Shakespeare’s new contemporariness,or Hamlet in the Yugoslav Drama Theatre of the 21st century

Abstract

This article investigates how Shakespeare’s Hamlet has become a platform for negotiating memory politics in Serbia in the new millennium. Focusing on two productions in Belgrade’s Yugoslav Drama Theatre since 2005 (Dušan Jovanović, 2005 and Aleksandar Popovski, 2016) and one adaptation, Cirkus istorija (Sonja Vukičević, 2006), the specific conditions for each of the productions’ actualization are investigated. Through a discussion of these Hamlet productions, the analysis reveals the ways in which the repeated staging of classical dramatic texts, with each production embedded within a specific staging tradition, becomes a renewed source of inspiration for political theatre.