Director Ferdo Delak (1905-1968) is the only newspaper issue New stage published as a twenty-year-old student at the Faculty of Arts in Ljubljana.
While studying, he attended the two-year Drama School of the "Association of Theatre Actors of the Slovenian Slovene Slovene Srpska", at the time the only, but relatively high-quality, option for formal theatre education, which he successfully completed in 1926. From January 1925 to May 1927, he performed part-time in supporting roles in the Ljubljana Drama.
As an enthusiast of avant-garde art, he found a counterbalance to his approach to theatrical institutions in attempts to overthrow established theatrical practices. He founded a society, a magazine, and an avant-garde theater. New stage. He met with like-minded people and collaborators in a former inn on the way to Ljubljana Castle and the Gruber Canal. The house, which represented a kind of cradle of the Slovenian historical avant-garde, was unfortunately demolished years ago. There they conceived the magazine and the first art evening, the program of which is published on the back cover of the only issue New stage.
The revolutionary ideas and slogans about the new theatre materialised rather poorly in front of a small audience at the first performance on 3 March 1925 at the Ljubljana Drama Theatre – according to most critics and giggling spectators – but the performers nevertheless earned some positive reactions. Critics praised Maša Slavec in particular, who was later hired as an actress at the Drama Theatre. Ferdo Delak also received a few compliments as an interpreter of some scenes. Like the two mentioned, the writer Ludvik Mrzel later found himself in professional theatre, his interpretation of Antony's speech from Shakespeare's Julius Caesar However, according to eyewitnesses, it represented the biggest disaster of this theatrical happening.
The Ljubljana Art Evening was the beginning of Delak's successful artistic engagement: together with his friend and collaborator, painter Avgust Černigoj - and some young theater enthusiasts from the director's native Gorizia - he continued acting and "staging" happenings in the border territory of fascist Italy - populated by Slovenians - until all Slovenian cultural activities were banned by law in 1927.
He further developed his views on theatrical art in the magazine Tank (1927), which he also edited. The magazine died out after the second issue, but was still in existence compared to New stage much more extensive and ambitiously designed. In 1987, a reprint of the journal was published with extensive accompanying studies.
The revived interest in the avant-garde cultural ferment of the 1920s also gave rise to a comprehensive and rich in both content and form exhibition on the Slovenian historical avant-garde at the Moderna galerija (1998). A reprint was also published in the exhibition catalogue. New stage (Tea Štoka: Ferdo Delak and the attempt at avant-garde theatre. In: Tank!, Ljubljana 1998, pp. 66-83).
