Original Title: Kazališne teorije
This exceptionally valuable theatrological text-book has already been used by American students for some ten years. The Croatian edition is a translation of the latest, expanded edition. It analyses theatre theory from Aristotle to the most recent 20th century theories. The material is dealt with through a historical and critical review of the historical periods and the authors who were active during them. In this way, a comprehensive review is given of the spirit of the particular time, and this approach clearly shows the exceptional nature of theoretical thought about the theatre art in individual historical periods.
The book came out in three volumes, each of which covers one thematic whole: the first deals with Antiquity, the Middle Ages and Renaissance and with the 18th century in France and England; in the second we find bourgeois 19th century theory with an introductory chapter about the 20th century, while the third covers the 20th century from 1914 until the 1980s.
The first and second volumes were translated by Lara Höbling Matković, with Boris Senker’s professional editing. Boris Senker translated the third volume. Manfred Pfister, Drama, Theory and Analysis (I-II) Original Title: Manfred Pfister, Das Drama. Theorie und Analyse, Wilhelm Fink, Munich, 1977.
After publication in the Series Mansions of Marvin Carlson’s Theories of the Theatre (Vols. 1-3), we continued by publishing another valuable book of theatre theory which is of fundamental value for national culture, science and art.
Drama,… by Manfred Pfister, professor at the Berlin Freie University, has gone through as many as eight editions because it has become the basic text-book for students of drama and teachers of drama and theatre at German universities. Primarily relying on the rich experience of the German theory of communications and the theory of reception, Manfred Pfister gives a systematic, theoretically well-based, and even more importantly, usable model for analysis of drama texts. The book has 450 pages and is divided into eight chapters: Foreword, Drama and the Dramatic, Drama and the Theatre, Transmitting the Message, Speech Communication, Personality and Personage, Time and Space Structure, and Conclusion. The book also contains a detailed list of primary and secondary reference literature and the author’s Index, facilitating finding one’s way through Pfister’s exceptional analytical theory of drama and the theatre.
As a fundamental work for the profession, this book is intended for theatre critics, theatre theoreticians and, particularly, students of theatre theory, dramaturgy, and high school teachers. The University of Zagreb confirmed the book’s worth by granting it text-book status.
Dr. Marijan Bobinac, professor of German Language and Literature at the Faculty of Philosophy in Zagreb, translated Drama into Croatian, and the reviewers were Dr. Victor Žmegać, Dr. Boris Senker and Dr. Nikola Batušić.
Drama was published with funding assistance from the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Croatia, the Ministry of Science, and the Bayerische Staatskanzlei from Munich.
Antonin Artaud, The Theatre and Its Double Original Title: Antonin Artaud Le Theatre et son Double, Edition Gallimard 1964 Antonin Artaud is one of the most controversial personalities in world theatre. The theatre of cruelty as a concept and as theatre practice stemmed from Artaud’s theoretical thought – which was vehemently demonstrative – and from his directing and theatre work. Artaud’s words: Before I return to questions of culture, I believe that the world is hungry and that it does not care much about culture are a stumbling block even today to many artists searching for a public which will consume their art. Artaud’s thought about the theatre was collected in several important theoretical texts which he published in the period between 1929 and 1938, when he brought them together under a common title, The Theatre and Its Double. He advocated the theatre as a place of spiritual transformation of man by his liberation from the most covert and dark wishes and desires, and this concept is still very much alive in the art and poetics of many directors and performers today. The Croatian translation of Artaud’s theoretical work, essential to the understanding of theatre poetics from the beginning of the 20th century to the present day, is a major contribution to theatrology and theatre practice in Croatia.
The book was published with funding support from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the French Republic, the French Embassy in Croatia, and the French Institute in Zagreb.