ABSTRACT
Hamlet was first staged in Bulgaria in 1906, when the young state, barely twenty-eight years out of Ottoman rule, sought opportunities for strengthening its sovereignty and identity while maneuvering a transition from petty agriculture and manufacturing to the new capitalism. This was the year of the first major labor strike and mass student protests against the autocratic regime of the Crown Prince Ferdinand, a time when the surge of patriotic enthusiasm was already yielding to bitter partisanship, rampant corruption, and the plundering of state assets by political opportunists (Bozhinova 2009: 28–29). In such a time Savremenen teatar (Contemporary Theatre), a traveling company with a reputation for social engagement, produced a substantially cut version of Hamlet and took it to some major cities (36–37). It was the first among theatre troupes to choose the European classic in order to shed light on Bulgarian social hopes and social rot (38). For the rest of the century, productions of Hamlet would map significant shifts in the civic engagement of Bulgarian theatre, while the Bulgarian public’s encounters with the play “would mark pivotal shifts in spiritual and social attitudes” (187).
