Театърът в България: акценти
BULGARIA’S THEATRE: FOCAL POINTS

Summary/Abstract: Briefly overviewing key turns in the thirteen centuries of Bulgaria’s history: the Liberation from the Ottomans in 1878; full independence in 1908, the country’s involvement in both the First and Second World Wars and the political change following 1989, the article traces out how these events had a bearing both on the beginning of Bulgaria’s theatre in the mid-nineteenth century and its ensuing development. A special emphasis in the study is placed on the periodisation of Bulgarian theatre and its interrelation with the national and socio-cultural contexts. In Bulgarian theatre’s 160-year history, four main periods can be identified. The first of them began in 1856 with the earliest performances of amateur companies until the end of WW1. The interwar period (1918–1944), though short, was especially strong and vital to the establishing and modernisation of Bulgarian theatre arts. With the end of WW2, Bulgaria along with the rest of the CEE countries, was incorporated in the Eastern Bloc within the Soviet sphere of influence. The following 45 years, i.e. Bulgarian theatre’s third period was complicated and contradictory inasmuch as theatre along with the rest of the arts was forced to become a communist propaganda machine. The last three decades before the fall of the Berlin Wall were the fourth period of the history of Bulgarian theatre continuing until the present. Each of these four main periods of the development of Bulgaria’s theatre practice is presented by the most significant aesthetic trends, persons and productions, tracing and analysing the defining aspects of the acilities and resources, infrastructure and cultural policies in the area of theatre.

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