Theatre Handbills and Posters under Socialism Against the Substitution of the Authentic Truth with the “Communist Truth” in the People’s Republic of Bulgaria
Theatre Handbills and Posters under Socialism Against the Substitution of the Authentic Truth with the “Communist Truth” in the People’s Republic of Bulgaria

Summary/Abstract: Theatre handbills and posters under Socialism, just like playwriting and productions, were an important verbal and imagery channel used to communicate with spectators/the Bulgarian nation both by the artists and the Bulgarian Com-munist Party. These authentic records of that time are evidencing the pursuits of the artist with their freedom-loving spirit, their ability to articulate the sufferings and anxieties of the then reality in a figurative language. Disclosed were also the manipulations of the Bulgarian Communist Party to indoctrinate and control the people even on the pages of the handbills, reiterating their “truths”, communist ideas and messages over and over again. Bulgarian theatre posters and hand-bills were, however, entirely subject to the ‘normative aesthetics’ until Stalin’s personality cult was denounced. In the 1960s through the 1980s they succeeded in evading censorship by using powerful visual language and remarkable inter-pretations of directors and poster artists such as Leon Daniel, Asen Stareishinski, etc. Unlike the theatrical productions of that time, posters and handbills have survived to tell their stories.

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