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Theatre in the
Context of the
Yugoslav Wars
(GLWHGE\-DQD'ROHÏNL
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Theatre in the Context of the Yugoslav Wars
Jana Dolečki · Senad Halilbašić
Stefan Hulfeld
Editors

Theatre in the
Context of the
Yugoslav Wars
Editors
Jana Dolečki Senad Halilbašić
University of Vienna University of Vienna
Vienna, Austria Vienna, Austria

Stefan Hulfeld
University of Vienna
Vienna, Austria

This research and publication project was funded by the Federal Chancellery
of Austria

ISBN 978-3-319-98892-4 ISBN 978-3-319-98893-1 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-98893-1

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018951568

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 Acknowledgements

First of all, we wish to express our sincerest gratitude to the authors, art-
ists and theatre activists who contributed to this volume—without their
remarkable efforts, their questions and comments and their encourage-
ments, this book could not have been made.
We would like to thank the Federal Chancellery of Austria for finan-
cially supporting a panel discussion with Snježana Banović, Dino
Mustafić and Gorčin Stojanović at the 2016 MESS festival in Sarajevo,
and for furthering our work on this book by granting us the resources
for finalizing this project in due time and scope. For the panel discussion
in Sarajevo, we also owe thanks to the Austrian Embassy in Bosnia and
Herzegovina.
Furthermore, we are indebted to the Faculty of Philological and
Cultural Studies, and to our own Department of Theatre, Film and
Media Studies, at the University of Vienna. They provided significant
means of support, both large and small, which were needed as much
as they were appreciated: First, in supporting the conference Theatre
During the Yugoslav Wars, and, second, in lending a hand towards the
publication of this ensuing volume. The Austrian association Akademie
an der Grenze and its chairman Dr. Klaus Pumberger were staunch part-
ners in securing necessary funds for this project. We would also like to
acknowledge the Center for Doctoral Studies of the University of Vienna
and their help in organizing the above-mentioned conference, as well as
our partner, the Volkstheater Wien.

v
vi    Acknowledgements

We also extend our thanks to the fellow Ph.D. candidates at the

Department for Theatre, Film and Media Studies, who, time and again,
readily engaged in discussion about our contributions to this volume
during our research meetings. We are grateful to the students of the class
Theatre During Yugoslav Wars, taught in the 2015/2016 fall term, since
it was their vivid interest in the topic that proved to us the importance
of this project, and of giving visibility to the field of research tackled in
the following chapters. We hope to have contributed to paving a path for
new generations of academics who wish to work on these topics.
We thank Erika Munk for her insightful comments and suggestions at
different stages of our work, and we are also grateful for the encourage-
ment given by Marvin Carlson whenever he happened to be in Vienna.
Furthermore, we are deeply grateful to Paul Butcher for proofreading
our volume and responding to our concerns, linguistic and otherwise, in
such a prompt and capable manner. We also thank Lina Dokuzovic, for
meticulous inspection of several chapters of this book and for providing
us with added knowledge on side.
Finally, we wish to thank our publisher, Palgrave Macmillan, for
accepting this volume and placing it within such an inspiring environ-
ment in its publishing program, next to the monographs of e.g. Silvija
Jestrovic, Milija Gluhovic or Sonja Arsham Kuftinec, all publications with
which this book shares interests and perspectives. We especially thank
the Commissioning Editor of the Literature and Theatre section, Tomas
René, for his trust, advice and patience, and the Editorial Assistant Vicky
Bates, who led us competently and with ease through the large amounts
of paperwork that tend to go along with the creation of a volume such as
this.
 Contents

Introduction 1
Stefan Hulfeld, Jana Dolečki and Senad Halilbašić

Part I Mobilisation of Theatre Institutions

Testimony Borka Pavićević 37

Borka Pavićević

Stages of Denial: State-Funded Theatres in Serbia

and the Yugoslav Wars 45
Irena Šentevska

Bosnia and Herzegovina’s National Theatres

in the Context of Language Politics During the War 63
Senad Halilbašić

Testimony Amela Kreso 83

Amela Kreso

Theatre as Resistance: The Dodona Theatre in Kosovo 87

Jeton Neziraj

vii
viii    Contents

War Discourse on Institutional Stages: Serbian Theatre

1991–1995 107
Ksenija Radulović

Part II Shifting Stages

Theatre on the Front Lines: Ad Hoc Cabaret in Croatia,

1991–1992 125
Jana Dolečki

Within and Beyond Theatre: President Tuđman’s Birthday

Celebration at the Croatian National Theatre in Zagreb 151
Lada Čale Feldman

Testimony Snježana Banović 173

Snježana Banović

Culture of Dissent, Art of Rebellion: The Psychiatric

Hospital as a Theatre Stage in the Work of Zorica Jevremović 177
Milena Dragićević Šešić

Theatre of Diversity and Avant-Garde in Late Socialist

Yugoslavia and Beyond: Paradoxes of the Disintegration
and Cultural Subversion 199
Ana Dević

Testimony Borut Šeparović 221

Borut Šeparović

Part III Subsequent and External Perspectives

The Theatre Exchange Between Slovenia

and the Republics of Former Yugoslavia in the 1990s 227
Barbara Orel
 Contents    ix

Fording the Stream of Conscience: Peter Handke’s

River Journeys 243
Branislav Jakovljević

Testimony Nihad Kreševljaković 271

Nihad Kreševljaković

Strategies for Challenging Official Mythologies in War

Trauma Plays: The Croatian Playwright Ivan Vidić 277
Darko Lukić

Postmodern Antigones: Women in Black

and the Performance of Involuntary Memory 297
Aleksandra Jovićević

Testimony Dino Mustafić 315

Dino Mustafić

Index 321
 Notes on Contributors

Snježana Banović is a theatre director and Professor at the Academy for

Dramatic Art, University of Zagreb. She has a Ph.D. in theatre studies
and has published on theatre history. She has directed numerous plays
in Croatia and elsewhere. Her books include Država i njezino kazalište
[The State and its Theatre] and Kazalište krize [Theatre of Crises].
Ana Dević is a sociologist, a senior Marie Sklodowska-Curie fellow
at the KU-University of Leuven. Ana’s Ph.D. is from the University of
California in San Diego. Relevant publications include “What Nationalism
Has Buried: Powerlessness, Culture, and Discontent in Late Yugoslav
Socialism,” in Stubbs et al. Social Inequalities and Discontent (2016).
Jana Dolečki is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department for Theatre-,
Film- and Media Studies at the University of Vienna. Her current
research focuses on wartime theatre in Croatia and Serbia.
Milena Dragićević Šešić is a Professor and Head of the UNESCO
Chair in Cultural Policy and Art Management at the University of Arts
Belgrade, and the former President of the latter. She has published about
150 essays and 16 books, some of which have been translated. Book
titles include Art and Alternative, Neo-folk Culture, Art Management in
Turbulent Times and Vers les nouvelles politiques culturelles.
Lada Čale Feldman is a Professor in the Department for Comparative
Literature at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University
of Zagreb, where she teaches drama, theatre and performance studies.

xi
xii    Notes on Contributors

She has published and edited a dozen books in both Croatian and
English, dealing with the aforementioned interests from political-anthro-
pological and feminist perspectives.
Senad Halilbašić is a University Assistant and Ph.D. candidate in the
Department for Theatre-, Film- and Media Studies at the University
of Vienna. His research focuses on theatre during the Bosnian war.
Previous publications include the volume Bibliothek Sarajevo. Literarische
Vermessung einer Stadt (2012), which he co-edited.
Stefan Hulfeld is Professor of Theatre and Cultural Studies at the
University of Vienna. His current research agendas focus on theatre his-
toriography and theory. Publications include the chapters “Modernist
Theatre” in The Cambridge Companion to Theatre History (2013)
and “Antitheatrical Thinking and the Rise of ‘Theatre’” in A Cultural
History of Theatre in the Early Modern Age (2017).
Branislav Jakovljević is a Professor and Chair of the Department of
Theatre and Performance Studies at Stanford University. His research
focuses on avant-garde and experimental theatre, performance theory,
performance and politics, and, currently, radical performance and eth-
ics. His most recent books are Alienation Effects: Performance and Self-
Management in Yugoslavia 1945–1991 (2016) and Smrznuti magarac i
drugi eseji [Frozen Donkey and Other Essays, 2017].
Aleksandra Jovićević is a Professor in the Department of Storia
dell’arte e spettacolo at La Sapienza University in Rome, and a coor-
dinator of the doctorate program in Performance Studies at the same
department. She is also curator of a book series, Politics and Aesthetics of
Performance, for the publisher Bulzoni in Rome.
Nihad Kreševljaković is a historian and cultural manager. He worked
as director of the Sarajevo War Theatre SARTR from 2012 until 2016.
He is the co-director of the documentary Do you remember Sarajevo? He
has been working as a producer at the MESS theatre festival since 1994,
where he holds the position of director since 2017.
Amela Kreso is an ensemble actress at the National Theatre Mostar. She
started working there during the war and has performed in various roles
since then. She graduated from the department for Drama and Acting at
the University Džemal Bijedić in Mostar. She also served as the theatre’s
artistic director.
 Notes on Contributors    xiii

Darko Lukić is a tenured Professor at the Academy of Dramatic Art

and a Professor for Doctoral Studies in Literature, Performing Arts, Film
and Culture at the Faculty of Philosophy, University of Zagreb. Previous
publications include Uvod u primijenjeno kazalište [Introduction to
Applied Theatre] (2016), Uvod u antropologiju izvedbe [Introduction to
Anthropology of Performance] (2013), and Drama ratne traume [War
Trauma Drama] (2009).
Dino Mustafić is a Bosnian-Herzegovinian theatre and film director.
He holds a degree in directing from the Academy of Dramatic Arts in
Sarajevo, where he studied during the city’s siege. He has directed
numerous plays throughout the entire Balkan region. He was the direc-
tor of the international theatre festival MESS.
Jeton Neziraj was the artistic director of the National Theatre of
Kosovo, and now he is the director of Qendra Multimedia (www.qendra.
org), an independent theatre company focused on contemporary drama
and theatre. He has written over 20 plays that have been staged and per-
formed in Europe as well as in the USA.
Barbara Orel is Associate Professor of Performing Arts and head of the
research group of the Academy of Theatre, Radio, Film and Television at
the University of Ljubljana. Her areas of research include contemporary
European performance theory, politics and culture. She has published in
edited collections such as International Performance Research Pedagogies:
Towards an Unconditional Discipline? (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017).
Borka Pavićević is a dramaturge, columnist and theatre activist. She was
the artistic director of the Belgrade Drama Theatre, a longtime BITEF
associate, and part of the artist movement KPGT. She is the founder of
the New Sensibility theatre (1981), and in 1994 she founded the Center
for Cultural Decontamination, whose numerous activities are focused on
fighting nationalism, intolerance and xenophobia.
Ksenija Radulović holds a Ph.D. in Theatre Studies from the Faculty
of Dramatic Arts (University of Arts in Belgrade) and is an Assistant
Professor at the FDA, teaching History of Theatre and Drama. Her
research interests are drama and theatre studies, and her fields of exper-
tise are directing, respectively redefining classics and reinterpreting classi-
cal texts.
xiv    Notes on Contributors

Irena Šentevska is an independent researcher and curator. She holds

a Ph.D. from the Department of Arts and Media Theory, University of
Arts in Belgrade. Her first book The Swinging 90s: Pozorište i društvena
realnost Srbije u 29 slika [Theatre and Social Reality in Serbia in 29 pic-
tures] was published in 2016 by Orion Art, Belgrade.
Borut Šeparović is a theatre and film director currently living and work-
ing in Zagreb. He graduated in philosophy and comparative literature
and also holds a Masters degree from the Amsterdam University of Arts.
He is the founder and artistic director of the prestigious Montažstroj
troupe, “a collective that ties different artistic disciplines and media cul-
ture in a socially responsible way.”
 List of Figures

Introduction
Fig. 1 Interior view of the stage in the former cultural center
of Pilica [Dom Kulture], located in the territory
of Republika Srpska (district of Zvornik), March 2018
(Photo courtesy of Velija Hasanbegović) 10
Stages of Denial: State-Funded Theatres in Serbia
and the Yugoslav Wars
Fig. 1 San letnje noći [A Midsummer Night’s Dream],
National Theatre Belgrade, 1997 (Photo: Miša Mustapić,
courtesy of the National Theatre Belgrade) 51
Bosnia and Herzegovina’s National Theatres in the Context
of Language Politics During the War
Fig. 1 Founding Document of the Ratno Kazalište HVO [HVO
war theatre; HVO, i.e. Croatian Defence Council, the military
formation of the Bosnian Croats] in Mostar (Photo courtesy
of Rusmir Agačević [private archive]) 72
Theatre as Resistance: The Dodona Theatre in Kosovo
Fig. 1 Entry of the Dodona Theater (Photo courtesy
of Jeton Neziraj) 92
Fig. 2 Actors in the comedy Professor… I am talented… it’s
not a joke (sequel) (Photo courtesy of Jeton Neziraj) 93
War Discourse on Institutional Stages: Serbian Theatre 1991–1995
Fig. 1 Troil i Kresida [Troilus and Cressida], Yugoslav Drama Theatre,
Belgrade, 1994 (Photo courtesy of Srđa Mirković) 109

xv
xvi    List of Figures

Fig. 2 Poslednji dani čovečanstva [The last days of mankind],

Yugoslav Drama Theatre, Belgrade, 1994 (Photo courtesy
of Srđa Mirković) 112
Theatre on the Front Lines: Ad Hoc Cabaret in Croatia, 1991–1992
Fig. 1 The actor Mladen Crnobrnja in the play Bratorazvodna
parnica. Ad Hoc Cabaret theatre group, 1991
(Photo courtesy of Darko Bavoljak) 140
Within and Beyond Theatre: President Tuđman’s Birthday
Celebration at the Croatian National Theatre in Zagreb
Fig. 1 Veliki meštar sviju hulja [The Great Master of All Scoundrels],
Zagreb Youth Theatre, 2001 (Photo: Sandra Vitaljić,
courtesy of the Zagreb Youth Theatre ZKM) 163
Culture of Dissent, Art of Rebellion: The Psychiatric Hospital
as a Theatre Stage in the Work of Zorica Jevremović
Fig. 1 Kraljica noći [The Queen of the Night], staged for children
of the medical staff of the Laza Lazarević Psychiatric Hospital
(Belgrade), 1994 (Photo courtesy of Zorica Jevremović) 189
Fig. 2 Zorica Jevremović quarrelling with the police that stopped
the street performance Put u nemoguće ili potraga za
boginjom Klio [The Road Towards the Impossible,
or the Quest for Goddess Clio], 1995 (Photo courtesy
of Zorica Jevremović) 191
Theatre of Diversity and Avant-Garde in Late Socialist
Yugoslavia and Beyond: Paradoxes of the Disintegration
and Cultural Subversion
Fig. 1 The Stage of Political Drama, the cast of Missa in A minor
on the cover of the prestigious NIN weekly magazine
(Belgrade), June 21, 1981 (Photo courtesy of NIN magazine) 204
Fig. 2 Boj na Kosovu [The battle of Kosovo], National Theatre
Subotica, 1989. Picture from performance on September
18, 1992 performed at the Kalemegdan Fortress, Belgrade
(Photo courtesy of BITEF theatre) 207
The Theatre Exchange Between Slovenia and the Republics
of Former Yugoslavia in the 1990s
Fig. 1 Antigone. Slovenian National Theatre Drama Ljubljana,
co-producer: Wiener Festwochen, 1993 (Photo courtesy
of Tone Stojko, Slovenian National Theatre Drama Ljubljana) 230
Fig. 2 King Lear. Slovenian National Theatre Drama Ljubljana,
1992 (Photo courtesy of Tone Stojko, Slovenian National
Theatre Drama Ljubljana) 236
 List of Figures    xvii

Strategies for Challenging Official Mythologies in War Trauma

Plays: The Croatian Playwright Ivan Vidić
Fig. 1 Actress Katarina Bistrović Darvaš as Jela 1 in the play
Veliki bijeli zec [Big White Rabbit] by Ivan Vidić, 2004
(Photo N. N., courtesy of the Zagreb Youth Theatre ZKM) 287
Postmodern Antigones: Women in Black and the Performance
of Involuntary Memory
Fig. 1 Performance Par cipela–jedan život [A Pair of Shoes,
One Life]. Women in Black, July 11, 2010
(Photo: Srđan Veljović, courtesy of Women in Black) 302
Fig. 2 Performance Srebrenica 8372. Women in Black, July 7, 2016
(Photo: Srđan Veljović, courtesy of Women in Black) 303
 Introduction

Stefan Hulfeld, Jana Dolečki and Senad Halilbašić

This volume assembles twelve academic contributions and six statements

by theatre practitioners and active participants of the wartime theatre
realm under the title Theatre in the Context of the Yugoslav Wars, with
the aim to explore and consolidate a research field that has been opened
up in the last decade by a number of monographs and papers. This intro-
duction first raises some general remarks about the volume, its research
objectives and its title. Second, it addresses the context behind a pho-
tograph (that would have been our choice for the cover), which mirrors
some of the preceding remarks. Third, it also provides an overview of
the individual chapters and experimentally explores correlations between
them. And finally, it initiates reflection upon the further development of
the research field promoted by means of this volume.

S. Hulfeld (*) · J. Dolečki · S. Halilbašić

University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria
e-mail: stefan.hulfeld@univie.ac.at
S. Halilbašić
e-mail: senad.halilbasic@univie.ac.at

© The Author(s) 2018 1

J. Dolečki et al. (eds.), Theatre in the Context of the Yugoslav Wars,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-98893-1_1
2 S. HULFELD ET AL.

“Yugoslav Wars”—A chronological overview of key events

May–June 1991: Rising violence following ethnic tension in

Croatia; Croatia and Slovenia declare independence from the SFR
Yugoslavia; Yugoslav People’s Army (JNA) takes over border areas
of Slovenia leading to the Ten-Day War.
September 1991: JNA openly attacks areas in Croatia; the Croatian
War of Independence starts.
October 1991–December 1991: Full-scale armed conflicts are
happening throughout Croatia. The Serb entity in Croatia pro-
claimed its independence as the Republic of Serbian Krajina, but
remained unrecognized by any country except Serbia.
January 1992: Vance peace plan is signed, creating zones for Serb-
controlled territories, and ending large scale military operations in
Croatia; UNPROFOR forces arrive to monitor this peace treaty; the
Republic of Macedonia declares independence; Republic of the Serb
People of Bosnia and Herzegovina—the future Republika Srpska
[Serb Republic]—is proclaimed.
April 1992: Bosnia and Herzegovina declares independence; the
Bosnian War begins, as well as the siege of Sarajevo that would
last for 1425 days in total and result in more than 10,000 peo-
ple killed by the forces of the JNA and, subsequently, the Army
of Republika Srpska. Federal Republic of Yugoslavia is pro-
claimed, consisting of Serbia and Montenegro and with Slobodan
Milošević as president.
May 1992: UN impose sanctions against Federal Republic of
Yugoslavia, banning all international trade, scientific and techni-
cal cooperation, sports and cultural exchanges as well as air travel;
Slovenia, Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina became UN mem-
bers states.
March 1993: The Croat-Bosniak War begins, a conflict between
the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the self-proclaimed
Croatian Republic of Herzeg-Bosnia, supported by Croatia.
May 1993: International Criminal Tribunal for the former
Yugoslavia (ICTY), a body of United Nations, is formed in The
Hague, Netherlands.
March 1994: Peace treaty between Bosniaks and Croats is signed
(Washington Agreement), arbitrated by the United States.
 INTRODUCTION 3

May 1995: Croatia launches Operation Flash, retaking its territories

from the forces of the Republic of Srpska Krajina, followed by the
exodus of 11,500–15,000 Serbian refugees.
July 1995: Srebrenica genocide reported, with more than 8000
Bosniaks killed by the units of the Army of Republika Srpska
under the command of General Ratko Mladić, who is sentenced
to life in prison by the ICTY in 2017.
August 1995: Croatia launches Operation Storm and reclaims over
70% of its pre-war territory, followed by the exodus of approxi-
mately 200,000 Serbian refugees; NATO launches a series of air
strikes on Bosnian Serb artillery and other military targets.
December 1995: Dayton Agreement signed in Paris, marking the
end of the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
March 1998: Fighting breaks out between Yugoslav forces and eth-
nic Albanians in Kosovo, Slobodan Milošević sends in troops and
police.
March 1999: NATO starts the military campaign Operation Allied
Force in Kosovo.
June 1999: Conflict in Southern Serbia between Albanian mili-
tants and Yugoslav security forces begins upon the end of Kosovo
War.

1.
The title of this volume promises to explore an art form in a geograph-
ical area and during a time span defined by the term “Yugoslav wars,”
that is to say, the territory of the (Ex-)Socialist Federal Republic of
Yugoslavia during the 1990s. Although the topic-time-place coordinates
may seem very fixed to readers not familiar with the complexity of this
historical context, we consider that the main concepts of the title and
reasons for choosing them need to be addressed.
First of all, what does “theatre” mean in this context? And more
importantly, can we state that known concepts and definitions of thea-
tre are challenged, extended, accentuated or corrupted in times of acute
and violent socio-political transformation, such as war? Looking through
some existing major research contributions, and especially those assem-
bled in this volume, a possible answer to the above-mentioned ques-
tion becomes quite obvious: during times of war, the usual theoretical
4 S. HULFELD ET AL.

common-places tend to be either shifted, intensified, questioned, or even

reversed. Furthermore, widely shared distinctions or dichotomies in the
field of aesthetics tend to be blurred. On one side of the spectrum, under
exceptional life conditions imposed by the war, the pure fact of maintain-
ing and producing theatre gains a strong meaning, e.g. as a collective act
of humanity or in order to maintain “normality” (meaning the “regular-
ity” of everyday life) against all odds. Simply performing and attending
theatre, as some texts in this volume show us, may provide efficacious
devices to challenge the peril of death and strengthen the will to sur-
vive. On the other hand, sometimes this maintaining of “normality,”
persisting to produce theatre repertoires as though nothing of stronger
social and political significance was happening outside the theatre stage,
could be considered the exact opposite—an escape from the responsibil-
ity of theatre, as a public space, to communicate with its reality regard-
less of the consequences this may bring. And it is exactly this ambiguous
position that speaks volumes of the effect that theoretical concepts of
theatre could bear during wartime. Escapism as one possible function of
theatre can result in an act of collective denial, or of sharing hope—and
many shades between the two.
On another level, and starting from the fact that wartime presup-
poses a certain national or other homogeneity required for actual
combat, theatre can be used as an artistic weapon to fight for national
independence and new forms of collective identity. This is crucial in
the case of Yugoslav wars, which were fought along ethnic and national
lines. Presenting and re-interpreting collective historical myths, as well
as fostering “blood and soil” narratives, are the related functions of at
least one type of wartime theatre. As some of the contributions in this
book demonstrate, most of the state-funded theatres throughout all of
the warring countries almost unanimously followed the call for national
unification initiated by the dominant political powers (or, in some rare
but respectable cases, decided to position themselves precisely against
it). Theatre thus became a platform for openly negotiating its political
potentials, engagements and responsibilities in the context of very clearly
denoted and mediated positions of Us vs. Them. Furthermore, consider-
ing some theoretical positions perceiving ethnicity and ethnically based
collective “identities” as not only a “requirement” of an ethically moti-
vated war but also its products,1 throughout this volume, theatre will
also be evaluated as an active mechanism able not only to reproduce but
also to create the patterns of certain national unity.
 INTRODUCTION 5

As already stated, in the case of ethnically based wars, national deno-

tation becomes one of the most central issues of the discussion on war-
time theatre. As we shall see in the presented texts, identification with
concepts of nationality took place on different levels and via different
modes—from the renaming of institutions (adding the attributes of
­ethnic affiliation), choosing “national” authors and nationally “relevant”
topics, staging works in specific language idioms, et cetera. Furthermore,
this also happened by means of expulsion—modes of forming nation-
ally defined theatres could also be found in the reality of what was miss-
ing from the theatre stages. Authors, actors and theatre professionals
of “other” ethnic affiliations suddenly perished from the nationally-
defined stages, thus reflecting not only the general wartime atmos-
phere, focused on naming and removing enemies from the “nation’s
body,” but also indicating to what extent theatre was engaged in this
process. Of course, one should be aware of the perils of generalization;
this is exactly why the theatrical phenomena that escaped implementing
the imposed nationalistic rhetoric and its brutal consequences will be fur-
ther addressed throughout the texts assembled here.
Theatrical performances allow one to present oneself in a potentially
limited, marginalized or suppressed public sphere and to speak out in
disagreement. Individual responsibility can be enacted and postulated;
fear and hopelessness can be expressed. However, the wartime context
not only challenges the existing concepts in the realm of theatre, but also
brings about new ones. For example, the question of whether one should
perform theatre during a war becomes a prevailing one, reflecting the ethi-
cal position of theatre and its practitioners in the overall scheme of political
power and its mechanisms of mediation. This question meanders through
most of the texts included in this volume—the mere fact of engaging one-
self in theatre production resonates with the theatre practitioners’ diver-
sified ethical concerns during the wars in Yugoslavia. As in this research
field, theatre and war relate to the concrete activities of human beings,
responsibility becomes a crucial topic: the responsibility of those who pro-
duced and witnessed art, or those who made use of performative acts to
achieve or promote certain ideological agendas, as well as the responsibil-
ity of those who carried out war activities or atrocities.
Considering all this, “theatre” in the context of the Yugoslav wars
must be understood as a wide notion including all sorts of theatri-
cal interactions, regardless of their organizational form, respectively,
their more social or artistic ambitions. The will to act or witness coram
6 S. HULFELD ET AL.

publico, to establish relationships in order to step out of the logic of war

or to take sides, the existential need to communicate, to claim the above-
mentioned responsibility or to evoke a special kind of reality in a shared
space where playful, symbolic, fictional or utopian features can become
potentially efficient, serves as a criteria of what has to be explored.
There are many historical and scholarly reasons to use “theatre” in the
given context as an umbrella term and to abstain from the usual differen-
tiations (cultural performance, performance, activist art, theatricality, per-
formativity, et cetera) at the first level of defining the research area. Only
one of these reasons shall be emphasized: the availability of food, water,
electricity, financial means, public spheres or the access to public media
and communication, are goods that warring factions aim to bring under
their control, while the preconditions to establish theatrical interactions
on a small scale can hardly be abolished or totally controlled. The organ-
izational forms, spaces, means and aims of theatrical interactions depend
greatly on such accidental factors, but their importance, effectiveness or
artistic value is not determined by whether people gather in a function-
ing National Theatre building, an improvized venue, in front of the load-
ing platform of a van, on public squares or streets, or in some private
or clandestine spaces. Thus the decision to generally label as “theatre”
interactions bearing the potential to create or transform specific realities
in a playful or symbolic manner stems from the objective to make very
different events comparable and to further explore their interdependen-
cies. This strategic lack of terminological differentiation on the first level
allows us to value phenomena which are obvious and hidden, “loud” and
“silent,” persistent and ephemeral, while their analysis aims to initiate
reflections about divergences and interdependencies in every respect.
Obviously, “theatre” during the Yugoslav wars turned out to be highly
relevant for opposing or at least different reasons for various groups of
people according to their actual life conditions and needs. In the shadow
of state-controlled media and comprehensive crises of all sorts, theatri-
cal performances gained a vital communicational significance in negotiat-
ing the roots, the state and the future of individuals and communities, in
which the framing of the latter with an ethnic, religious, nationalistic and/
or martial zeal conflicted with promoting a multiethnic, multi-confessional,
anti-nationalistic and peaceful mode of coexistence. While theatre in Europe
generally faced a loss of importance for the community as a means for nego-
tiating social needs and values, theatre in the context of the Yugoslav wars
increased its significance in all respects, simultaneously with bloodshed.
 INTRODUCTION 7

“Yugoslav wars” is another term that is less defined in our context

than one might presume. Historians may have depicted (and are still
depicting) armed conflicts and war crimes summarized under the term
“Yugoslav wars,” they may have analyzed different factors causing these
wars in the framework of the breakup of SFR Yugoslavia; and they may
have counted approximately how many deaths, casualties or missing per-
sons resulted from these wars (see above: “Yugoslav Wars”—A chrono-
logical overview of key events).2 Of course one must be aware of this
kind of knowledge; but as “theatre” presupposes that actual persons
establish actual relationships in actual spaces during a definite time
span, “war” necessarily gains a concrete meaning in this context as well.
Theatre in the context of war lacks any abstractness, and instead denotes
concrete experiences in concrete situations. Therefore, the notions of
war in this particular case could not be more ambiguous and complex—
although narrowed down to similar dates and toponyms, the “same” war
can be defined and narrated differently, as we can witness by analyzing
the current state of historiography and everyday politics in the succes-
sor countries. In Croatia, the term “homeland war” or “the war of inde-
pendence” is still very much used officially to describe the armed conflict
that took place on its territory, with attempts to label it an armed conflict
with strong traits of civil war still being scrutinized3 and even potentially
penalized.4 On the other side, in the official narratives of today’s Serbia,
this conflict is predominately called simply the “war in Croatia.” The
problem of designating an armed conflict as a war is even more present
in the case of the conflicts between Croatian and Bosniak armed forces in
Bosnia and Herzegovina, or in the case of armed combats between the
Serbian Army and the Albanian minority in Kosovo. Although a com-
mon understanding of these conflicts still cannot be negotiated, and the
use of the plural form thus also points to the lack of minimal agreement,
the contributions of this volume address this problem by challenging the
aforementioned notions, each in its own way.
The point of departure for our research activities in this field can
be found in two Ph.D. projects currently being led at the University
of Vienna, one focusing on theatre during the wars in Bosnia and
Herzegovina, the other on wartime theatre in Croatia and Serbia. In
need of widening the research field with existing and new approaches to
these topics, we organized the conference Theatre During the Yugoslav
Wars in November 2015 (while also conducting a seminar for students
under the same name in that very semester).5 With this, an international
8 S. HULFELD ET AL.

research network was eventually established, and in the closing discus-

sion of the conference, the idea for a related book project was brought
up. Some major learning steps and changes in our mindsets accompanied
its planning and realization, one of which is reflected in the shift of the
preposition in the title from the initial “during” to the much wider “in
the context of.”
We started to define the project as a theatre-historiographical one
and broadened our time-span focus to 1999, giving less attention to
those approaches pursuing the traces and consequences of war in con-
temporary performances. One reason for this type of intervention in the
temporal determinations of our initial project is found in the fact that,
even if the administrative dates of the first and last armed conflicts can
be determined to a certain extent, their influence on the state of theatre
cannot. Another reason for focusing on a quite narrow time-span, with
the dedicated objective of working in the field of theatre historiography,
is certainly the urgent need to systematically collect, analyze and debate
the remnants of theatrical activities of the war era. While a quite con-
siderable amount of productions are well documented, and some muse-
ums, state or theatre archives, and magazines from the region provide
important collections and material, a lot of basic research still has to be
done, especially when considering those forms of theatre happening out-
side urban centres and “out of reach” of the media and further public
interest. Furthermore, as we have experienced throughout our work on
bringing this volume together, some phenomena of wartime theatre, for
very different reasons, are still underrepresented in this research field,
thus also missing basic analytical treatment (e.g. the wartime theatre
activities in Banja Luka). A systematic theoretical framework in organ-
izing and debating this very material that we already know or that we
still have to discover was lacking, especially on an international, English-
speaking level. This was another motivation for the specific focus of our
first theatre-historiographical attempts.
These are still important goals to achieve when considering our given
intentions, but we learned from the contributions in this volume that his-
tory in this case decisively affects the present. In many case studies, the
past and the present proved to be interwoven in numerous ways, with
respect to theatre practice from the 1990s until this very day: therefore,
it is difficult to determine whether and when exactly the Yugoslav wars
came to an end. The period of war, be it as an armed and executed con-
flict between two or more opposing political entities or in the form of the
 INTRODUCTION 9

“new wars” of the post-Cold war era,6 can rarely be curtailed by defined
initial and final dates. In the case of all the wars fought in the course of
Yugoslavia’s breakup in the 1990s, there was never any formal declaration
of war by the opposing parties. An end to the wars was mostly achieved
through international peace conferences, and they were officially ended
by peace agreements, as, for example with the Dayton Agreement in the
case of Bosnia and Herzegovina, or with the Kumanovo Agreement in
the case of the war in Kosovo. But while the Prussian general and military
theorist Carl von Clausewitz famously defined war as “the continuation
of politics by other means,” the editorial team behind this volume was
often confronted with the question of whether some present-day events
surrounding our research project are not proof that, even in times of
declarative peace, there may still exist something like the continuation of
war by other means. More than once, we were reminded of the reper-
cussions of the wars on the present; and theatre practice seems to entail
a distinct potential to measure the long-term damage on individuals and
communities, and to remember what the public discourse wants to define
as forgotten or to rage against states of denial. The scandals regularly pro-
voked by the theatrical inquiries of the theatre director Oliver Frljić are
only the most distinguished, but not the only proof of this.7
In conclusion, we decided to define the research field using the prep-
osition “in the context” as a “history of the present,” which led us to
think about and to adjust the historiographical concept.

2.
We experienced the extent to which the temporal determinants of the
Yugoslav wars, as well as the notion of theatre, were subverted while pre-
paring this volume—more precisely, in dealing with the choice of a cover
photo for the book. Initially intrigued by the photographs presented
by Branislav Jakovljević in his lecture at the mentioned conference in
Vienna, we engaged in a delicate task of finding a visual expression of the
books’ main topics and controversies. While we were successful in find-
ing such a picture, the publisher unfortunately rejected our choice due to
its cover design policy. However, the selected photo deserved to become
part of this introduction out of different reasons.
The mentioned picture, taken by the photographer Velija
Hasanbegović in early 2018, impressed us due to its visual message
simultaneously being vague and documentary, sufficiently general to
10 S. HULFELD ET AL.

Fig. 1 Interior view of the stage in the former cultural center of Pilica [Dom
Kulture], located in the territory of Republika Srpska (district of Zvornik),
March 2018 (Photo courtesy of Velija Hasanbegović)

be placed in different times and places, but at the same time located in
a very specific place and within a striking context (Fig. 1). This image,
portraying an abandoned space existing somewhere on the border
between fact and fiction, storytelling and history-telling, became a con-
ceptual frame we wanted to further address in this introduction in order
to distinguish more precisely between the various discourses raised when
addressing theatre and war.
At first glance, the motif of the devastated stage might be associated
with an abandoned venue which has fallen into decay over time. But
then, one might recognize the holes and bruises on the concrete walls,
as well as the white paint covering graffiti with new graffiti over it, some
of it later made unreadable. The former are bullet holes; the latter doc-
ument an ongoing battle to symbolically take possession of this place of
remembrance.
One might think that our interest in this photo was raised by its
apparent trespassing of the clear border of the war as a “material,”
 INTRODUCTION 11

and theatre as a “medium” of presentation. The war affects theatre in

numerous ways, transforming not only its traditional modes of rep-
resentation but also very often its ways of functioning—there are numer-
ous cases of theatre houses and stages being closed, used as shelters,
moved to safer cities or zones, transferring performance times to mat-
inees. But the photograph mainly reminds us of the possibility that a
stage can become the scene of atrocities as well.
It shows an interior view of the stage in the former cultural centre
of Pilica, located in the territory of Republika Srpska, one of the two
legal entities of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The venue was originally
built as one of many cultural centres [Dom Kulture] throughout the
former Yugoslavia, established with the foundation of the socialist state
after World War II in order to provide a space for art and culture in
remote and non-urban areas of the country. They were usually used for
cultural manifestations, guest performances by theatre groups, concerts,
film screenings, et cetera. In the course of the Bosnian War, the Pilica
Cultural Centre twice became a scene of horrendous war crimes: up
to 750 men and boys of Muslim ethnicity were detained in the centre
for several days at the end of May 1992, following the ethnic cleans-
ing of multiple villages in the district of Zvornik. They were supposed
to be relocated to the safe area of Sapna, but this never happened: on
June 1, 1992, those civilians were taken away from the Cultural Centre
by armed forces of the Army of Republika Srpska [Vojska Republike
Srpske, VRS], executed in the surrounding areas and buried in mass
graves.
As part of the genocide that took place in Srebrenica and its sur-
rounding areas in 1995, on July 16, approximately 500 Bosnian-Muslim
men and boys were executed by VRS military personnel in the cultural
centre of Pilica itself, using automatic weapons and hand grenades.
The theatre stage, the storage area beneath the stage and the audito-
rium became horrendous crime scenes.8 These two documented and
prosecuted war crimes in Pilica were not the only cases in the course of
the Bosnian War in which a theatrical space turned into a place of the
gruesome suffering of innocents, as one of our contributing authors,
Branislav Jakovljević, recently pointed out with reference to the case of
Čelopek (also located in the district of Zvornik), where the stage of the
cultural centre became a torture chamber.9
Showing the image of this specific place of detention and execu-
tion in the introduction of an international academic volume dealing
12 S. HULFELD ET AL.

with theatre in the context of the Yugoslav wars reminds us of the most
dreadful effect of war and what this conflict meant for those imprisoned
in the cultural centre of Pilica and expecting to be killed. We selected
it as a memorial sign for this purpose, because the scholarly point of
view tends to gain distance and, therefore, lose sight of some unbeara-
ble truths, especially by focusing on theatre and those individuals, among
others, who had the strength to use it as a playful means of survival or
active revolt.
Furthermore, we find that this photograph comments on the inability
to factually reclaim the end of war and underline one of the numerous
ways it still lingers, with or without the complicity of official systems of
political power. Once we had received the photos from the actual place
and compared them to those taken in the last few years in other con-
texts, we noticed a certain “graffiti war” taking place on the walls of
the venue, which, in the meantime, had became a place of annual com-
memoration for the victims who had been tortured and killed on the
spot. Over the course of just a few years, we could follow nationalistic
and other symbols being overwritten in a perpetual continuation of the
“war by other means.” Pictures from 2016 show graffiti writing in sup-
port of Ratko Mladić, the commanding officer of the Army of Republika
Srpska, a war criminal convicted in 2017 as the main person responsible
for the very genocide happening here. These graffiti symbols appeared
before an annual memorial service, organized by the Udruženje porodica
zarobljenih i nestalih lica općine Zvornik10 [Association of the Families
of Imprisoned and Missing Persons of the district of Zvornik], held to
commemorate the imprisoned victims on May 31, 2016—the commem-
orating families stated that those symbols had not been present a year
earlier.11
In 2018, the letters were covered by black graffiti, probably out of
respect for the victims who are commemorated here each year by
Bosnian Muslims and other visitors. The image chosen above is the
most recent picture available—and, in contrast to pictures taken a year
or two ago, it shows a new graffiti sign: on the right side of the stage
we see the sign C-C-C-C, a Cyrillic abbreviation of Samo Sloga Srbina
Spasava, meaning “only unity saves the Serbs.”12 As the above analysis
proves, the stage and the auditorium of the Pilica cultural centre remain
a place of post-war wounds and unresolved questions of historiography
and responsibility.
 INTRODUCTION 13

3.
The arguments for assembling this volume became clear at the
above-mentioned conference, where, for the first time since the wars,
such a number of acknowledged academics and theatre profession-
als discussed the wartime theatrical phenomena of a once mutual state,
bringing their research and experiences to direct communication. This
comparative presentation of knowledge thus simultaneously addressed
the position of “the others” (or the former enemies during the con-
flicts), opening up the discussions to new forms of understanding. The
outcomes of the conference were incredibly valuable, as we learned that
most theatre theoreticians in the Yugoslav successor states—with few
exceptions—deal with related topics in the context of their respective
national framework, while their research does not necessarily transcend
the boundaries of the new nation states. It is self-evident that each
successor state has experienced its own peculiar political and social trans-
formations, and thus requires specific analysis, but by assembling this
volume, we wanted to further stimulate present and future research chal-
lenging transferrable levels and correlations. As stated above, the contex-
tualization of different forms of theatre with different war experiences
could be considered as a first methodological approach to the research
field under construction. Out of the individual contributions, one can
depict a first map of specific constellations; yet of course, the following
way to outline correlations is only one possibility of reading through this
volume.
The first section of the volume concerns institutionalized theatre
under the influence of economic transition, warmongering politics, state
control and the rise of nationalism in a relationship of mutual depend-
ence with the Yugoslav wars. The eminent intellectual, dramaturge and
activist Borka Pavićević introduces the section with an analysis of the
transition period in retrospect (“…privatization. That was the basis:
nationalism was an upgrade”), and points out the extent to which a the-
atre institution mirrors the governmental system. As the artistic direc-
tor of the Belgrade Drama Theatre, she witnessed the dissemination of
jingoistic mindsets until she was dismissed in 1993, amid her struggles
to keep the theatre repertoire relevant to the acute reality. Reacting to
the uniform official cultural policy concentrated on producing national
narratives and presenting its harsh consequences, which she describes in
detail. In 1994, she founded the Centre for Cultural Decontamination,
14 S. HULFELD ET AL.

which very quickly became an important hub for intellectual and artistic
resistance in Belgrade. Pavićević’s experiences of being actively engaged
in both institutional and non-institutional realms of creative production
in Belgrade during the wars provide a unique comparative perspective.
As her testimony shows, while the independent theatre scene almost
immediately and overtly critically reacted to the horrors of reality (its
most prominent agents being the DAH Theatre group13), the state-
funded theatres continued their activities in a certain oblivion, pretend-
ing that the war was happening to others. Managed mostly by appointed
supporters of the regime, and thus under the direct influence of the gov-
ernment, most of the state theatres concentrated on creating repertoires
either based on historical narratives (stirring up national sentiments of
unity), or providing their audiences with the possibility to “escape” the
violent reality.
This position is exactly the starting point of Irena Šentevska’s con-
tribution, which discusses official Serbian theatre presenting “spectacles
of forgetfulness” during wartime, staging repertoires producing certain
amnesia towards the perturbed reality. Furthermore, Šentevska shows
how a paradoxical situation, where the state subsidized culture by the
highest ever percentage of its budget14 in the midst of one of the harsh-
est economic and social crises in modern European history, resonated on
the stages of official theatre institutions, departing from the visual aspects
of the staged material. After analyzing examples of lavish productions
manifesting the state of denial, she introduces examples of those produc-
tions staged in state-funded theatres that expressed an attempt to criti-
cize the positions of power responsible for their own functioning.15
Šentevska shares some part of her main analytical focus with Ksenija
Radulović, who also deals with noteworthy productions of state-funded
theatre in Belgrade during the wars, such as Troilus and Cressida and
The Last Days of Mankind, which were staged in the Yugoslav Drama
Theatre (JDP) in 1994. But, while Šentevska, focusing on visual aspects,
underscores that theatre remained quite “undramatic” or trapped in aes-
thetics compared to everyday life, and that observably the institutions
generally remained caught in the warmongering system that funded
them, Radulović focuses on dramaturgical aspects and criticism, empha-
sizing how important the discussed performances were for the “minority
of citizens who consistently struggled against official policies.” By pro-
viding deeper analysis of the productions such as Powder Keg by Dejan
Dukovski (1995) or Tamna je noć [Dark Is the Night] by Aleksandar
 INTRODUCTION 15

Popović (1993), Radulović claims that a certain resistance to the

“war-mongering nationalist policies and media manipulations” did, how-
ever, manifest on the institutional stages in Belgrade, but was, however,
sporadic, belated or isolated.
Less ambivalent was the activity of the Dodona Theatre in Kosovo’s
capital Pristina, a semi-official or half-hidden institution, affectionately
described by Jeton Neziraj as a “muse of resistance.” Neziraj shows that
the shaky ground upon which this theatre had to assert itself, against all
odds, was its source of power. During the 1980s, with nationalism grow-
ing among both the Serbian and the Kosovo Albanian inhabitants, and
after Serbia severely restricted the autonomous status of the Kosovo in
1989, Kosovo Albanians boycotted the Serbian-dominated institutions
and/or were expelled from them. The marginalized majority began to
build up clandestine parallel structures, especially schools. Albanian
teachers and students of the Faculty of Dramatic Arts also subsequently
resumed their lessons in a decrepit building after their eviction. And as
theatres were either closed or supervised by Serbs, a children’s and youth
theatre with about 160 seats in the suburbs of Pristina became their
practice venue. Although a Serbian director was imposed there as well,
two notable actors succeeded in preserving the stage for evening perfor-
mances in Albanian due to a fake contract. Comedies by international
authors from the twentieth century were mostly played in the Dodona
theatre from 1992–1998, whereas comedy-like ruses were applied to
“neutralize” the Serbian director in order to accomplish forbidden tasks
such as final exams for the students of the officially non-existent Albanian
Faculty of Arts. The Dodona theatre was very successful, and occupies
an important place in the cultural memory of many Kosovo Albanians as
a “muse of resistance” until today; it put up spiritual resistance against
“the national purification of Kosovo,” which first led to war-like events
and then resulted in a war. Following Neziraj’s report, this stresses the
current endeavor of Kosovar theatre to be a “strong promoter of demo-
cratic development” in the end.
Generally, it seems that the importance of the Dodona theatre lay in
the creation of a public sphere where Albanian was spoken. Similar to
this case of Albanian theatre in Kosovo, processes of shaping national
theatres through language politics were a key strategy in wartime Bosnia
and Herzegovina, as Senad Halilbašić points out. After a survey of the
language situation and language politics in the Socialist Federal Republic
of Yugoslavia, he refers to the astonishing number of 35 national theatres
16 S. HULFELD ET AL.

in this federation in 1990, and highlights two illustrative examples of

national theatres in Bosnia and Herzegovina at war. First, the National
Theatre of the Bosnian Krajina Banja Luka, which, with the outbreak
of the Bosnian War in spring 1992, changed its name to become the
National Theatre of Krajina, therefore dropping any “Bosnian” attribute.
Besides changing its name, this theatre began to communicate exclusively
through the Serbian language and with Cyrillic letters, but these were
only the exterior signs of the ethnic purification of the theatre ensem-
ble and the respective ethnic cleansing of Banja Luka and its surround-
ings. Second, Halilbašić describes how the National Theatre of Mostar,
established in 1951 on the eastern side of the river Neretva, where the
majority of the city’s Bosnian Muslims lived, was briefly abandoned in
1992 due to attacks by Serbian militia, while due to the Croat-Bosniak
war, Mostar became a divided city and its National Theatre a no-man’s
land. A Croatian National Theatre was founded as early as 1994 on the
western side, on the basis of a former theatre enterprise (yet claiming for
itself, until today, the founding year 1951), while in the eastern part one
remaining actress started to reuse the damaged building, providing the-
atre courses for young people as well as staging productions with ama-
teur actors. This activity gave rebirth to the National Theatre that still
exists today on the eastern side. Again, language was used in this pro-
cess of division like a “flag of independence,” as the author explains. The
National Theatre of united Mostar was a destroyed institution when the
only remaining ensemble actress, Hadžija Hadžibajramović, gathered
young people and amateur actors there during the shelling of the city.
But it had an impact on individuals that prospering theatre institutions
usually only pretend to achieve: Amela Kreso, today an ensemble mem-
ber of the National Theatre who started acting there during the war,
describes acting at times of war in a very personal report about her par-
ticipation in the courses and stagings of that time: “For me personally,
acting was some sort of catharsis: as it took place in another world, it
permitted me to unwind from all the stress and fear of everyday life. …
Theatre ‘saved’ a lot of people in Mostar—those who worked there, as
well as those who visited and watched our performances.”
Our next section is organized around case studies presenting symp-
tomatic shifts and transformations in the production of theatre under
wartime circumstances. Thus, Jana Dolečki writes about the travelling
wartime Ad Hoc Cabaret collective that toured the battlefields of Croatia
in the beginning of the war in 1991 and 1992. Providing valuable
 INTRODUCTION 17

research based on the existing material documenting the activities of this

group, Dolečki analytically contextualizes the moment when a handful
of established theatre artists from Croatia decided to take up their art as
“weapons” of their own choice, in this way, giving their own answer to
the question of whether theatre should stop or continue with its activities
while the country is at war. Initiated with a clear goal of providing enter-
tainment and interlude for those audiences caught up in the actuality
of ongoing conflicts (soldiers, army personnel, the wounded, refugees,
et cetera), Ad Hoc Cabaret performed short humorous skits introducing
various characters, fictional and real, confronted with the real conflict.
But what Dolečki argues is that this venture not only provided “ther-
apeutic” material for those most affected by combat, but in addition,
stimulated their further armed engagement by employing disparaging
humour in depicting those presented as the enemy. Furthermore, she
postulates that the performative collective abandoned the satirical genre
by providing a positive picture of a nationally homogeneous identity,
reflecting the ideological concepts of a unified national body required by
the official wartime politics.
The interplay between positions of power and theatre in its broader
sense continues in other contributions of this section. While Dolečki
focuses on theatrical activities that shifted outside of traditional theatre
walls in order to deliver a political message to those mostly influenced by
wartime political decisions, Lada Čale Feldman exhibits how this power
actually seeks its own confirmation by taking over the most representa-
tive stage: that of a national theatre. She introduces the case of the birth-
day celebration dedicated to then Croatian President Franjo Tuđman,
presented on the main stage of the Croatian National Theatre in Zagreb
in 1994. Starting from a celebratory event (which, as her text shows,
used theatrical material), Čale Feldman examines how socio-political
authority was performed on the central stage of a newly-formed nation
state. She gives a valuable historical analysis of similar events positioning
the sovereign in the centre of the receptive field, and contextualizes the
concepts of political spectacle and national cultural memory established
by means of stagings. Čale Feldman thoroughly inspects the elements of
the above-mentioned performance honouring Tuđman’s 75th birthday,
exposing it as a manipulative, populist and propagandistic “performance
of power” with one goal: that of re-affirming national unity. Stating that
the local theatre community did not adequately react to these and sim-
ilar manifestations of power in theatre, partly avoiding reflecting their
18 S. HULFELD ET AL.

own political complicity, Čale Feldman introduces two theatrical exam-

ples she finds stood up to the manipulations of that time and critically
deconstructed the image of the national authority, such was Tuđman.
The play The Great Master of All Scoundrels, adapted from a short story
by Miroslav Krleža and directed by Branko Brezovec, premiered in 2001
in the Zagreb Youth Theatre (ZKM), located a few hundred meters from
the Croatian National Theatre. Dissecting the above-mentioned birthday
celebration and its numerous levels of manipulation, Brezovec actually
focused his unambiguous critique on the theatre community that partic-
ipated in this manifestation of political obedience. Similar but also more
explicit use of the same event, provoking similar questions of professional
and other responsibility, is to be found in Bakhe [The Bacchae], directed
by Oliver Frljić and staged in Split in 2008. In both these examples, Čale
Feldman detects a valuable theatrical approach that succeeds, regardless
of the real obstacles of such endeavors, in critically deconstructing war-
time theatrical activities.
The testimonial by Snježana Banović, one of the active participants in
this theatre scene contextualized both by Dolečki and Čale Feldman, illus-
trates how these times were experienced by someone not willing to play
along out of pure opportunism. By discussing her own directorial engage-
ment, which gained professional significance precisely as the first armed
conflicts were occurring, she reveals the conditions of work in a cultural
system heavily disrupted by war. The consequences of her rejecting the
imposed national patterns presented on national stages in Croatia at the
outbreak of war, as well as her engagement in civil society, were harsh—
she was forbidden to work on the official stages in Zagreb and was profes-
sionally exiled to smaller provincial stages. By analyzing the repertoire of
the Croatian National Theatre in Zagreb during the first years of the con-
flict, Banović detects manipulative practices in stagings of historical plays
reaffirming the concepts of Croatian nationhood created not only parallel
to national uprisings of the nineteenth century but, more alarmingly, dur-
ing the Croatian Nazi puppet regime in World War II.
Continuing with the notion of “shifted” stages and expanding the
aforementioned ethical dilemma that the theatrical community through-
out the region faced when confronted with armed combat and its con-
sequences, Milena Dragičević Šešić discusses a rather exclusive example
of theatrical dissent from the official cultural systems governed by the
state apparatus simultaneously fighting an armed conflict. In her chapter,
she goes on to present the work of Zorica Jevremović, a Belgrade-based
 INTRODUCTION 19

theatre artist and activist who, in pursuing her own vision of personal
artistic commitment in the context of the wartime reality, opted for a
very brave and telling move, shifting her theatrical engagement to the
premises of a local psychiatric hospital. As Dragičević Šešić points out,
Jevremović somewhat paradoxically found the optimal conditions for
executing her creative activities in psychiatric wards, where she continued
to lead several workshops and organize a few performances with patients
and hospital staff between 1992 and 1995. She not only found the hos-
pital to be a space “out of reach” of the official narratives of national-
ism propagated by the state at that time; she also saw it as a suitable
and applicable metaphor of a society out of joint, with patients escap-
ing the madness of the reality by resorting to another type of madness.
However, Dragičević Šešić shows that Jevremović did not perceive this
elusive socio-political position of the psychiatric hospital as a platform for
elusive performative material as well—by staging diverse performances
composed of different text, music, visual or performance material cre-
ated during the workshops with the patients, she managed to stage her
projects as a paradigm of the outside world, reflecting its power positions
and relations, echoing the disrupted conditions of its functioning. The
novelty of Jevremović’s approach to the work with patients—in compar-
ison to the known methods and approaches of psychodrama—was the
fact that these performances were eventually being performed for an
audience, marking this endeavor as a theatrical and thus social event,
capable of raising the possibility of such a space as a place of “free” artis-
tic production. By describing the contextual conditions of the dissent-
ing theatre scene in Serbia in the early 1990s from the perspective of an
active participant, Dragičević Šešić is not only providing us with bene-
ficial knowledge rarely stated in contemporary academic research, but
is also revealing the extent to which Jevremović was unique in the rad-
icalism of her decision to withdraw from the existing forms of theatrical
presentation by creating her “detached” creative platform. Furthermore,
by introducing this example, Dragičević Šešić addresses the problem
of such and similar theatrical events being eliminated from the official
cultural memory due to not being initiated or executed by the official
national systems of cultural presentations.
The final paper of this section, by Ana Dević, presents the case of
Kazalište Pozorište Gledališče Teatar (KPGT), the much documented “all-
star” theatre group or project initiated in the early 1970s by some of the
most progressive Yugoslav theatre practitioners and thinkers of the time.
20 S. HULFELD ET AL.

Created as a pan-Yugoslav project executing this supra-nationality on all

levels of its conception or organization, KPGT was famous for its inno-
vative aesthetics, but also for its innovative organizational practices, oper-
ating somewhere “against” and “alongside” institutional theatre and
cultural systems. In addition, the group and one of its main creators, the-
atre director Ljubiša Ristić, gained a reputation for being quite critical
towards the Yugoslav socialist system, denouncing certain myths of the
Yugoslav political system from their leftist political positions. In her text,
Dević provides a comprehensive study of the pre-war functioning of the
KPGT, showing the different ways in which Ristić and his collaborators
critically tackled the ruling political structures—either by choice of staged
repertoire, or by maintaining certain production processes that to some
extent avoided the “nuanced” censorship of the state. In the late 1980s,
Ristić and his collaborators officially entered state theatre by accepting
directorial positions at the National Theatre in Subotica (1985) and Novi
Sad (1988), both soon becoming creative hubs for “alternative” theatres
from all around Yugoslavia. With the first events pointing to the dissolu-
tion of Yugoslavia, KPGT, conceived as an all-Yugoslav theatre project,
started to disintegrate too, reflecting the extent to which its intrinsically
ideological feature was being corrupted by actual socio-political circum-
stances. It is exactly this point of crisis that Dević tries to examine more
thoroughly, in a commendable effort to detect the way in which these
events influenced KPGT’s further developments as well as its initial mis-
sion as a highly critical theatrical project. As Dević continues to show,
this development took many controversial forms, with Ristić receiving
financial and other support from the wife of Slobodan Milošević, Mira
Marković, and her political party JUL (the Yugoslav United Left), even-
tually even becoming the party’s president. By displaying this example,
Dević opens up a very relevant discussion on how, and under what cir-
cumstances, a politically relevant theatre movement wanting to change
the system from within can preserve itself as an “independent” theatre
stage.
One answer to this question is offered by the testimony of Borut
Šeparović, one of the most active and enduring participants of the alter-
native theatre scene in Croatia since the late 1980s. In the presented
excerpt, Šeparović recounts the initial activities of the independent per-
formative group Montažstroj, detecting the extent to which their first
productions were influenced by the dissolution of Yugoslavia as well as
by the violent nature of the subsequent war. The group was founded
 INTRODUCTION 21

in Zagreb in 1989, and it promoted a very specific type of aesthetics

formed around non-verbal theatre and physical performance. According
to their own words, the main goal of this “performance unit” was to
bring media and pop-culture into a theatrical setting, and their perfor-
mances were thus distinguished by various pop elements of that time
such as techno music, high-endurance dance and MTV-like visual aes-
thetics. They very soon became nationally recognized and awarded for
their innovative approach to theatre practice, even performing at Ristić’s
YU Fest theatre festival in 1991, to much acclaim. Interestingly enough,
painting an atmosphere of actively doing theatre in Croatia during war-
time and in the context of international success, Šeparović recounts just
how in 1994 the KPGT group, for him, suddenly switched from being
a collective transcending ethnic affiliations into being a representative of
the Others. In his statement, Šeparović goes on to show how the unique
performative language of Montažstroj was very much created as a reac-
tion to the national theatre scene in Croatia that, in the early 1990s,
went into a certain aesthetic stagnation, dedicating itself to nationalistic
and historical narratives helping to form the cultural identity of a newly
formed state. Although Šeparović eventually left Croatia in 1995 as he
lacked financial, but also structural support for continuing his work with
Montažstroj, he regularly returned to Zagreb and still engages into the-
atre projects questioning the “blind spots” of contemporary Croatian
society, such as the war and its official representation. By explaining
the consequences that one of this projects, the show Generation 91–95,
which he directed in 2009, had for its participants, Šeparović concludes
with a statement on the possibilities of theatre as a socially engaged dis-
cussion platform, apt for executing direct and visible transformations.
In the last section of this volume, we assemble several papers discuss-
ing theatre production in the context of the Yugoslav wars from dif-
ferent subsequent or external perspectives. In her paper on Slovenian
theatre, Barbara Orel shows in what way the conflicts and their direct
and indirect consequences influenced the cultural system of a country
positioned somewhat outside of the conflict itself during most of the
1990s. Moreover, she examines the extent to which the wartime con-
text shaped theatrical exchange between Slovenia and the newly-formed
ex-Yugoslav countries and goes on to present valuable examples of these
newly established cultural networks. As Orel shows, once detached from
the shared Yugoslav cultural system, institutional Slovenian theatre of
the early 1990s began to shift away from the political topics prevalent in
22 S. HULFELD ET AL.

the socialist era and started to stage material in line with the aesthetic
movements of Western European theatre. Although not directly pre-
sented, the wartime context was still reflected on institutional stages,
mostly in the form of a metaphor—as Orel points out, the rise in the
number of ancient Greek tragedies staged in the early 1990s, as a com-
ment on the prevailing conditions in neighboring countries and a sort
of marking of the position of the Others, proved that the topic of war
still occupied a significant part of theatre production. While the state-run
theatres confronted the Yugoslav wars indirectly, the independent and
alternative theatre scene responded more explicitly to the new state of
affairs in the environs. In her text, Orel draws attention to the Ex Ponto
theatre festival, founded in Ljubljana in 1993 with a unique ambition of
offering a creative social (and eventually also performative) platform for
artists who fled the wars, thus forming new possibilities of their “inclu-
sion” in the Slovenian cultural scene. Orel concludes that, although it
did not deal consistently with the topic of the wars, Slovenian theatre
was nevertheless significantly marked and transformed from “within” by
the social consequences of the Yugoslav wars, predominately by provid-
ing an artistic refuge to many theatre professionals in search of continu-
ing their professional activities in the less tormented structures of a once
mutual cultural space.
An Antigone focusing on the fratricidal war between Eteocles against
Polynices, written by Dušan Jovanović and staged by Meta Hočevar in
1993, was one of the strongest manifestations of the Slovenian National
Theatre in Ljubljana during the wars, and it gained international acclaim.
Antigone returns in the chapter by Aleksandra Jovićević, yet in the plu-
ral, as a silent chorus with the mission to mourn and remember what
the majority denies. Referring to theoretical concepts of remembrance
and denial—the twentieth century, with its abhorrent numerous geno-
cides, brought about an extensive reflection on these topics—Jovićević
frames the Serbian branch of an international feminist and anti-militarist
organization called Women in Black as these Antigones. With their per-
formative acts and installations in public spaces, Women in Black repeat-
edly mourned and commemorated the estimated 8372 victims of the
Srebrenica genocide in Belgrade, where officially until today this histor-
ical event of an extremely brutal nature is not considered a genocide.16
Against the postmodern lack of “intense compassion for the extreme
suffering of people elsewhere,” the performances and actions of Women
in Black “represent a confrontation between past and present, between
 INTRODUCTION 23

forgetting and memory, between a promise to create a place of mem-

ory and the effective realization of that promise.” Jovićević emphasizes
the persistent activities of these civilians as a “strong collective action,”
according to Luc Boltanski, characterized by the factors such as “inten-
tionality,” “incorporation in bodily gestures and movements,” “sacrifice
of other possible actions,” the “presence of others,” and “commitment.”
When discussing ways of remembering wars and everyday violence
from the peripheral position of those deprived of political power, a very
valuable reference point is given in the following text by Darko Lukić.
Presenting the case of Croatian playwright Ivan Vidić, himself an active
participant in the combat in Croatia in the early 1990s, Lukić addresses
the question of how personal trauma is transformed into a theatri-
cal testimony. Furthermore, he goes on to show how the “war trauma
plays”17 by Vidić and other Croatian playwrights dispute the official
wartime narratives, and why the latter were generally “always disobedi-
ent to patriarchy, war, nationalism and militarism.” His analysis of the
genre, which according to Lukić can neither be considered political nor
historical drama, focuses on Ivan Vidić and his plays Groznica [Fever],
Bakino srce [Grandmother’s Heart], Octopussy and Veliki bijeli zec [Big
White Rabbit]. As the National Theatre in Zagreb (including its pro-
duction and staging of Tuđman’s birthday celebrations) was a distinc-
tive player in the agenda to stir up patriotism, Vidić and other authors of
his kind never had the opportunity to make an appearance on this stage.
Grandmother’s Heart, for example, attacked the “cult of the patriarchal
family,” in which propagated nationalism and the Nazi-backed Ustasha
regime during World War II are closely interwoven. Yet, though their
war trauma plays adopted a subversive attitude towards war and post-war
mythologies, they never resulted in a counter-program. Lukić argues that
this genre shows “deeply-rooted problems with identity on the level of
depersonalization and uncertain identities” and therefore acts beyond
realism, adopting a “non-position” or a “nowhere position.” A common
characteristic of these plays, interpreted as a symptom of this lost posi-
tion, is the fact that the dramatis personae bear de-individualized names
like Grandmother, Grandfather, Mother, Professor, Security Guy, Boss,
Uncle, Aunt, Little Sister, Baby, et cetera. War trauma plays operate with
private memories, individual histories, and personal myths to escape from
both the production of a triumphant history and its official mythologies,
as well as counter-history with its respective counter-myths. Though
the authors are engaged in deconstruction, they risk being interpreted
24 S. HULFELD ET AL.

as individuals who mythologize their own traumatic experience, from

whence stems the major trap in the analysis of war trauma plays.
Peter Handke’s play Voyage by Dugout, or the Play of the Film of the
War [Die Fahrt im Einbaum oder das Stück zum Film vom Krieg] pre-
miered at the Burgtheater in Vienna on June 9, 1999, the day when the
Federal Republic of Yugoslavia signed a peace accord with NATO in
Kumanovo. The play is part of Handke’s pieces of literature and state-
ments dealing with the breakup of Yugoslavia, and the internationally
renowned author’s sympathies for the Serbian standpoint became visible
even for non-readers when Handke made his appearance at the funeral
ceremony for Slobodan Milošević in 2006, stating “I don’t know the
truth.” One has to admit that finding truth is a complex task for a poet
of such artistic rank as Handke, and the subtitle of the above-mentioned
play bears witness to the difficulties caused by the many layers, between
which truth easily vanishes. The chapter by Branislav Jakovljević tack-
les this complexity with high precision and the respect that both artistic
material and truth deserve. The analysis of the setting for the play and
the metaphor of the dugout results in a journey in time and space that
leads to some of the crucial places where the Yugoslav wars were waged,
suffered or judged. The paper discusses the aesthetic questions raised
by the play. Jakovljević traces several journeys that Handke made in
the region, confronting his writings with what he could or should have
witnessed or known, emphasizing obvious errors, omissions and con-
tradictions. In the end, readers are provided with enough information
in order to recognize the complicity of the famous bystander Handke,
but with this, the paper shifts to emphasize the related key problems at
a more general level. Jakovljević first reminds us of a neglected aspect of
the Yugoslav wars, pointing out that the “highly visible atrocities such
as the siege of Sarajevo and genocide in Srebrenica were inseparable
from the bloodless (and also very bloody) crimes that Milošević’s regime
­perpetrated against the citizens of its own country.” Second, he outlines
why the intentional omission of this correlation leads to narratives of
self-victimization and accusations systematically preventing us from
knowing the truth. “The result of all of that,” he states, “is the lack of
minimal agreement about the meaning of the Yugoslav wars and about
their real outcomes.”
A planned contribution about theatre activities in Sarajevo was unfor-
tunately canceled at a late stage in the realization of this book pro-
ject. With this, the internationally best-known theatre scene, actively
 INTRODUCTION 25

resisting a wartime siege, paradoxically remains underrepresented in this

volume. At least there are published pieces of research concerning the-
atre in wartime Sarajevo, and—to name just a single one—the relevant
part of Silvija Jestrovic’s monograph Performance, Space, Utopia: Cities
of War, Cities of Exile (2013) comments exemplarily on the overall sit-
uation, on individual performances, and on Susan Sontag’s Waiting for
Godot in the framework of the cultural life of this city. However, we
tried to compensate the missing theoretical approach with two valua-
ble testimonials by artists who were actively involved in the unplanned
and unparalleled outbreak of creativity that took place in the cultural
scene (and especially in theatre) as a fast reaction to the siege. Nihad
Kreševljaković, an intriguing historian and thinker in the realm of
Sarajevo’s cultural memory and from 2012 to 2016 the director of the
Sarajevski Ratni Teatar SARTR [Sarajevo War Theatre] gives an account
of his reflections and activities during the siege, comprising consid-
erations regarding how a “regular” walking speed could be defined in
order to avoid being shot by snipers. He reports that such reflections
and their impact on one’s own behaviour became some kind of artis-
tic experiences of their own. The blurring of borders between everyday
(and night) life determined by the siege, and artistic work as the only
self-determined way to cope with the situation, are often evoked in his
narratives and in those of other testimonies. The same is true regarding
the border between actors and their audience. Kreševljaković relates that
he witnessed the most “complete interaction” between these theoret-
ically separated partners that he ever experienced. Dino Mustafić, who
started to work as a director staging various plays during the siege and
who was later the director of the brave MESS theatre festival, describes
performance situations that let us better understand what “complete
interaction” probably means. Both seem to have experienced the trans-
formational power that theatre, at its best, can have on what is usually
called reality, or on social relationships shaped by mindsets, emotions
et cetera. “Every performance in Sarajevo was kind of an apotheosis to
life,” says Mustafić. And the last sentences of his account make clear that
this potential, in the service of freedom, needs to be revived whatever the
circumstances may be.
Outsiders can hardly imagine experiences of that kind, but the-
atre historians, considering several centuries of theatrical practice,
would probably deny that lives must be threatened in this specific
and atrocious way in order to share the apotheosis of life by means
26 S. HULFELD ET AL.

of theatre. In any case, one can ask questions: for example, whether
the experiences in Sarajevo, in Pristina’s Dodona theatre, in Hadžija
Hadžibajramović’s theatre workshops and performances in Mostar,
or the experiences of actors, actresses, writers and audiences facing
extreme life conditions anywhere in the region are comparable. At
least the narratives, in which some wartime theatre experiences are
evoked, are comparable, and some of the topoi and metaphors are
recurring. But if such comparisons should turn out to be unproduc-
tive, wrong or even offensive, one could take up one of Mustafić’s
assumptions, that only time will tell whether these experiences were
“aesthetically relevant.” This is and will be part of the responsibil-
ity of theatre scholars, because it seems that theatrical experiences
in war zones are described in similar terms and categories,18 even
though the attitudes, agendas and their related aesthetics totally dif-
fer. Concerning Sarajevo, the opening production of the SARTR men-
tioned by Kreševljaković and Mustafić—the play Sklonište [Shelter],
written by Safet Plakalo and Dubravko Bibanović at the beginning of
the siege, with a narrative taking place in an abandoned theatre props
room where two unnamed theatre artists debate the sense of theatre
and art at times of war—would merit discussion in detail as it is obvi-
ously “aesthetically relevant.”19 For example, it features a highly orig-
inal character, namely the notorious, rather confused but fanciful liar
Mina Hauzen, who simply pops up in the shelter from the streets of
wartime Sarajevo, rooted in the experiences, fears and fantasies of this
period. At the same time, she appears equipped with traits originat-
ing from the grotesque, applied by the authors with theatrical knowl-
edge of how obvious liars may transform themselves into midwives
of truth when they set foot on stage. To invent a female descendant
of Baron Munchausen, who challenges narratives of war agitated in
state-controlled media on stage in besieged Sarajevo during a time in
which “the truth” is highly manipulated, might be just one of many
reasons why Sklonište could one day become part of the world’s cul-
tural heritage.
Many specific observations and questions arose as we started to think
about connections between the contributions of this volume. We indi-
cated some of them in providing a perspective on the three sections, but
what we intended to do moreover was to initiate curiosity and encourage
readers to find their own approach to exploring this book.
 INTRODUCTION 27

4.
We are quite aware that with this volume we have not reached “com-
pleteness” concerning the geographical areas of research (what about
the Republic of Macedonia, Republika Srpska?), topics (what about art-
ists in exile?), possible correlations (what about those between theatre
and media?), methodological approaches (what about gender studies?)
et cetera raised by the title. Some deficiencies are due to coincidences,
others to the editors’ awareness of the crucial points and outlines of the
addressed research field, which grew while working on this book. Apart
from the fact that completeness mostly remains a kind of phantasm, one
would in any case have to define assumptions of what kind of complete-
ness would possibly be worth struggling for. In conclusion to this intro-
ductory section, we would like to focus generally on some steps in our
learning process that we find would be helpful for any future research
heading in the same direction.
With our notion of “theatre”—explained in the first section of this
introduction—we opened up the research field very widely. With the
intention of reflecting correlations between selected theatrical phenom-
ena at distant places or within one city, the focus falls on the exploration
and explanation of differences and/or similarities, therefore on spe-
cific wartime situations, social strata, political agendas or language pol-
itics in relation to the choices of theatre makers and activists, and the
resulting outcomes of their efforts. One of the best examples of how
intriguing it is to think about whether there are hidden ties, telling dif-
ferences or unexpected points of contact between the cultural life in
Belgrade and Sarajevo during the wars is presented in the notable and
above-mentioned monograph Performance, Space, Utopia: Cities of War,
Cities of Exile (2013) by Silvija Jestrovic. Pointing out differences and
starting from a perspective that mostly takes performances and pro-
test actions in the 1990s and early 2000s into analytical focus, Jestrovic
defines Belgrade as a “city-as-action” whereas, under the same criteria,
she names Sarajevo a “city-as-body.” Furthermore she engages in a very
interesting differentiation of her own standpoint, denoting herself as an
“insider-who-has-left” (in the Belgrade chapter) or an “intimate out-
sider” (when she explores the artistic creation flourishing in Sarajevo).
Besides the many theoretical perspectives that this book provides for this
type of research, Jestrovic positions one’s own standpoint in knowledge
production as an important layer. This position of research, which is also
28 S. HULFELD ET AL.

very much visible in our contributions, will become even more relevant
as a new generation of scholars, lacking direct experience of the war, start
to discover and research topics in the context of Yugoslav wars which
have already been tackled or, in some cases, are theoretically unexplored.
In addition, as noted above, there are many cities of war and cities of
exile that have so far remained rarely noticed.
These remarks may further outline the research area, but the crucial
point still remains to be labeled. In the majority of the chapters in this
volume, as well as in additional readings, there is one topic that recurs in
explicit and implicit form, namely the question of artistic responsibility.
This comprises reflections as to whether it makes sense to produce thea-
tre or claim the streets for artistic interventions while wars are raging. As
we learned through our research and contributions to this volume, such
thoughts were of crucial importance to some theatre makers, and com-
pletely ignored by others. Asking and answering these questions during
wartime did not remain in a theoretical vacuum, but instead had very
practical repercussions, such as theatre practitioners voluntarily leaving or
being dismissed from their workplaces. To position responsibility as the
key concept of future comparative research means to think further about
and understand the options theatre makers faced and chose to partake
in during the period of armed conflicts. This perceptive approach would
be indispensable in order to comment on and fully grasp the choices
they made at that time, in respect of their social commitment on the one
hand, and, on the other, in respect to the creativity they developed in the
framework of their repertoire politics and their chosen aesthetic features.
Similar questions would also be applicable for theatre goers.
In addition, putting responsibility and related options and choices in
the limelight affects the historiographical design in a decisive manner.
Concerning the latter, we already pointed out that saving the research
material concerning theatrical activities in the context of the Yugoslav
wars and making them accessible to a wider public is still an important
task. Furthermore, we stated that the past and the present concern-
ing the Yugoslav wars are still closely interwoven, but restricting our
thinking to options and responsible choices prevents us furthermore
from falling into the trap of seeing historical development as inevita-
ble. Of course, it is important to know much more about “what hap-
pened” within and via theatrical activities in the context of the Yugoslav
wars, but consciousness that nothing evolved the way it did inevitably,
but rather through choices of individuals and communities, is also of
 INTRODUCTION 29

great relevance. What were the options, what were the criteria for these
choices? Did reflections on responsible behaviour emerge at all? Were
they reserved to individuals, or was there a certain consensus? Questions
of this kind could be the starting point for a future theatre-historio-
graphical approach. Crucial considerations and insights on this topic can
be found in the volume presented here. On the whole, they concern art-
ists who do not regret their choices of that time or who are—for good
reasons—even proud of the decisions they made. On the other hand,
there are those who, like Banović, contextually confront their own expe-
riences from today’s point of view, stating that their theatre productions
should have “been braver.” Then, there are cases such as those of Ljubiša
Ristić or Peter Handke, analyzed in the two relevant contributions, pro-
viding complex perspectives for us to question the concept of the artistic
responsibility. And lastly, there are those responsible for repertoires, plays
or performances that seemed neither artistically relevant nor guided by
ethical principles, which are barely present in this volume.
It is obviously not easy to speak about the less brave choices, about
having instrumentalized an art form as a weapon in service of those
who promoted or waged war, or about the sense of shame that stems
from such activities. Nevertheless, one can hardly avoid such difficulties,
because the full range of more or less responsible (artistic) choices must
be discussed in order to get a measure of mutual correlations between
different cultural spheres. Theatre scholars are experts in discussing artis-
tic responsibility, and in such discussions general questions of responsibil-
ity will be inescapably mirrored—pursuing such a research agenda could
at least aim to contribute to a “minimal agreement about the meaning of
the Yugoslav wars and about their real outcomes.”

Notes
1. See Dubravka Žarkov, The Body of War: Media, Ethnicity, and Gender in
the Break-up of Yugoslavia (Durham and London: Duke University Press,
2007).
2. For a more general overview on the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s, see
for example John B. Allcock, Marko Milivojević, and John Joseph
Horton, eds., Conflict in the Former Yugoslavia: An Encyclopedia (Santa
Barbara: ABC-CLIO, 1998); Catherine Baker, The Yugoslav Wars of
the 1990s (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015); Lenard J. Cohen, and
Jasna Dragović-Soso, eds., State Collapse in South-Eastern Europe: New
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
Wighod, abbat and presbyter, went on to the country of the
Northanymbrians, to Aelfuald the King, and the Archbishop of the
holy church of the city of York, Eanbald. The King was living far off in
the north, and the said Archbishop sent his messengers to the King,
who at once with all joy fixed a day for a council,[295] to which the
chief men of the district came, ecclesiastical and secular. It was
related in our hearing that other vices,[296] and by no means the
least, needed correction. For, as you know, from the time of the holy
pontiff Augustine no Roman priest[297] [or bishop] has been sent
there except ourselves. We wrote a Capitular of the several matters,
and brought them to their hearing, discussing each in order. They,
with all humility of subjection and with clear will, honoured both your
admonition and our insignificance, and pledged themselves to obey
in all things. Then we handed to them your letters to be read,
charging them to keep the sacred decrees in themselves and in
those dependent on them.
“These are the chapters which we delivered to them to be kept.
[298]

“1. Of keeping the faith of the Nicene Council.

“2. Of Baptism, the Creed, the Lord’s Prayer.
“3. Of two Councils to be held every year.
“4. Of the service and vesture of Canons and Monks.
“5. Of the elections of Abbats and Abbesses.
“6. Of ordaining Priests and Deacons.
“7. Of the Canonical Hours.
“8. Of the rights of churches granted by the See of Rome.
“9. That ecclesiastics do not take food secretly.
“10. That priests do not perform sacred rites with bare legs[299]; of
the offerings of the faithful; that chalice and paten for sacrificing to
God be not made from ox-horn, because they are bloody; that
bishops in their councils judge not secular matters.
 “11. Let kings and princes study justice, obey bishops, venerate
the church, employ prudent counsellors.
“12. That in the ordination of kings no one permit the assent of evil
men to prevail; kings must be lawfully elected by the priesthood and
the elders of the people, and be not born of adultery or incest; let
honour be paid by all to kings; let no one be a detractor of a king; let
no one dare to conspire for the death of a king, because he is the
anointed of the Lord; if any one have part in such wickedness, if he
be a bishop or of priestly order let him be thrust out from it, and
every one who has assented to such sacrilege shall perish in the
eternal fetters of anathema. For by examples among yourselves it
has frequently been proved that those who have been the cause of
the death of sovereigns have soon lost their life, being outside the
protection of divine and human law.
“13. That powerful and rich men decree just judgements.
“14. Of the forbidding of fraud, violence, rapine; that unjust tribute
be not imposed on churches; of keeping peace.
“15. Unlawful and incestuous unions are forbidden to all, alike with
the handmaids of God and other illicit persons and with those in
affinity and kindred and with other men’s wives.
“16. Lawful heirship is by decree refused to the children of harlots.
“17. Of tithes to be given; of usury to be forbidden; of just
measures and equal weights to be established.
“18. Of vows to be fulfilled.
“19. We have added that each faithful Christian must take example
from Catholic men; and if anything has remained of the rites of
pagans it must be plucked out, contemned, cast away.
“For God made man fair in form and appearance; but the pagans
with diabolical instinct have inflicted most horrible scars,[300] as
Prudentius says:

He tainted the innocent ground[301] with sordid spots,

 for he evidently does injury to God, who fouls and defiles His
creature. Without doubt a man would receive a rich reward who
underwent for God this injury of staining. But to one who does it from
gentile superstition it profiteth nothing, as circumcision to the Jews
without belief of heart.
“Further, you wear your clothes after the manner of the gentiles
whom by God’s help your fathers drove out of the land by arms. It is
a wonderful and astonishing thing that you imitate the fashion of
those whose life you always hate.
“You have the evil habit of maiming your horses: you slit their
nostrils, you fasten their ears together and make them deaf, you cut
off their tails; and though you could have them entirely unblemished,
you will not have that, but make them odious to every one.
“We have heard also that when you go to law with one another
you cast lots after the fashion of the gentiles. This is counted as
completely sacrilegious in these days.
“Further, many of you eat horses, which no Christian in eastern
lands does. This you must give up. Strive earnestly that all your
things be done decently and in order.
“20. Of sins to be confessed and penance to be done.
“These decrees, most blessed Pope Hadrian, we propounded in a
public council in presence of King Aelfuuald, Archbishop Eanbald,
and all the bishops and abbats of that region, also of the ealdormen,
dukes, and people of the land. And they, as we said above, with all
devotion of mind vowed that they would in all things keep them
according to the utmost of their power, the divine clemency aiding
them. And they confirmed them in our hand (in your stead) with the
sign of the holy cross. And afterwards they wrote on the paper of this
page with careful pen, affixing the mark of the holy cross.
“I Aelfuualdus king of the Transhumbrane race, consenting, have
subscribed with the sign of the holy cross.
“I Dilberch[302] prelate[303] of the church of Hexham joyfully have
subscribed with the sign of the holy cross.
 “I Eanbald by the grace of God archbishop of the holy church of
York have subscribed to the pious and catholic force of this
document with the sign of the holy cross.
“I Hyguuald bishop of the church of Lindisfarne obediently have
subscribed with the sign of the holy cross.
“I Aedilberch bishop of Whithern[304] suppliant have subscribed
with the sign of the holy cross.
“I Aldulf bishop of the church of Mayo[305] have subscribed with
devoted will.
“I Aetheluuin[306] bishop have subscribed by delegates.
“I Sigha the patrician with placid mind have subscribed with the
sign of the holy cross.[307]
“To these most salutary admonitions we too, presbyters and
deacons of churches and abbats of monasteries, judges, chief men,
and nobles, unanimously consent and have subscribed.
“I duke Alrich have subscribed with the sign of the holy cross.
“I duke Siguulf have subscribed with the sign of the holy cross.
“I abbat Aldberich[308] have subscribed with the sign of the holy
cross.
“I abbat Erhart have subscribed with the sign of the holy cross.
“All this having been accomplished, and the benediction
pronounced, we set out again, taking with us illustrious
representatives of the king and the archbishop, the readers
Maluin[309] to wit and Pyttel. We travelled together, and they brought
the above decrees to a council of the Mercians, at which the glorious
King Offa was present, with the senators of the kingdom, the
Archbishop Iaenbercht[2] of the holy Dorovernian Church, and the
other bishops of those parts. In presence of the council the several
chapters were read out in a clear voice, and lucidly expounded both
in Latin and in Teuton so that all could understand. Then all with one
voice and with eager mind, grateful for the admonitions of your
apostolate, promised, that they would according to their ability with
most ready will keep in all respects these statutes, the divine favour
supporting them. Moreover, as at the northern council, the king and
his chief men, the archbishop and his colleagues, confirmed them in
our hand (in the stead of your lordship) with the sign of the holy
cross, and again ratified this present document with the sacred sign.
“I Ieanbrecht[310], archbishop of the holy church of Dorovernum,
suppliant have subscribed with the sign of the holy cross.
“I Offa king of the Mercians, consenting to these statutes, with
ready will have subscribed with the sign of the holy cross.
“I Hugibrecht[311] bishop of the church of Lichtenfelse have
subscribed with the sign of the holy cross.
“I Ceoluulf bishop of the Lindisfaras[312] have subscribed.
“I Unuuona bishop of the Legorenses[313] have subscribed.
“I Alchard[314] bishop have subscribed.
“I Eadberht[315] bishop have subscribed.
“I Chumbrech[316] bishop have subscribed.
“I Harchel[317] bishop have subscribed.
“I Acine[318] bishop have subscribed.
“I Tora[319] bishop have subscribed.
“I Uuaremund[320] bishop have subscribed.
“I Adalmund[321] bishop have subscribed.
“I Adored[322] bishop have subscribed.
“Edrabord abbat. Alemund abbat. Boduuin abbat. Uttel abbat.
“I duke Brorda have subscribed with the sign of the holy cross.
“I duke Eadbald have subscribed.
“I duke Bercoald have subscribed.
“I count Othbald have subscribed.”
 APPENDIX C
(Page 177)

Sed obsecro si vestrae placeat pietati ut exemplarium illius libelli

domno dirigatur apostolico aliud quoque Paulino patriarchae similiter
Richobono et Teudolfo episcopis doctoribus et magistris ut singuli
pro se respondeant Flaccus vero tuus tecum laborat in reddenda
ratione catholicae fidei tantum detur ei spatium ut quiete et diligenter
liceat illi cum pueris suis considerare sensus quid unusquisque
diceret de sententiis quas posuit prefatus subversor in suo libello et
tempore praefinito a vobis ferantur vestrae auctoritati singulorum
responsa et quidquid in isto libello vel sententiarum vel sensuum
contra catholicam fidem inveniatur omnia catholicis exemplis
destruantur et si aequaliter et concorditer cunctorum in professione
vel defensione catholicae fidei resonant scripta intelligi potest quod
per omnium ora et corda unus loquitur spiritus sin autem diversum
aliquid inveniatur in dictis vel scriptis cuiuslibet videatur quis maiore
auctoritate sanctarum scripturarum vel catholicorum patrum innitatur
et huic laudis palma tribuatur qui divinis magis inhaereat testimoniis.
 APPENDIX D
(Page 197)

The following are the passages of the Donation which touch the
question of the joint patronage of St. Peter and St. Paul in the
Church of Rome. The edition from which they are taken is thus
described on the title-page:—

Constantini M. Imp. Donatio Sylvestro Papae Rom.

inscripta: non ut a Gratiano truncatim, sed integre edita: cum
versione Graeca duplici, Theodori Balsamonis, Patriarchae
Antiocheni, et Matthaei Blastaris, I(uris) C(anonici) Graeci.
Typis Gotthardi Voegelini
(1610).

The first page of the Latin Edict is not represented in the Greek
Thespisma. It ends with the words: “Postquam docente beato
Silvestro trina me mersione verbi salutis purificatum et ab omni
leprae squalore mundatum beneficiis beati Petri et Pauli
Apostolorum cognovi.”

Iustum quippe est, ut ibi lex sancta caput teneat

principatus, ubi sanctarum legum institutor salvator noster
beatum Petrum Apostolatus obtinere praecepit cathedram,
ubi et crucis patibulum sustinens beatae mortis poculum
sumpsit suique magistri et domini imitator apparuit: et ibi
gentes pro Christi nominis confessione colla flectant, ubi
eorum doctor beatus Paulus Apostolus pro Christo extenso
collo martyris coronatus est: illic usque in finem quaerant
doctorem, ubi sancti doctoris corpus quiescit; the Greek has
τὂν διδάσκαλον ὅπου τὰ τῶν ἁγίων λείψανα ἀναπαύονται.
 Construximus itaque ecclesias beatorum Petri et Pauli
Apostolorum, quas argento et auro locupletavimus: ubi
sacratissima eorum corpora cum magno honore recondentes,
et thecas ipsorum ex electro (cui nulla fortitudo praevalet
elementorum) construximus, et crucem ex auro purissimo et
gemmis pretiosis per singulas eorum thecas posuimus et
clavis aureis confiximus.

Pro quo concedimus ipsis sanctis Apostolis dominis meis,

beatissimo Petro et Paulo, et per eos etiam beato Silvestro
patri nostro summo Pontifici et universali urbis Romae Papae
et omnibus eius successoribus Pontificibus, qui usque in
finem mundi in sede beati Petri erunt sessuri, atque de
praesenti concedimus palatium imperii nostri Lateranense,
quod omnibus praefertur atque praecellit palatiis.

Si quis autem (quod non credimus) temerator aut

contemptor extiterit, aeternis condemnationibus subiaceat
innodatus, et sanctos Dei principes Apostolorum Petrum et
Paulum, sibi in praesenti et in futura vita sentiat contrarios,
atque in inferno inferiori concrematus cum diabolo et omnibus
deficiat impiis.

The learned editor makes an interesting comment on the

recognition by Constantine of the par utriusque meritum, the equal
merit of the two apostles Peter and Paul. The fate of Paul, he says,
resembles that of Pollux. The two brothers, Castor and Pollux, had a
Temple in common in the Forum, but it came to be called the Temple
of Castor alone.
In using such a document as this, the temptation to alter words
must have been very great. As an example of such change, the
words which follow on our first quotation may be cited—“utile
iudicavimus una cum omnibus satrapis et universo senatu,
optimatibus etiam et cuncto populo Romani gloriae imperii
subiacente.” For gloriae Gratian reads ecclesiae. The Greek version
has τῆς ῥωμαικῆς δόξης.
 On a phrase of the Donation—“eligentes nobis ipsum principem
Apostolorum vel eius vicarios firmos apud Deum esse patronos”—
the editor quotes a remarkable passage from Aimoin[323] v. 2, which
it is specially fitting to reproduce here, since it relates to
Charlemagne and his sons: “Post non multum tempus incidit ei
desiderium dominam quondam orbis videre Romam, principis
Apostolorum atque doctoris gentium adire limina, seque suamque
prolem eis commendare; ut talibus nitens suffragatoribus, quibus
coeli terraeque potestas attributa est, ipse quoque subiectis
consulere, perduellionumque [si emersissent[324]] proterviam
proterere posset. Ratus etiam non mediocre sibi subsidium conferri,
si a Vicario eorum cum benedictione sacerdotali tam ipse quam et
filii eius regalia sumerent insignia.”
In a letter to Karl of the highest importance, Ep. 33. a.d. 794.
Hadrian I uses a remarkable phrase in describing
Karl’s regard for the Church of Rome. He speaks of his faith and love
towards the church of the blessed chiefs of the apostles Peter and
Paul,—quantum erga beatorum principum apostolorum Petri et Pauli
ecclesiam fidem geritis et amorem. In the same letter he employs an
argument which—while it would naturally have force with Karl—
appears to assign to national churches other than that of Rome a
remarkable position of independence. “If,” he says, “everywhere
canonical churches possess their dioceses intact, how much more
should the holy catholic and apostolic Roman church, which is the
head of all the churches of God,—Si enim ubique Christianorum
ecclesiae canonicae intactas suas possident dioeceses, quanto
amplius sancta catholica et apostolica Romana ecclesia, quae est
caput omnium Dei ecclesiarum....”
 APPENDIX E
(Page 290)

Eginhart gives the name of Charlemagne’s elephant as Abulabaz.

This probably represents AbuʾlʿAbbás, the elephant being in that
case named after his royal donor, the first Abbasid Caliph, who was
none other than our old friend of many tales of adventure, Harun al
Raschid. His caliphate lasted from 786 to 809, and thus coincided
with the most brilliant period of Charlemagne’s reign as king and
emperor. His policy was to remain on most friendly terms with
Charlemagne, while sending to Irene’s supplanter at Constantinople,
Nicephorus, communications of the following character:—
“Harun al Raschid, Commander of the Faithful, to Nicephorus, the
Roman dog.
“I have read thy letter, O thou son of an unbelieving mother. Thou
shalt not hear, but behold my reply!”
Eginhart tells us under the year 807 of noble presents sent by the
Saracen king of the Persians to Charlemagne. They included a
pavilion and court tents, all, including the ropes, of linen of divers
colours; palls of silk many and precious; scents, unguents, and
balsam; two great candelabra of brass (orichalc) of marvellous size
and height; and above all a wonderful clock made of brass (orichalc).
The principle of this remarkable machine was that of the water clock.
At each complete hour little balls of brass were set free, which fell on
to a cymbal below with a tinkling sound, while at the same time
twelve knights on horseback opened windows and pushed out,
closing windows which had been open.
 FOOTNOTES
[1] Mendacia.
[2] See the story of his conversion, p. 11.
[3] The following inscription is found in this book:—“Hunc
Vergilii codicem obtulit Berno gregis beati Martini levita devota
mente Deo et eidem beato Martino perpetualiter habendum ea
quidem ratione ut perlegat ipsum Albertus consobrinus ipsius et
diebus vitae suae sub pretextu sancti Martini habeat et post suum
obitum iterum sancto reddatur Martino.”
[4] It appears to be impossible to identify the site of the cell of
Wilgils. The local idea is that Kilnsea may be the place. But then
the local idea is that Kilnsea means “the cell by the sea”.
[5] The church of St. Andrew in Rome was the first church
which Wilfrith in his youth visited on his first appearance in that
city. It was on the altar of that church that he first saw a
magnificent copy of the Gospels, which so fired his enthusiasm
that he had a similar copy made, written in letters of gold on
purple parchment and adorned with gems, for his church at
Ripon. His great church at Hexham, the finest church north of the
Alps, he dedicated to St. Andrew, and the dedication thus became
a favourite one in Northumbria. See my Theodore and Wilfrith, p.
17.
[6] Horreense, the Germans think; now Oeren.
[7] Epternach.
[8] See my Conversion of the Heptarchy, pp. 202-4.
[9] See my Conversion of the Heptarchy, p. 190.
[10] iii. 20, plate xiii.
[11] Ps. lxxvii. 11.
[12] The relative numbers of these three “sides” of the School
of York may possibly be indicated by the quidam, alii, nonnulli, of
the author.
[13] Biscop.
 [14] After a parenthetical paragraph the writer continues, “Cuius
iam, ut dictum est, sequens Hechbertus vestigia.”
[15] Gregory, it must be supposed. If one of the Apostles of the
Lord had been meant, much more honorific words would have
been used.
[16] Used antiphrastically for malediction: see Job i. 5.
[17] Deut. xxxii. 11.
[18] Chapter viii of the Rule of St. Benedict directs that a monk
shall not conceal from his abbat evil thoughts which come into his
heart.
[19] John xiii. 25 to xviii. 1 inclusive.
[20] Sigulf, as we have seen, told the writer the facts of Alcuin’s
life which he recorded.
[21] Dial. ii. 85. Benedict there narrates that he saw the whole
world collected into one ray of the sun, in which the soul of
Germanus, bishop of Capua, ascended to the heavens.
[22] Ps. cvi. 1.
[23] Francia, both here and in Alcuin’s Letter 35, where he
writes as if with these words in his mind: “I came to France, under
pressure of ecclesiastical need, and to confirm the reason of the
Catholic Faith.”
[24] There is a tradition that Alcuin wrote the Office for the Mass
on Trinity Sunday. See Appendix A.
[25] The “hereditary right” seems to indicate that by these
“benedictions” the library of York is meant, of which more will be
said later on.
[26] “Talentum sui domini”, sc. Elcberti?
[27] The perpetual presence of Sigulf was needed for the
celebration of masses, Alcuin remaining a deacon. There is a
curious mention of Alcuin’s part in the administration of Holy
Communion, and of the action of the young King Louis when
receiving at his hand; see p. 32.
[28] We can date this meeting fairly closely by the fact that Karl
granted a privilegium to Parma on March 15, 781.
[29] The bishop George whom we know as intimately
concerned with the affairs of Hadrian I and with British interests
was Bishop of Ostia. If this is he, we shall hear of him again in
connexion with the Archbishopric of Lichfield.
[30] Abbat of St. Martin of Tours, a curiously early connexion of
Alcuin with his future home. To him Alcuin addressed the earliest
letter of his which is extant; see p. 205.
[31] Alcuin was about seven years older than Karl. They were
at this time about forty-six and thirty-nine years of age.
[32] St. Peter of Ferrières, dio. Sens.
[33] Alcuin makes mention of his residence here during the
autumn of 798 in his correspondence with Gisla, Karl’s sister; see
p. 253. The Museum of Troyes is housed in the old buildings of
the Abbey of St. Loup.
[34] Matt. x. 23.
[35] He was subject to febrile attacks.
[36] For Alcuin’s letter to Fulda, written after Karl’s refusal of
permission, See Appendix A.
[37] “In psalmorum et missarum multa celebratione.”
[38] See p. 13.
[39] Called Witto by Alcuin (ep. 107), and Candidus (106) as
the Latin rendering of the Teutonic name.
[40] To Fredegisus Alcuin wrote letters on the three kinds of
visions (257) and on the Trinity (258). He is understood to be the
“Nathanael” of other letters. Of Fredegisus, Theodulfus, the
Bishop of Orleans, wrote to Karl:

Stet levita decus Fredegis sociatus Osulfo,

Gnarus uterque artis, doctus uterque bene.

He was a master in the school of the Palace and afterwards

Archdeacon. He became Abbat of Cormery, and eventually of
Tours.
[41] See the mention of him in previous note. Osulf was a
household officer of the young King Charles, see p. 250. The last
words of Alcuin’s interpretation of the vision suggest that he was
an Englishman, one of the youths whom Alcuin brought from York
as his assistant masters.
[42] This was Benedict, the Abbat of Aniane in Languedoc. That
region is here spoken of as Gothia, because the Goths had
settled about Toulouse in the fifth century. The fact that Benedict
used often to come to consult Alcuin is an interesting illustration
of the disregard of distance in those days. As the crows fly,
Toulouse is some 270 miles from Tours, and the journey was a
long and arduous one.
[43] The three sons of Karl were all of them kings (practically
sub-kings) of one part or another of his vast domains. The great
partition of the empire was not arranged by Charlemagne till after
Alcuin’s death.
[44] It will be borne in mind that Alcuin was only in deacon’s
orders.
[45] This is one of the various indications of date which enable
us to calculate the time at which the biography was written.
[46] Charles and Pepin died before their father, and Louis
became sole emperor and ruler of all that Charlemagne had held.
[47] With regard to some possible confusion here between Karl
and his eldest son Charles, see p. 246.
[48] Vita, c. 21.
[49] It is frequently impossible to calculate a man’s nationality
from his name in the century with which we are dealing, and it is
unsafe to guess at it. Aigulf, for instance, was the name of the
Gothic Count of Maguelone, the cup-bearer of Karl’s son, Pepin of
Aquitaine, and father of Benedict of Aniane.
[50] Engelsaxo.
[51] “Venit iste Britto vel Scotto.” The Scot in those days was
the Irishman. We may imagine that “Scotto” was formed derisively
to match “Britto”. But it should be remembered that in Alcuin’s
dialogue on grammar the disputants are Saxo and Franco, a very
similar formation.
[52] It is of at least local interest to remark that the latest of
many burnings of York Minster, Alcuin’s old abode, was caused
very much in the same way. Carpenters had been at work, in the
bell-chamber of the south-west tower, and left a candle burning
on the table where they had been planing wood. The candle
burned low and fell over on to some shavings, to which it set fire,
and thence the flame grew and grew till it burst out, and the great
fire of May 20, 1840, was the result. This present writer was a boy
of six at the time, and from his bedroom window saw it all, from
the beginning, through the sounding boards of the chamber. He
was eventually carried off in a blanket, as the tower would have
fallen into his father’s house if it had come down. The house, it
may be added, was the house in which Guy Fawkes was born.
See also p. 82.
[53] The word monasterium has so many meanings that we
cannot be sure what precisely is here meant. It may possibly
mean the maius monasterium, Marmoutier, see p. 221.
[54] The historian here quoted, a contemporary of St. Martin,
must not be confused with Sulpicius, Archbishop of Bourges, a.d.
584, surnamed Severus to distinguish him from a second
Sulpicius Archbishop of Bourges, surnamed Pius, who died a.d.
644.
[55] “Hesterna die indicatur mihi,” &c. We fortunately have the
letter. It is Epistle I of the collected works of Sulpicius.
[56] It may be that we have here an early hint of a practice of
which we have record in later times. The water which had been
used for washing the tomb of St. Martin was held to have healing
properties in the later middle ages.
[57] Believed at that time to have been written by St. Paul.
[58] In our editions, Arno and not Fredegisus was the recipient
of this treatise.
[59] Presumably the same as Withso and Witto.
[60] “Franci et Saxonis,” the author says. But in the disputatious
dialogue they are called Saxo and Franco. Saxo addresses
Franco as O Franco! but on one occasion he slips into the
vocative France: “En habes, France, de adverbio satis.” Fr. “Non
satis; pausemus tamen ad horam.” Saxo. “Pausemus.” The
dialogue is much of the same kind as that found in Aldhelm’s
works a hundred years earlier between Magister and Discipulus.
See my St. Aldhelm, ch. xii.
[61] We have seen from the author that he could very seldom
shed tears, p. 27.
[62] There is a delicate touch in putting into the devil’s mouth
the literal name and not the intimate name.
[63] Cant. iv. 4.
[64] A cynic might remark that Alcuin did not answer the clever
question of the enemy. He could not deny that he was elaborately
deceiving his attendants.
 [65] Sulpicius Severus, Life, c. 25.
[66] Theodulf of Orleans makes a little apology to Karl for
Alcuin’s use of wine and beer (not English beer! see p. 267):

Aut si, Bacche, tui aut Cerealis pocla liquoris

Porgere praecipiat, fors et utrumque volet;
Quo melius doceat, melius sua fistula cantet,
Si doctrinalis pectoris antra riget.

If he bids bring forth cups of thy liquor, O Bacchus, or cups of

the liquor of corn, and perhaps takes both; it is that he may teach
the better, the better may sing his stave, if he moistens the
recesses of his instructive breast.
[67] “Celebrabat omni die missarum solemnia multa.”
[68] Based on Isa. xxii. 22.
[69] See p. 211.
[70] The biographer here passes in a telling manner to the
present tense.
[71] Again the use of Alcuin’s baptismal name at a critical point.
[72] This is one of the endless number of cases in which it is
made quite clear that the original attraction to Rome was not the
asserted bishopric of Peter, but the fact of the tombs of Peter and
Paul. The cult of these two chiefs, princes of the Apostles, was
the source of the reputation of Rome. See Appendix D.
[73] See p. 268.
[74] The title consists of twenty-four elegiacs, with only ordinary
thoughts.
[75] Gesta Regum, i. 3.
[76] The mention of Ascension Day in the account of Bede’s
death is in the judgement of some scholars more easily
reconciled with the incidence of Ascension Day in the year 742.
[77] The see of Dunwich appears to have been vacant then.
[78] All this tells against the now exploded belief that Theodore
established the parochial system. His paroichia was the diocese.
[79] The earliest pieces of English now extant in the original
form are the inscriptions in Anglian runes on the cross erected in
670 in the churchyard of Bewcastle, in memory of the sub-king
Alchfrith (see p. 9). The main inscription runs thus: + This sigbecn
thun setton hwaetred wothgar olwfwolthu aft alkfrithu ean küning
eac oswiung + gebid heo sinna sowhula. + This token of victory
Hwaetred Wothgar Olwfwolthu caused make in memory of Alcfrith
once king and son of Oswy. + Pray for the high sin of his soul.
See also p. 296.
[80] See p. 5.
[81] In ordinatione.
[82] Constituant.
[83] He was Bishop of Winchester a.d. 1367 to 1398; Wilfrith
was Bishop of York a.d. 669 to 678.
[84] Eton was founded, in a very small way, in 1440.
[85] As to the treatment of ancient ecclesiastical MSS. in one
part of France at the time of the Revolution, see pages 219, &c.
[86] It is now maintained that ‘Saxon’ is formed from saxa,
stones, but for a different reason, being taken as describing
‘armed men’ in the stone age.
[87] It is so, also, in Eddi’s prose account, “pro lachrymis ad
aures Dei pervenientibus.”
[88] See also p. 137.
[89] See my Lessons from Early English Church History, pp.
74, 75.
[90] Our word “inn” means a place enclosed, or a place
comprising an enclosure.
[91] p. xxiii.
[92] See also p. 141.
[93] “Monasterium” is used in the middle ages for a parish
church in the country. “Minster” has always been a special
Yorkshire word, “York Minster,” “Ripon Minster,” “Beverley
Minster.” The unique inscription at the side of the sun-dial at
Kirkdale Church, dated as in the days of Tostig the Earl, sets forth
that “Orm Gamal-suna bohte Sanctus Gregorius minster”.
[94] The writer of this cannot refrain from mentioning a curious
coincidence of dates and experience between himself and his
schoolfellow and head master Alcuin. York Minster was burned on
May 23, 741, when Alcuin was six years old. The cathedral school
being within the precincts, Alcuin would have to be removed to a
place of safety. York Minster was burned on May 20, 1840,
curiously near to being the eleven-hundredth anniversary of the
burning on May 23, 741, and the present writer, then aged six,
was carried from his bed in the minster precincts to a place of
safety in Castlegate.
[95] An. dcc.xli. Her forbarn Eoferwic. This entry is found in
the two MSS. of the Chronicle known as Cotton. Tib. B. 1 and
Bodl. Laud. 636. These two MSS. have special information about
Northumbrian affairs. They differ in the spelling of proper names,
but in this case they take the same spelling of the Anglian name
of York, which appears in five different forms in the Chronicle.
[96] Before Froben this was read Alcuinus, clearly an
impossible reading in a list drawn up by Alcuin himself, and at a
time when his chief effort of versification could not be in the
library.
[97] See Appendix B, p. 310.
[98] Haddan and Stubbs, iii. 440.
[99] a.d. 790-805.
[100] “Sacerdos.” It appears clear that Alcuin is using the word
as equivalent to “episcopus”, as it frequently was.
[101] Mal. ii. 7.
[102] “Speculator.”
[103] “Super-speculator.” Isidore explains in his Etymologies
that bishops are called “episcopi” by the Greeks and
“speculatores” by the Latins, because they are set on high in the
church.
[104] “Sacerdotes.” That Alcuin is speaking of bishops, not of
priests in general, is clear from his verses at the end of the letter,
where he repeats his phrases “terrae sal”, “lumina inundi”, and
adds “Bis sex signa poli”, the twelve stars of the sky, namely the
bishops of the Southern Province. These were, not counting
Athelhard himself, Higbert of Lichfield, Kenwalch or Eadbald of
London, Kinbert of Winchester, Unwona of Leicester, Ceolwulf of
Lindsey, Denefrith of Sherborne, Aelhun of Dunwich, Alheard of
Elmham, Heathred of Worcester, Ceolmund of Hereford, Wiothun
of Selsey, Weremund of Rochester.
[105] “Consacerdotes.”
 [106] Prov. xviii. 19. The Vulgate and the Septuagint versions
give the force of the passage in Alcuin’s sense. The Authorised
Version gives, “A brother offended is harder to be won than a
strong city.” The Revised Version agrees exactly with the A.V.
[107] Gildus, in Alcuin.
[108] It may be supposed that Offa was engaged in building an
abbey church at St. Albans. William of Malmesbury says of the
church built by Offa in honour of St Alban (Gesta Regum, i. 4):
“The relics of St. Alban, at that time buried in obscurity, he had
reverently taken up and placed in a shrine decorated to the fullest
extent of royal munificence with gold and jewels; a church of most
beautiful workmanship was there erected, and a society of monks
assembled.” The black stones may have been wanted for
pavements.
[109] Pope Hadrian I. He died December 27, 795, having held
the Papacy for twenty-three years, with great distinction, at a
most important time in its history.
[110] Simeon of Durham, under the year 795.
[111] This would naturally mean Ireland at that time, but it is far
from clear that Ireland is meant.
[112] Isa. i. 4.
[113] Offa died July 26, 796, and Ecgfrith died in the middle of
December in the same year, after a reign of 141 days.
[114] In each of these two cases the new king was, in this year
796, most unexpectedly raised to the throne from a comparatively
poor position, in which he had married a wife of his own position.
Alcuin fears that they will be tempted to cast off the early wife and
take some lady more fitted for a throne.
[115] This prophecy was not fulfilled. It was not till nine years
after the date of this letter that Eardwulf was expelled from the
kingdom.
[116] Prov. xx. 28.
[117] Ps. xxiv. 10, Vulgate; xxv. 10, A. V.; xxv. 10, Psalter.
[118] Haddan and Stubbs, iii. 521, from William of Malmesbury,
G. R. i. 4.
[119] A mancus was more than one-third of a pound, but that
conveys no real idea to the modern mind of its actual value.