The book by Assoc. Rumyana Nikolova “Functioning Mode of the Bulgarian theatre in the period 1944-1989”, “P. Venedikov” Publishing House 2020, was awarded the ICARUS for 2021 for a critical text by the Theatre Historians, Critics and Dramatists Guild at the Union of Bulgarian Actors.
In it, the author explores theatre in Bulgaria during the communist period. The communist government carried out a total transformation in all spheres of social life. In the theatre the aspiration was its subordination to the communist ideology and its Sovietization. This goal dominated repertory choices, new Bulgarian drama, and the completed productions.
The main characteristics of the model of the Bulgarian theatre in the years of communism were formulated by 1956. The period between 1948 and 1956 saw a substitution of natural repertoire choices, the manipulated cultivation of an ideologically correct new Bulgarian drama, the introduction of socialist realism and Stanislavski’s system adapted to its purposes. This was also the time when the expansion of the theatrical network took place, and the centralization of the management of culture and the theatre in particular reached its peak. The Bulgarian theatre functioned in an entirely repertory model.
