This year, the side programme Bitef Library will promote only one, but indisputably significant publication. It is the second edition (e-book) of the collection of essays Dramatic and Postdramatic Theatre: Ten Years After, from the conference which was organized under the same name in 2009 at the Faculty of Drama Arts in Belgrade in cooperation with Bitef and within that year’s festival, and on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of the first publication of the seminal work Postdramatic Theatre by the German theatre scholar Hans-Thies Lehmann. By then, the book had already been translated into numerous languages - Spanish, English, French, Japanese, Portuguese, Polish, Farsi, Slovakian, Slovenian, Croatian - and had, although not without provoking certain disputes, global influence on the understanding and acceptance of contemporary theatre and performing arts that do not belong to the paradigm of dramatic theatre. The conference hosted some of the leading theatre scholars and artists from country and abroad, and most of the addresses were published in the collection: besides Lehmann himself, the collection includes the works by Patrice Pavis, Elinor Fuchs, Marco De Marinis, Lada Čale Feldman, Oliver Frljić, Vlatko Ilić, etc. The conference was presided by Ivan Medenica, who also edited the book.
There are two reasons for the second, digital edition of the collection Dramatic and Postdramatic Theatre: Ten Years After: almost the entire first edition has been sold out while the book remains in high demand, and Lehmann’s recent death. The promotion will be held as a mini-conference, in two parts. The first part will focus on the topic of international reception and the significance of the postdramatic paradigm today, twenty-three years after the book Postdramatic Theatre was published, both in art and in science. The participants are the professor emerita Christine Hamon-Siréjols, Paris, Stefanie Carp, PhD, Berlin, associate professor Vlatko Ilić, PhD, Belgrade, and docent Agata Juniku, Phd, Zagreb. The second panel is dedicated to the influence of the postdramatic paradigm on the local scene, both artistic and critical one (Serbian theatre criticism still largely relies on this concept). The participants are theatre critics and theatre scholars of various generations: associate professor Marina Milivojević Mađarev, PhD, Belgrade, Svetislav Jovanov, PhD, Novi Sad, and Andrej Čanji, Belgrade.
This year’s Bitef Library is organized in cooperation with the Faculty of Dramatic Arts in Belgrade and the Association of Theatre Critics and Theatre Scholars of Serbia. The entire promotion will be moderated by the professor Ivan Medenica, PhD.