Serbian Culture the Spiritual Heritage of the Serbian Church

Serbian Culture

Theatre among Serbs has a tradition that is more than eight centuries old. Theatre in Serbia was not created without the occasional interruption. Serbian theatre performances in the Middle Ages had a basically secular and entertaining function. They featured improvisations without written texts, and were staged in public places. The theatre, at this time, remained beyond the bounds and influence of the Orthodox Church. In the thirteenth century, church authorities forbade their congregation to attend gatherings where actors showed their performances (Library of Serbian Culture, par. 55).

The traits of staged scenes and sport festivities lived on in the Serbian fourteenth century as well. In the painting The Mocking of Christ, created between 1317 and 1318 in the monastery of Staro Nagoricino, the endowment of King Milutin, three characters in long sleeves, together with several figures with unusual instruments, are seen in the foreground. Serbian rulers, who had a friendly and diplomatic relationship with Dubrovnik, sent their music and entertainment groups for the celebrations of Saint Blasius (the patron of Dubrovnik) and artists from Zeta and Dubrovnik visited Serbia (1412 and 1413). Programs consisted of various musical, pantomime and jester's skills and exhibitions (Library of Serbian Culture, par. 19).

At the end of the fifteenth century, a convert to Islam, Ali-beg Pavlovic, who was certainly of Serbian origin, sent his theatre group to Dubrovnik. It was led by Radoje Vukosalic, a Serb, and from the letter of introduction it can be concluded that Vukosalic is the first known Serbian actor - the manager of that traveling theatre group. Turkish rule existed from the second half of the fifteenth century to the beginning of the nineteenth century, and it interrupted the cultural development of the Serbs. During that period only performances of religious character were staged from time to time. The only exception was Vojvodina, where a segment of the Serbian people, especially after the end of the seventeenth century, had lived in the multiethnic culture of the Habsburg Monarchy. Thus, theatre activity was under central European influence (Library of Serbian Culture, par. 82).

The first modern Serbian play was the school drama entitled: Traedokomedija, written by: Manuil Kozacinski (1699-1755). The play was performed in Sremski Karlovci in 1734. The school drama period lasted until 1813, when amateur acting commenced. At the end of August, 1813, the first play was staged in Pest: The Nutcracker Bird by Joakim Vujic (1772-1847), created on the basis of a work by August Kotzebue. Actors-students from school drama plays were replaced by grown-up actors, three of whom were professionals (Library of Serbian Culture, par. 37).

After arriving in Serbia, Vujic founded the Prince's Serbian Theatre in Kragujevacin, which he worked as the manager, literary consultant, producer, leading actor, translator and adapter of dramatic works. Due to his theatre activity, Joakim Vujic deserved the title "the father of Serbian theatre." In 1838, the first professional theatre company among the Serbs was created in Novi Sad. It was the Travelling Amateur Theatre, which had performed in Novi Sad, Zemun and Pancevo up to 1840; then, from June, 1840 to the end of 1841, in Zagreb (under the name "The National Theatre Company"). In February of 1842 it merged with the Theatre at Djumruk (the custom's office in Belgrade, making a professional ensemble out of it. This theatre deserves credit for creating the first regular professional ensembles among South Slavs (Novi Sad, Zagreb, Belgrade) in the seventh decade of the nineteenth century (Library of Serbian Culture, par. 21).

A great playwright among Serbs was Jovan Sterija Popovic (1806-1856). After abandoning the schemes of pseudo-Classicism and national Romanticism, Popovic became the first Serbian author with the distinctive features of the Realist approach to the literary and theatre substance, as well as the basic mainstay of the repertoire of Serbian theatres from 1830 to 1870. Creating characters on the basis of living models and revealing the comic side of their nature and personality, he offered a lucid analysis of the mentality and temperament of his fellow citizens, thus making it possible for distinguished Serbian actors to give a series of convincing artistic creations, some of which became legendary. Even today Popovic's comedies preserve their dramatic vitality and satirical topicality (Library of Serbian Culture, par. 78).

In 1850s and 1860s Laza Kostic (1841-1910) and Djura Jaksic (1832- 1878) gave Serbian Romanticist drama and theatre new poetic expression and a new type of drama hero, characterized by psychological dualism. The stagings of Kostic's tragedies Maksim Crnojevic (1869), in which the worlds of Serbian national epics and Shakespeare's tragedy were interwoven, and Pera Segedinac (1882), in which a tragedy from the history of Serbian people was interconnected with the burning problems of Kostic's time, were theatre landmarks (Library of Serbian Culture, par. 17).

At the end of the nineteenth century, the influence of French theatre strengthened. Before the World War I, this was the influence of Comedie-Francaise and Paris Boulevard theatres, rather than new theatre trends in France. Recent styles of European dramaturgy and theatre (Naturalism, Symbolism, Expressionism) - and not only French - were sensed in Serbian dramaturgy and theatre. Borisav Stankovic introduced new sensitivity and new poetic tones in the Realist approach into the already worn-out genre of popular folk plays "with singing," with his work Kostana (first performed in 1900), which has a cult following among Serbian theatres and audiences (Library of Serbian Culture, par. 86).

Physical Landmarks of Serb Culture

Prince Mihajlo Street in Belgrade with its neighboring blocks has been a subject of architects' interest for almost three centuries. During the Baroque urban renewal of Belgrade, between 1718 and 1739, the present main street of Prince Mihajlo was set up by the Austrians as a monumental architectonic border between German and Serbian towns. In the very proximity of this street, parallel to the watershed, they established the Great Square. On two facing sides of the square they constructed two representative buildings, Alexander's and Mauer's barracks. However, this square did not preserve its function for long. With the return of Turks in the second half of the eighteenth century and the first half of the nineteenth century, the Great Square was reduced to the Little Market. The orthogonal block scheme found itself in the clutches of an uncontrolled building of town sections. The third urban reconstruction of the most significant part of Belgrade, from 1867 to 1887, which was carried out according to the ideas of Emilijan Joksimovic, the first Serbian town-planner, finally strengthened the domination of symmetrical blocks, in the European way. Along with the Great Square, or Little Market, or King's Square, or Student's Square today, Prince Mihajlo Street, backed up against the Belgrade fortress, has been the dominant motif in the vista of the macro-environment of all of Belgrade (Library of Serbian Culture, par. 91).