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Newspaper Mask, subtitled "theatre magazine", began to be published in the autumn of 1920. Our first theatre magazine was published by the Ljubljana subcommittee of the Association of Theatre Actors of the Slovenian Slovene Slovene Association.
The creation of the magazine is closely connected with the establishment of a new professional organization. Barely three months before the start of publication Masks Slovenian actors participated in the first congress of Yugoslav actors in Zagreb (July 6-8). The versatile theatre artist Rade Pregarc (1894-1952) was also very active in the newly established actors' association, and since September 2019 he has been a member of the acting ensemble of the Ljubljana Drama. Together with his fellow actor Silvestr Škerl (1903-1974), he became the editors of the first Slovenian and Yugoslav theatre magazine.
With his suggestiveness and versatile activism as editor, Rade Pregarc managed to gain the widest circle of collaborators, supporters and readers for it. In Mask Many important theatre publicists and critics, as well as other Slovenian writers and cultural figures, contributed articles. Many of the contributors were very young, from Pregarč's generation: among them were future artists, translators and editors. The lawyer and publicist Viktor Vovk wrote in the first issue about the theatre events in the Narodni dom in Trieste and about the fascist arson of the building on 13 July 1920. In the sequels, the director Osip Šest published a theatrological reflection entitled About the actor's individuality, and actor and director Milan Skrbinšek contributed a discussion on modern directing. Skrbinšek also contributed an article on actor Anton Verovšek, and writer France Bevk on Oton Župančič as a playwright. In the article, he also described Župančič's efforts for a more appropriate and high-quality stage pronunciation. The discussion on stage language was contributed by philologist Ivan Koštial, professor of classical languages and Slovene at the gymnasium in Novo mesto. Two future composers wrote about music and opera: the barely eighteen-year-old Mirko (Mihovil) Logar contributed a critique of the concert by Mario Kogoj, and Matija Bravničar wrote an article entitled About singing voice hygiene, reviews of musical events and a polemical record of criticism. Pregarč's classmate, writer Angelo Cerkvenik, published a prose feuilleton in the form of diary entries entitled Conversations. He also presented the dramatic work of Lojz Kraigher, Ljubomir Micić and Mirko Karolija. Fran Albreht provided an overview of the Ljubljana drama season, while Zorko Prelovec provided an overview of the opera season. Writer Gustav Strniša reported on the first season of the Slovenian theatre in Maribor, while Stanko Majcen, a future playwright, wrote about recitation and the artistic word. Stane Melihar, who later became the Mask followed theatrical events in Vienna, reported on contemporary drama and theater, and translated texts from German. In Masks a discussion of Manfred Schneider's expressionism and a text entitled Actor and role Carl Hagemann. In addition to a repertoire review, each issue also contained news about the activities of the subcommittees of the actors' association: Trieste, Maribor, Belgrade, Zagreb and others.
The elated atmosphere at the end of the war and the establishment of a new, Slavic state also spilled over into the field of theatre. Slovenian theatre professionals enthusiastically participated in unification and networking at the national level. Magazine Mask contributed greatly to the knowledge of the theatre and general culture of the Croatian, Serbian, Bosnian, Herzegovinian, Montenegrin and Macedonian territories. It brought news about theatre events in the Balkans, reviews of performances and repertoires of Yugoslav theatres. Articles were contributed by colleagues from other Yugoslav theatres and theatre critics and publicists from larger Balkan cities; in principle untranslated and – in the case of Serbian writers – even in Cyrillic. On the first pages of the new magazine we can read that the printing house lacked Cyrillic letters, but a few issues later the editorial board announced that the problem had already been solved: “Brother Serbs! Our printing house has received a large number of Cyrillic letters: so write in Cyrillic." Among the writers of articles on Balkan theatre and wider European events was Joco Cvijanović, a Croatian opera singer, active in the Zagreb subcommittee and vice-president of the Federal Actors' Association. A broader, European perspective was provided by, among others, critic and publicist Hinko Vinković, Croatian writer, theatre critic and translator Ladislav Žimbek, who - like Vinković - was from Varaždin, and reported on the performances of the Varaždin City Theatre. In Mask avant-garde artist Ljubomir Micić also sent articles, and in February 1921 he began publishing the famous magazine Zenith and a book collection with the same name.
The euphoria and illusions about the free and happy development of the nations united in the new state did not last long and sobering up came almost overnight. The burning of the National House in Trieste (incidentally: Pregarc and Škerl were both from Trieste and their acting beginnings took place in the Trieste theatre, i.e. in the National House) was an ominous prelude to the signing of the Rapallo Treaty, by which the newly established Kingdom of SHS, among other things, renounced a large part of western Slovenian territory. After episodes with the ban on the activities of the Communist Party, which was finally expelled from parliament and sent underground after its exceptional success in the parliamentary elections at the end of November 1920, the centralist and royalist Vidovdan Constitution followed in the summer of 1921, which was further tightened by the Law on the Protection of the State a good month later. The Vidovdan Constitution definitively legalized the subordinate role of Croats and Slovenes and the dominant role of Belgrade; it did not recognize Macedonians, Montenegrins, and other nations at all and denied them any free national and cultural development.
Ljubljana's theatre also went hand in hand with the political catastrophes at the national level in its own way. On the one hand, it was a period of strike unrest, and on the other, it was an era of the painful and long-term nationalization of the Ljubljana theatre, which after the First World War found itself in the hands of the Theatre Consortium (the largest owner was Jadranska banka). The theatre staff wanted both theatres, in Maribor and Ljubljana, to be nationalized as soon as possible. They hoped for more stable financing, better working conditions and, consequently, a higher artistic level. The decisions at the Belgrade ministries were issued as early as February 1920, and the saga of nationalization was only concluded in the spring of 1921, when the actors' association, headed by the new president Danilo, who replaced Pregarc, cooperated in preventing re-privatization.
The first strike by theater staff occurred even before the magazine began publication. Mask, in March 1920, but it was short-lived, without positive results and without sanctions. At the beginning of the 1920/21 season, new tensions arose. On October 27, the employees, united in the Ljubljana subcommittee of the Association of Theater Actors, sent a letter to the management of the National Theater with strike demands. At the forefront was the struggle for a higher level of Slovenian theater, which found itself in rather chaotic conditions upon reopening. Due to its desire for profit, the theater consortium expected hyperproduction from the theater management: a large number of premieres and repeats exhausted the poorly paid ensemble and often affected fairly average or even below-average results. The reason for the strike was hidden behind the strike demand for the purity of the stage language: after the touring acting troupe of Mikhail Muratov, the management hired Russian actors and paid them almost twice as much as domestic ones. Mask, which published a positive review of the Muratova acting group's tour in its first issue (written by Josip Vidmar), already in its third issue – published on November 1 – printed a supplement entitled Strike of the drama staff of the "National Theatre" in Ljubljana. The annex listed the strike demands, which were followed by a negative response from the theatre management. The strike committee subsequently rejected the management's accusations as unfounded. Passions slowly subsided, the actors – also thanks to the intervention of the Belgrade headquarters of the Association – returned to work before the end of November, and behind the scenes, intrigues began against Pregarec, which ultimately buried the magazine. Of course, the attacks on it were also frontal: the theatre management constantly threw the editorial staff, which operated in the Association's premises, out on the street, because some of the contributions were allegedly directed against the management and the theatre consortium. Articles discrediting the Mask and her colleagues, saying they are publishing lies about Slovenian theater.
If the main protagonist on the side of the strikers was the then president of the Ljubljana subcommittee, Rade Pregarc, on the other side – in addition to the director of the board Friderik Juvančič – one of the greatest advocates of the engagement of Russian theatre artists was undoubtedly the director of the Ljubljana Drama, Pavel Golia. In fact, at first glance, it is strange that Pregarc and Golia found themselves on opposite sides of the issue of the engagement of Russians: both spent a good part of the First World War in Russia, both were Russian prisoners of war for a while, both got to know the famous Moscow Drama Theatre and became enthusiastic about Stanislavski and the Russian style of acting. Before the tragic split between the two enthusiasts of Russian theatre, Golia was the first to Masks, which also published Vidmar's assessment of Muratov and his teammates' visit, wrote an article about Ignaciju Borštnik. Later in Masks he no longer published.
Although the management did not take into account the acting requirements, the relatively long engagement of Czech actors from the end of the 19th century was not repeated this time: the Russians, who of course did not know Slovenian and performed only in Russian, generally left Ljubljana fairly quickly. Jakov (Josip) Osipovič Šuvalov, who had arrived in Ljubljana the season before and, alongside Osip Šest, was the main director of the – newly opened – National Theatre in the 1919/20 season, also left. Only the director and actor Boris Putjata remained in Ljubljana, who was later joined by the actress Marija Nablocka.
The fight against Pregarc continued: the Association's activities were allegedly directed against the government and Yugoslav authorities, while at the same time the opera members accused him of arbitrariness and trinitarianism. Disappointed with Ljubljana, Rade Pregarc signed a contract with the Split theatre for the 1921/22 season on 26 February. At the extraordinary general meeting on 14 March 1921, he was re-elected as president of the actors' organisation, but he did not accept the appointment. At his request, a new general meeting was convened a month later: a new subcommittee was elected, and Anton Cerar Danilo became president. Despite the January announcements that a double issue would be published in February, Mask was published only twice more. The last issues of the magazine are closely connected with the congress of Yugoslav actors, which Ljubljana hosted in July. The tenth, ceremonial, was almost entirely written by Danilo, who helped calm the heated passions with his prudent performance. Danilo also had a lot of credit for the successfully implemented nationalization of the theater, the power, the "aspirations and ideas", which he mentions in the last issue Masks, but he didn't have:
"It would be criminal to underestimate the merits and work of the former committee. It had good aspirations, good will and ideas, but too much belligerence." (Mask, No. 10, p. 156)
Ljubljana was left without a theater magazine, and the "too militant" Rade Pregarc joined the newspaper Acting, which was published from 1921 to 1923 by the Yugoslav Actors' Association (Association of Serbian, Croatian and Slovene Actors, later Yugoslav Actors).
The Maribor Theatre published five issues in the 1921/22 season Dramas, which was called a theater magazine, but remained halfway between a professional newspaper and a theater magazine. Delak's attempt to publish a theater magazine was also New stage (1925), which remained only in the first issue and was more reminiscent of Danilov's interwar periodical in terms of scope and scope. Theater (1916) as in MaskIt first began to appear in the 1930s. Drama, our first theatre magazine, which saw its mission as caring for amateur theatre creation. It was published for four years with difficulties. A year later, it began to be published People's stage, published and edited by Niko Kuret. The magazine lasted seven years (1934 – 1940); first as a monthly and then as a bimonthly. Despite its great influence on the development and quality of Slovenian amateur theatre creation, Kuret's theatre magazine was pushed into oblivion in the post-war decades due to its Catholic or Christian orientation. In the post-war period, with the increase in the number of professional theatres, the publication of theatre magazines flourished. In 1963, the staff of the Slovenian Theatre Museum founded Documents, which were published as a biannual magazine, but over the years have become a book collection. Similar ambitions and plans – like the Slovenian Theatre Museum with The Documents – the Academy of Theatre, Radio, Film and Television had Information and research, which already in the second issue became a completely monographic publication. By 1975, five volumes had been collected. Information and research were revived only in 1995 with the collection About the history of the theaterIn 2001 they changed their name to Theatrological research, and in 2008 AGRFT began publishing a journal for the theory of performing arts Amfiteater, which was initially published irregularly, but from the third year onwards (2015) it has been published biannually in co-publishing with the Slovenian Theatre Institute. Since 1966, the magazine has also been available to readers Doll; 55 issues were published by 1999. We only got a real theatre magazine again in 1985. The Association of Cultural Organizations of Slovenia began publishing the magazine Masks, and during the formation of the independent Slovenian state, three issues of the international magazine were published Euromasks in English. In the early nineties, the magazine, which has been published continuously for thirty-five years, was renamed, following the example of Pregarč's magazine, to Mask.
Katarina Kocijančič