Publishing Activity

Publishing activity of Sterijino pozorje was initiated in 1956, simultaneously with the establishment of this institution. The Yugoslav Theatre Festival had been accompanied by catalogues from the very beginning, and as soon as 1959 the edition of “Contemporary Yugoslav Drama” was started, which published the dramatic texts which were awarded the Sterija prizes. The year 1965 was a milestone in the development of publishing activity: the “Scena” magazine for theatre art was initiated and the first title of the edition “Dramaturgical Text” was published – Fragments on Theatre by Josip Kulundžić, a playwright, theoretician, director and one of the founders of Sterijino pozorje, followed by the books by Yugoslav theatre scientists such as Branko Gavela, Hugo Klajn, Josip Vidmar, Eli Finci, Mato Milošević, among others.

The publishing activity reached its peak during the 1980s. The aforementioned editions, as well as the libraries “Theatrical Monographs”, “Theatrologia Yugoslavica”, and separate series published about a hundred titles. Miroslav Belović, Boro Drašković, Dragan Klaić, Jovan Ćirilov, Branko Pleša, Milenko Misailović, and editors of monographs on theatre in Macedonia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Slovenia, Croatia (Blagoja Ivanov, Josip Lešić, Sreten Perović i Radoslav Rotković, Vasja Predan, Branko Hećimović), continue the tradition of their predecessors. When we add the collections of essays from the forums and international symposiums on theatre criticism, directing, creators and their poetics, periodicals and the Journal of Yugoslav Theatres, it comes as no surprise that Sterijino pozorje is one of the greatest publishers of literature on theatre in our country.

The crisis of the 1990s and the lack of resources have not left Sterijino pozorje untouched, so the activity was reduced to publishing the catalogues of Festival and triennial exhibitions, an occasional publication of titles in cooperation with other publishing houses, and “Scena” magazine lost its regular rhythm of being published every two months.

After 2005, the new series “Sinteze” and “Prizor” (Editor Svetislav Jovanov) started bringing titles by domestic and foreign authors on theatrical theory and practice, featuring certain authors and their work, while the latest dramatic literature is evaluated through anthologies. Among the serial publications Serbian Theatre Journal and Scena magazine for theatre art, published in Serbian and English, are the most prominent.