History of the Croatian Theatre in Communications from Hvar by Nikola Batušić

Nikola Batušić participated in thirty-six Hvar Theatre Days conferences. He presented his first communication in 1974 and the last one in 2009. This paper argues that the total of thirty-seven communications represent the backbone of Batušić’s theatrical work from the 1970s to the 2000s. Owing to their importance they are also included in Batušić’s books and studies published in that period. His main research areas are: Držić, his predecessors, contemporaries and followers; the Baroque and the School Theatre; the Kajkavian Theatre and the Kajkavian dramatic literature; the Croatian National Theatre in the period when it is headed by Demeter, Šenoa, Miletić, and Benešić; Branko Gavella and Miroslav Krleža, Finally, it is observed that Batušić’s approach to Croatian dramatic literature and Croatian theatre tends to change. In his earlier writing, Batušić is a theatre historian who, based on available resources, describes »the scenic image« of individual plays, stage productions and/or the entire periods. In the second part of his career, he is a comparative theatrologist, a scholar focusing on the analysis of connections between the Croatian theatre and its immediate and wider surrounding. In his later years, Batušić approximates the cultural approach to theatre and dramatic literature. Accordingly, he focuses less on the reconstruction of older and modern already staged plays, and more on the construction of a possible theatrical performance based on specific unpolished plays or scripts