Hrvatski

IN MEMORIAM: GEORGIJ PARO

Date created: 20.06.2019.
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IN MEMORIAM: GEORGIJ PARO

 

Presentation of the book Georgij Paro's City-Stage

Editor: Hrvoje Ivanković

Publisher: Disput, Zagreb

 

Premiere of the film Georgij Paro - Cleaning Up

Writer: Lada Džidić Barić

Director: Siniša Bajt

Produced by: Croatian Radio and Television

 

In the period from 1971 to 1973, Georgij Paro directed Bertolt Brecht’s The Life of Edward II of England and Miroslav Krleža’s Aretheus and Christopher Columbus at the Dubrovnik Summer Festival, the three plays which can be considered a turning point in the history of the Festival theatre, as well as contemporary Croatian theatre, at least with regard to the ideas and achievements in the field of site-specific theatre. With Edward II, Aretheus and Columbus, Paro made a grand introduction of contemporary writers to the drama repertoire of the Festival, until that moment almost exclusively defined by productions of classical works, and the way he did it marked the beginning of a new chapter in consideration of the idea of site-specific theatre as a basic distinctive feature of the Dubrovnik Summer Festival’s drama programme.

Apart from the new introductory study by Hrvoje Ivanković, the book Georgij Paro’s City-Stage contains around two hundred pages of texts by eleven other authors (Vjeran Zuppa, Milan Milišić, Mani Gotovac, Dalibor Foretić, Petar Selem, Marko Fotez, Slobodan Selenić, Matko Sršen, Božidar Violić, Ivica Kunčević, Georgij Paro) who write about these productions from the perspective of different time periods and analytical starting points, shedding light on them in a wider theatrical and social context.

The concept of the book was co-authored in his final months by Georgij Paro himself (1934-2018), one of the most significant directors in the entire history of Croatian theatre, who returned to Edward II, Aretheus and Columbus in his theatrical accounts on several occasions, considering these plays the peak of the most propulsive period of his artistic career.