulgarian culture throughout the whole 20th century the National Theatre represented the painful duality of these two approaches to the “national”. This strainful and contradictory mixture of the two approaches to the “nationally Bulgarian” constituted the very name of the theatre as “national”. The need of choosing between the two meanings of the national – the collective mythical meaning (traditional) or the individual historic meaning (the modern) – has always been summoned in situations of crisis. What is the present realization of the nation- al and what are the expectations for the National Theatre to represent? What is the place of the National Theatre in the present national state? Are we ready for the questions globalization as a process poses to the development of culture? The article outlines the crisis of the national state and the place of the nationally representative institutions as, for example, nation- al theatres like Deutches Theatre, Bourgtheatre, the Royal National Theatre, Comedie Francaise, Theatre Dramaticni in Warsaw among others. The article renders the opinion that national theatres are typical of the universal “high modernism” (Fr. Jameson) which, as a type of expression is representative of the culture of the respective national theatres. The article also outlines the global crisis of the “national” and its implications in the Bulgarian cultural stratum, along with the adding of other new local problems. It traces the shrinking of Bulgarian theatre after the political changes in 1989 and the lessening of interest on behalf of the national state towards investing into the theatre’s future development. As a result from this process, as well as a result from the features of the historical genesis of the meaning of “national” in representation of the National Theatre “Ivan Vazov”, the theatre formed after the fall of communism in 1989 rather a unique centre of diverse artistic experiments in Bulgarian theatre than remaining merely a representative of a type of expression of “high modernism” similar to this in its sibling national theatres. What is the choice of Bulgarian culture – strengthening of the positions of the National Theatre and a special statute for its development in the light of the weakening Bulgarian theatre or marginalization of the National Theatre as a nationally representative institution resulting from the local effects of the process of globalization and the political changes after 1989?

  • Issue Year: 2005
  • Issue No: 2
  • Page Range: 7-11
  • Page Count: 5
  • Language: Bulgarian