The Wendish Research Exchange - Scholze, Dietrich: Fifty Years of German-Sorbian Professional Theatre

Lětopis Abstract 2014 1: Scholze, Dietrich: Fifty Years of German-Sorbian Professional Theatre

The “Sorbian National Theatre” (founded in 1948) was merged with the Bautzen Municipal Theatre (1796) in August 1963 to form the “German-Sorbian National Theatre of Bautzen”. The merger increased the artistic potential of both houses. The Sorbian part of the programme has concentrated since then on 1. the Sorbian literary heritage, 2. contemporary drama by Sorbian authors and 3. translations of foreign, mostly eastern European plays. Around 250 productions were put on in fifty years (together with thirty projects in the separate puppet theatre). At the Bautzen Theatre around twenty-five actors, of whom half are capable of acting in both languages, put on a varied programme of national and international drama, hardly feasible in other “provincial theatres”. Since 1862 theatre as an art form has represented a stable element in Sorbian national identity.