Travel, Interrupted: Stasis and Early Modern Spain at Yu Fest and Bitef (1993)

Abstract: This article examines the relationship between dramaturgical stasis, forgetting, and theatre of civil war, here explored in the context of two festivals held during the Yugoslav wars, one dedicated to the Spanish Golden Age, the other to ‘Wanderers and Dreamers’. Despite the festivals’ ostensible focus on exploration and discovery, I contend that stasis was their defining thematic undercurrent. I reconstruct three unusually still productions: Lope de Vega’s Fuente Ovejuna , an adaptation of Don Quijote , and Miroslav Krleža’s Kolumbo . All three depict failed voyages that can be read as reflecting a crisis of faith in both the state and the citizen.