COMEDY
Subtitle: Burka in two acts with singing
NUMBER OF PERSONS: 10 (10m)
PLACE AND TIME OF EVENT: The game follows peasant life at the end of the 19th century in the Slovenian countryside.
The text was published in the second volume of Krek's Selected writings (1927).
TIME OF GAME CREATION: Ivan Dolenec, editor of Krek Selected writings, in the introduction to the second volume, he states that Krek's manuscript of the play has been lost, but a transcript with permission for performance, dated February 19, 1897, has been preserved. Krek is said to have written the play at the initiative of members of the Catholic Society of Handicraft Assistants, and the verses were set to music by the society's choirmaster Alojzij Sachs.
John the Evangelist Krek (1865–1917) was a politician, priest, theologian, publicist and writer of numerous professional, historical, theological and literary works. He was a long-time member of the National and Provincial Assembly, and he devoted himself primarily to improving the social situation of farmers and workers. He founded associations, cooperatives, loan companies, vocational schools, consumer chains for the supply of labor, employment agencies (employment agencies), pension funds, cultural and sports associations. By economically saving the Slovenian peasant population, he influenced the reduction of emigration. In his political program, which he understood as Christian socialism, he advocated for the economic and political survival of Slovenians, which, in his opinion, depended on improving their social situation and the successful all-round organization of economic and cultural life. He supported the demand for universal and equal suffrage and emphasized the importance of education, including informal education. His most important treatises include Black beeches of the farmhouse (1895). In the work he analyzed the agriculture and economy of many countries. Krek's most extensive monograph, which consists of more than six hundred pages, is Socialism (1901). In the work, he gave his view of the history and development of socialist ideas and movements. Krek's biographers have recorded several thousand speeches and around six thousand articles, and he also wrote poems, prose, and plays.
First dramatic attempt St. Cyril and Methodius set foot on Slavic land (1885) was followed by a series of plays with exclusively male roles; the author wrote them for performance in societies that had exclusively male (or exclusively female) membership in his time: Justice has been served. (1892), Gypsy magician (1897) and Municipal drum (published 1908, written at least ten years earlier).
He later wrote the same number of plays with mixed casts: Turkish cross (1910), Three sisters (1910), drama St. Lucia (1913) and With the army (2017).
Krek did not have great literary ambitions. Most of his plays were written at the initiative of friends and members of societies for the needs of their theatrical creation. In the Slovenian Christian-Social Association, which he founded, he organized the publication of Collections of folk games, in which two of his burkas were also published. Due to the abundance of his other works, he did not attend the staging of his texts, but the information has been preserved that he participated as an actor in Slovenian amateur performances in Vienna (On the 50th anniversary of Dr. Janez Evangelista Krek, 2017, p. 49).
ROMA IN EARLY SLOVENIAN DRAMA
In the following, we occasionally use the term "gypsies", which was used in older Slovenian literature, although we are aware of the derogatory or offensive undertones that this word has today. In Linhart's comedy This happy day or Matiček is getting married (1890), the Roma are only mentioned: little Jurček is renamed Matiček and is therefore "deserving" of naming one of the most famous characters in our literature and the first hero in Slovenian drama.
In the comedy by Miroslav Vilhar First come, first served (1870), which remained in manuscript, also features the gypsy Jela, who plays a role similar to that of servants in Molière's comedies. As a fortune teller, she holds all the threads of the story in her hands, influences the plot and, above all, the outcome of the play, and benefits from it herself. It is true that she is cunning and calculating, but she is also benevolent and intelligent: the "clients" trust her judgment and follow her instructions.
Vilhar's play remained in manuscript and is almost completely unknown, while Krek's was a burka Gypsy magician years and years after its creation, it remains extremely popular and is often performed on community stages. The gypsy Miško has similar characteristics to Jela. He is also clever, quick-witted and resourceful. Everything in the play unfolds according to his ideas. However, Miško is more of a caricature, and this is because of the language: he speaks a kind of broken Croatian, which is supposed to help the play achieve additional comic effects.
Fran Milčinski also tried to provoke laughter by caricaturing Romani speech in his comedy Gypsies, but His portrayal of the Roma is different. He deliberately portrayed the representatives of the Brajdič family by taking into account all the prejudices and clichés characteristic of attitudes towards the Roma.
The Slovenian Theatre Museum was the publisher of a comprehensive collection of analyses of Slovenian theatre plays written by Taras Kermauner, which was published under the title Reconstruction and/or reinterpretation of Slovenian dramaCrack games Gypsy magician Among other things, he also devoted himself to the book Overcoming the mud (Part 1).
In the first scene, the neighbors are scolding the younger generation. Lokar's son Lenart is a slacker who wants to make money without working, while Grahar's nephew Pavle likes to work, but is a bully and a brawler. Their behavior is also annoying to their peers, so they hire a clever gypsy named Miško, who makes fools of them both. The first one is "enchanted" to become invisible. When he wanders around, convinced that no one sees him, the actors comment on his mistakes, which makes him think about himself and eventually improve. The second one is forced to remain silent and endure all sorts of reproaches from the villagers due to some kind of spell, which Miško convinces him is of fatal importance for the outcome of his love story. Because he is finally calm and greedy, the father of the girl he is in love with also takes pity on him. She promises him her daughter's hand, so that the event ends happily for everyone and culminates in a long song that summarizes the content of the burka and shares life's wisdom with the audience. The play is interspersed with singing performances throughout the action: solo and choral. Among others, the action is interrupted by a boy's, military and gypsy song.