Jana Dolecki is a PhD candidate at the Department for Theatre, Film and Media Studies at the University of Vienna, Austria. Her current research focuses on wartime theatre in Croatia and Serbia.
Senad Halilbasic is a University Assistant and PhD candidate at the Department for Theatre, Film and Media Studies at the University of Vienna, Austria. His research focuses on theatre during the Bosnian war. Previous publications include the co-edited volume Bibliothek Sarajevo: Literarische Vermessung einer Stadt (2012).
Stefan Hulfeld is Professor of Theatre and Cultural Studies at the University of Vienna, Austria. His current research agendas focus on theatre historiography and theory. Publications include the chapters 'Modernist Theatre' in The Cambridge Companion to Theatre History (2013) and 'Antitheatrical thinking and the rise of "theatre"' in A Cultural History of Theatre in the Early Modern Age (2017).

Marks the first academic publication in English treating the various forms of theatre and cultural performances during the Yugoslav wars

1. Introduction.- 2. Testimony: Borka PAVICEVIC.- 3. Irena SENTEVSKA: Stages of Denial: State-funded Theatres in Serbia and the Yugoslav Wars.- 4. Senad HALILBASIC: Bosnia and Herzegovina's National Theatres in the Context of Language Politics During the War.- 5. Testimony: Amela KRESO.- 6. Jeton NEZIRAJ: Theatre as Resistance. The Dodona Theatre in Kosovo.- 7. Ksenija RADULOVIC: War Discourse on Institutional Stages: Serbian Theatre 1991-1995.- 8. Jana DOLECKI: Theatre on the Front Lines: Ad Hoc Cabaret in Croatia, 1991-1992.- 9. Lada CALE FELDMAN: Within and Beyond Theatre: President Tu man's Birthday Celebration at the Croatian National Theatre in Zagreb .- 10. Testimony: Snjezana BANOVIC.- 11. Milena DRAGICEVIC SESIC: Culture of Dissent, Art of Rebellion: The Psychiatric Hospital as a Theatre Stage in the Work of Zorica Jevremovic.- 12. Ana DEVIC: Theatre of Diversity and Avant-Garde in Late Socialist Yugoslavia and Beyond: Paradoxes of the Disintegration and Cultural Subversion.- 13. Testimony: Borut SEPAROVIC.- 14. Barbara OREL: The Theatre Exchange between Slovenia and the Republics of Former Yugoslavia in the 1990s.- 15. Branislav JAKOVLJEVIC: Peter Handke's River Journeys: Fording the Stream of Conscience.- 16. Testimony: Nihad KRESEVLJAKOVIC.- 17. Darko LUKIC: Strategies for Challenging Official Mythologies in War Trauma Plays: The Croatian Playwright Ivan Vidic.- 18. Aleksandra JOVICEVIC: Postmodern Antigones: Women in Black and the Performance of Involuntary Memory.- 19. Testimony: Dino MUSTAFIC.

This book assembles texts by renowned academics and theatre artists who were professionally active during the wars in former Yugoslavia. It examines examples of how various forms of theatre and performance reacted to the conflicts in Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Slovenia, and Kosovo while they were ongoing. It explores state-funded National Theatre activities between escapism and denial, the theatre aesthetics of protest and resistance, and symptomatic shifts and transformations in the production of theatre under wartime circumstances, both in theory and in practice. In addition, it looks beyond the period of conflict itself, examining the aftermath of war in contemporary theatre and performance, such as by considering Ivan Vidic's war trauma plays, the art campaigns of the international feminist organization Women in Black, and Peter Handke's play Voyage by Dugout. The introduction explores correlations between the contributions and initiates a reflection on the further development of the research field. Overall, the volume provides new perspectives and previously unpublished research in the fields of theory and historiography of theatre, as well as Southeast European Studies.