52
UDC 792.02(497.5)  
DOI 10.51937/Amfiteater-2021-1/52-66
In their 1979 manifesto, the independent experimental theatre collective Kugla glumište 
(Zagreb, 1975–1985) claims: “Kugla discovers images, symbols and stories that wish to be 
the promise of community.” The article explores the repercussions of those neo-avant-
garde community efforts on the contemporary Zagreb non-institutional scene by analysing 
four inclusive performances which differ in motivations, aesthetic aims, production levels 
and participatory modes. In The Love Case of Fahrija P (2017), the ex-members of Kugla and 
additional co-authors stage a polylogue with the artistic heritage of the deceased Kugla 
glumište member Željko Zorica Šiš (1957–2013) and the inclusive procedures they devised 
during the 1970s. The community project 55+ (2012) by the production platform Montažstroj 
gathers the participants who are over 55 in workshops, public debates, celebrations, 
protests and a documentary to provide visibility and voice to that neglected generation. 
In the trilogy On Community (2010–2011), the production platform Shadow Casters tests 
different mechanisms of creating temporary aesthetic communities, from learning an a 
cappella group song to sharing secrets, on its recipients. Finally, the atmospheric inclusion 
of the subtly associative performance Conversing (2019) by Fourhanded offers an almost 
elitist opportunity of co-existing in the intimate world of private tensions. However, what 
they all have in common is a physically non-invasive form, emotional and/or intellectual 
engagement and an emphasised personal commitment that can oblige audiences to 
reciprocate while they join the community of experience.
Keywords: Zagreb non-institutional theatre of the 2010s, community of participants, On 
Community, 55+, The Love Case of Fahrija P, Conversing
Višnja Kačić Rogošić is an assistant professor at the University of Zagreb, a member of 
the editorial board of the Croatian Theatre Journal and an associate of the Miroslav Krleža 
Institute of Lexicography. She published the book Group Devised Theatre (2017). She was 
a Fulbright Fellowship Program scholar in 2010/2011 (CUNY, New York City, USA). She is 
a member of the Croatian Centre ITI and is on the executive committee of the Croatian 
Association of Theatre Critics and Theatre Scholars.
vrogosic@ffzg.hr

53
Keeping the Promise of Community: 
Communal Efforts on the Contemporary 
Zagreb Non-Institutional Scene
Višnja Kačić Rogošić  
University of Zagreb, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences
The Zagreb non-institutional theatre scene provides elements of communal experience 
(reflected in the creative process, performance or reception) both in the obscure and 
well-known theatre practice, in memories and archives, in retrospective interpretations 
and the straightforward strategic activities as well as in various periods of its recent 
history. Although one can find under investigated examples of the theatrical exploration 
of this field in the first part of the 20
th
 century,
1
 it particularly developed amid the 
1970s’ rediscovery of collective power on the alternative scene, when even groups 
with clearly individualised creative tasks avoided naming specific authors (community 
of performers/authors) and interaction with the audience was almost expected 
(community of participants), and was perhaps most elaborately realised in the practice 
of the neo-avant-garde experimental theatre group Kugla glumište (1975–1985). In 
the words of their 1979 manifesto: “Kugla discovers images, symbols and stories that 
wish to be the promise of community” (79).
2
 The following paper will attempt to chart 
1 For instance, in the summer of 1940, the members of the theatre company Družina mladih (1939–1948), which was 
founded within the French Institute in Zagreb, undertook a methodological experiment containing some of the recognisable 
elements of community building such as physical isolation and connecting through a consciously chosen common creative 
process. As remembered by the surrealist writer and the influential group member Radovan Ivšić, “(e)nough young people 
warmed up to the practice, so we decided to spend the summer together in the village of Razvor, on the river Sutla, and 
dedicate all that time to making theatre. It was in Razvor that Družina mladih set up its chorus for choral recitations, 
which was one of group’s basic activities for years, along with the acting and the puppetry” (156). Thus a barely registered 
practical research overflowed into the formal innovation implying a strong collective base, both on the organisational and 
performative level. Choral performance was suggested by Ivšić who also provided powerful modernist choral recitations 
such as Sun City (1943–1944) as linguistic texts of their performances. Diverging from the desirable and generally accepted 
realistic conversational style it recalled ritual heritage of the theatre performance and musical quality of the stage speech, 
according to the description of the composer Ivo Malec: “We did choral recitation as a sort of musical-vocal piece. We spoke 
the text in such a way that the word or the sentence would shift from one mouth to the other creating a certain musical 
surrounding” (161). 
2 Kugla’s claim reverberated across various layers of the group’s existence. It was tested in the organisation of the group 
as its members experimented with “creating their working surrounding as a primary social group” (Burić quoted in 
Marjanić and Vlašić-Anić 48). It was transferred to the creative process which, regardless of the informal domination 
of more experienced and more charismatic members and in spite of sometimes slow-moving progress, relied primarily 
on the group discussion and nominal equality in making decisions. It was manifested in the performance marked by the 
fragmented dramaturgy (a sequence or a cluster of separated scenes) resulting from the artistic polylogue and a group 
body of performers united in a procession or a tableau vivant. Finally, it was dispersed by the invitation to the spectators 
to join their participative projects, as clarified by the group: “The problem is that so far Kugla’s success has been evaluated 
according to AESTHETIC and not social criteria […] no one has ever noticed that this is a different kind of social activity” 
(Mor 86). 

54 contemporary repercussions of that communal legacy on the same independent theatre 
scene by analysing four projects from the 2010s: On Community (O zajedništvu, Shadow 
Casters, 2010–2011), 55+ (Montažstroj, 2012), The Love Case of Fahrija P (Ljubavni 
slučaj Fahrije P, group of authors, 2017) and Conversing (Razgovaranje, Fourhanded, 
2019). Namely, with different motivations, aesthetic goals, production levels and 
modus operandi, they do not necessarily refer to the term but do focus on a group of 
interconnected individuals united by means of cohesion, particularly in relation to the 
audience. Thus, the analysis will especially explore the interactive and participatory 
potential of each of the performances employed to form a social organisation, exploring 
the political potential of the community or its practical and ideological background. If 
there is a common starting point, it can be found in their positive perception of the 
community, whether it is proposed as a probable outcome, a question or “wishful 
thinking”. As Zygmunt Bauman observes, somewhat ironically, “Community, we feel, is 
always a good thing” (1).
A possible community
The positive side of the spectrum is marked by the belief in the successful establishment 
of performative unity of all those involved in a theatre performance. Up to a certain 
point, it is a natural outcome of the 20
th
-century experiments in that field that completed 
the cycle from devising fresh models to their practical testing, from envisioning ideals 
to accepting attainable versions, from subverting conventions to inaugurating new 
conventions and even joining the mainstream. Some form of communal theatrical 
experience is thus nearly presumed or at least less problematised and exceeds the 
presented material or serves as its denominator – obtained like a previously existing 
pattern and applied with a lot of optimism or acceptance of its shortcomings to the 
new circumstances. Accordingly, the theatre performance The Love Case of Fahrija P 
(Theatre &TD, opening night: 13 December 2017) directly links to that neo-avant-
garde heritage. It was created by a group of authors,
3
 including Zlatko Burić Kićo 
and Damir Bartol Indoš, who once belonged to Kugla glumište; even more so, upon 
the disintegration of the group in the early 1980s, they respectively represented its 
“soft” and “hard” fractions. In addition, the project is a homage to another deceased 
Kugla member and multimedia artist, Željko Zorica Šiš (1957–2013), and therefore 
rendered in the form of performative dialogue with his artwork; in particular, it is 
based on three comic pages from 1984 (The Love Case of Fahrija P , Mummies, Ed Killer 
Hed) with references to his other works such as partially edible installations, the 
experimental film Cabbage Clairvoyant (2012) or the reflections of his fictional alter-
3 Zlatko Burić Kićo, Damir Bartol Indoš, Dragana Milutinović, Tanja Vrvilo, Hrvojka Begović, Dina Puhovski, Sven Jakir, 
Domagoj Janković, Miro Manojlović, Ivan Marušić Klif, Igor Hofbauer Hof, Henning Frimann Larsen, Peter Oliver Jørgensen 
and Ana Janjatović Zorica.

55 ego Dr Hans Christian Zabludovsky published in two fantasy bestiaries. It does not, 
therefore, come as a surprise that the project relates to Kugla’s opus on the level of 
content, dramaturgy, spatial organisation and highlighted media. Zorica’s motifs are 
incorporated into the mixture of everyday scenes and surreal fiction, which the group 
established in the mid-1970s juxtaposing, for example, the spectacular multimedia 
staging of the crime story about Fahrija P . with a simple, realistic tale about ordinary 
people, a peasant family growing cabbages. 
Furthermore, the production is shaped in four spatially and thematically separated 
segments, of which some are additionally divided into mutually independent parts: 
postdramatic interpretation of Zorica’s comic plots staged on two more conventional 
scenes is followed by a succession of performances on small scaffold stages representing 
various loci and a musical finale in an empty hall. Along with acting, it features music – a 
possible nod to the famous Kugla band, which accompanied all of their shows – and a 
strong visuality, interweaving live acting and drawing, film, installation and projections 
of comics, a debt to the multimedia oeuvre of Željko Zorica. 
Most importantly, within the context of this insight, The Love Case of Fahrija P continues 
to rely on its audience, leaving the impression of a collection of procedures designed 
to persuade the spectators to renounce that status in favour of physically active or 
more conscious participation. On the general level, the fragmentary disposition of 
particular scenes is surpassed by a collective processional body of audience members 
led by one or more performers from one performance locus to another. The invitation 
to join it is issued calmly (“Let us go! Let us move!” announces the actor Sven Jakir after 
the introductory scene. “Go, now, follow the snowstorm into the hall and take a look at 
our other images” encourages the actress Tanja Vrvilo after the end of Fahrija’s story). 
Still, it cannot hide the implicit ultimatum: join the group or miss the performance 
altogether. On the level of particular segments, the authors interlace different channels 
and intensity of inclusion. By directly addressing the viewers demanding their alert 
intellectual engagement and openly showing or presenting the performance content, 
for example, in the central sequence on scaffold stages, they practise the Brechtian 
abolishment of the fourth wall convention to create a firm connection between the 
stage fiction and the reality of the auditorium. To quote the official announcement: 
“Come to the show, in the words of Ed Killer Hed, to see – when you are already 
watching.” At the same time, all the segments appeal to the sensory experience of the 
recipient with the ever-present musical performance, which alternates in force with 
acted parts, occasionally transforming a theatre piece into a concert. The Love Case of 
Fahrija P begins with forceful tones (composed and performed by Miro Manojlović, 
Henning Frimann and Peter Ole Jørgensen and enriched with the operatic voice of 
Dina Puhovski), continues with a dynamic background of our experience and finishes 
with a full-blown acoustic environment which envelopes everybody.

56
A questionable community
If the neo-avant-garde theatrical investigation of community highlighted its potential 
in the creation of a theatre performance (and vice versa), it has also contributed 
to the precaution with which some contemporary theatre-makers return to that 
concept. One bears in mind the difficulties in maintaining the popular neo-avant-
garde model of the community of equals and many theatre collectives that dispersed 
under the pressure of the uncomfortable tension between common values and 
individual freedoms. Thus, on an abstract level, certain positive insecurity or even 
amusing scepticism can be applied to the very idea of community, for example, 
concerning the motives and possibilities of its realisation as well as sustainability. 
However, when tackled with curiosity and/or critically, the community cannot avoid 
becoming one of the thematic or formal problems of the project. Such reserved and 
questioning attitude is demonstrated by the production platform Shadow Casters 
(2001–) which opened the 2010 decade with the performance trilogy On Community
4
 
(2010–2011) “examining the community and communal experience through multiple 
reasons for their establishment, energy and socio-political conditions and changes” 
(Shadow Casters Explicit). In the opening part, Explicit Contents
5
 (Zagreb Youth 
Theatre, opening night: 9 May 2010), presented in the form of six interlaced audience 
journeys through the theatre building, each led by a pair of actors, the authors focus 
on creating the “arranged community”. The second performance [R]evolution Master 
Class
6
 (Belgrade, Atelje 212, opening night: 14 September 2010) – again a group 
psychophysical interaction between the audience and the performers, although 
mostly in a single joint space – instigates the re-evaluation of the community through 
its “decomposition and reestablishment”, while the finale Male/Female – Female/
Male
7
 (Theatre &TD, opening night: 25 February 2011) divides its “basic energies – 
male and female” only to confront them in “the laboratory-theatrical dialogue” (Ibid.). 
Regardless of the formal variations, all the performances share several specificities 
important for the main topic of this article. First of all, the community that Shadow 
Casters question is a theatre community: with the exception of a few fragments,
8
 
it is placed in the spatial and temporal context of a theatre performance (although 
it can occur in the working rather than the performance spaces within a theatre 
building) and is limited to the participants of a theatrical event. Throughout the 
4 Concept: Boris Bakal; direction: Boris Bakal and Katarina Pejović.
5 Dramaturgy: Boris Bakal, Katarina Pejović, Stanko Juzbašić; co-authors and performers: Lana Barić, Goran Bogdan, Lada 
Bonacci, Ivana Buljan Legati, Nikša Butijer, Edvin Liverić, Vilim Matula, Maro Martinović, Nadja Perišić Nola, Barbara Prpić, 
Urša Raukar, Vedran Živolić.
6 Dramaturgy: Boris Bakal and Katarina Pejović; co-authors and performers: Aleksandra Janković, Hristina Popović, Ana 
Marković, Joana Knežević, Srđan Jovanović, Bojan Krivokapić.
7 Dramaturgy: Vedrana Klepica, Stanko Juzbašić, Dražen Novak; orchestrator: Stanko Juzbašić; co-authors and performers: 
Irma Alimanović, Benjamin Bajramović, Boris Bakal, Nikša Butijer, Dean Krivačić, Zrinka Kušević, Vili Matula, Jelena 
Miholjević, Mona Muratović, Petra Težak (Boris Ler).
8 In Explicit Contents one group of the audience is shortly led outside of a theatre building blindfolded while in [R]evolution: 
Master Class one of the groups leaves the theatre to go write graffiti on city walls.

57 particular segments, the authors thematise various contemporary group identities 
such as family, nation, gender, a circle of acquaintances or intimate friends, or even a 
dance group, generally relating their experiment to the wider social circumstances. 
However, they eschew a firm connection with any specific examples or models of 
community, thus preserving a more neutral character of the problem. Furthermore, 
the described “laboratory” conditions allow for the fully inclusive nature of the 
trilogy, which strives to invite the recipients into all or most of the phases of the 
complete project. They attend the Opening Night, a symbolical starting point of the 
devising process, not to witness the performance but to join the discursive search 
for common interests upon which the performance would be built. They are invited 
to support the creative process as the necessary “rehearsal audience” because 
“without the participating audience, there is really no performance” [R]evolution 
and are eventually, using various mechanisms, placed into the very centre of the 
artwork. Namely, the development of each of the performances in great part consists 
of gathering the audience into one or several smaller or larger groups to lead them 
through some performative tasks: share a secret with your partner, learn a group 
dance/an a capella song, take a collective bow, meditate on flying, give an opinion, 
enter a conversation, etc. Following the authors’ conviction that the evolution of the 
individual is the precondition for forming a sustainable community, the tasks tend 
to have a more or less emphasised emancipatory character. The outcome is doubly 
rewarding. On the one side, it enables the performers to “catch up” with the audience 
who are conventionally more experienced in their recipient roles than the actors are 
in whichever role they embody (Explicit Contents 2010). Thus, they balance out the 
general inequality of the temporary theatrical community. At the same time, it tests 
one’s decision to become and/or remain a member of that same body by examining its 
particular qualities: the vulnerability or protection of the individual within a group, 
features with which a group might identify, the way it chooses to present itself, or 
treat the non-members. Finally, if Shadow Casters are comprehensive when setting 
up an experiment, they are equally open when it is time to provide the results since 
the trilogy progresses towards more focused problems rather than clear solutions. 
Although the tendency is visible in all its parts, it is perhaps most evidently presented 
in the last one, which is constructed as four different performances in the form of 
elaborate group discussions: a performance by male performers intended respectively 
for male and female spectators and a performance by female performers intended 
respectively for female and male spectators. Namely, in each of the four variants, a 
group of gender equalised spectators is welcomed by a group of gender equalised 
performers in the hall, where the seating is symbolically placed in concentric circles. 
The audience is then invited to an informal two-hour long socialising session with 
occasional, subtly offered, “provocative” discussion issues or activities which 
might unite/divide present communities, considering their specific gender profile 

58 (for example, “Would you agree that this is a man’s world and that men should be 
blamed for everything wrong in it?” or “What would be an acceptable way to end 
a relationship?”). Male/Female – Female/Male thus lucidly suggests: whether the 
circumstances for creating any community are favourable or not, its realisation 
remains the matter of our individual responsibility.
A wanted community
The same “problem-based” approach is perhaps most appealing in relation to a 
specific community – one that is achievable, existing or even desirable, just not 
unconditionally. Therefore, starting from a more concrete communal experience (or 
a lack of one), many artists strive to discover its optimal or at least more functional 
version as well as the road to its actualisation. As their name suggests and their 
manifesto statement confirms, the Artistic Organisation for Opening New Fields 
of Theatre Communication Fourhanded is strongly preoccupied with this sphere 
of research. Specifically, the organisation is dedicated to the “realisation of refined 
communication” and “always wants to gather a group of participants” only to anchor 
them to their immediate surrounding with the socially engaged performance, one that 
Fourhanded defines as “co-acting, co-dealing with what is around us” (Četveroruka 
manifestno). Even more so, the meticulous examination of means and ways to achieve 
performative community serves as a distinguishing methodological feature of their 
work: “We are interested in dealing with the materiality of the connections established 
by the theatrical event between its participants and in shaping that materiality […] 
with the consciousness that every form is the result of the joint investment made 
by the subjectivities of both audience and performers” (Ibid.). Those interests serve 
as the premise of the fourth episode in their artistic-exploratory cycle Distances,
9
 
which is inspired by the crisis of interpersonal relationships caused by the Croatian 
War of Independence (1991–1995). The series of performances was initiated by the 
theatre director Marina Petković Liker in 2017 with the investigation of the postwar 
conditions in the small Baranja municipality of Darda (East Slavonia).
10
 The authors 
used an economically and socially devastated and politically, nationally and humanly 
deeply divided place as the paradigmatic example of insurmountable barriers 
in communication in contemporary Croatian society.
11
 Hence their performance 
9 The whole cycle is comprised of the following episodes: Distance – Focusing (2017); Distance – Falling behind (2017); 
Distance – Point 285 (2018); Neither Friend nor Brother (2018) and Conversing (2019).
10 Initially, the research also included Maja Sviben (dramaturgy), Eva Kraljević (camera), Miro Manojlović (editing), Luka 
Gamulin (sound) and Nina Đurđević (camera).
11 In relation to the project, the authors describe “one of the elementary problems of the current moment” as “lack of 
understanding and fear from the other as well as aggressive and destructive impulses towards the other and oneself” 
"Udaljenosti – fokusiranje".

59 significantly named Conversing
12
 (2019) chooses both thematic and methodological 
approach to the subject, which is additionally elaborated by the juxtaposition of the 
documentary material – audio recordings of the conversations between the authors 
and women from Darda, and its theatricalised reflection. Thematically, the recorded 
conversations establish the outline of the “distances”, i.e., the ambivalence between the 
necessity and the impossibility of overcoming described social crisis and continuing 
promising co-existence. At the same time, Fourhanded employs the “authenticity” 
of the media to affect the performers and the audience. Expectedly rendered in a 
discursive format, the performative reaction to this problem is presented by six 
female performers who attempt to maintain a functional conversation. One of the 
key characteristics of their approximately two-hour interaction is the difficulty with 
which a series of monologues fuses into a polylogue and the easiness with which the 
participants of that polylogue misinterpret each other or take opposing sides. And 
although that “jazz discussion”
13
 (live group improvisation with several performance 
tasks in relation to the living material) does not provide a clear story, characters or 
even time and space, the distance between women symbolically gathered around 
one table and trapped in a vicious circle of miscommunication is transparent. If the 
change is possible, it seems that it can be instigated by the recipients (gathered in 
an equally symbolic way in a wider circle around the performers) who Fourhanded 
recruits as “witnesses”. Namely, as the precondition for the understanding and 
unity which is out of reach of performers, the authors encourage the audience to 
develop analytical insight, accept conscious co-existence and feel responsibility 
but also warmth: they juxtapose different perspectives, they share the space and 
do not ignore the spectators, they personalise invitations to the performance and 
blur its temporal frame by inviting audience members to join them in an informal 
conversation over drinks afterwards. They hope that “after you've spent an hour or 
two noticing something in a different way, it will continue to vibrate even when you 
leave” (Petković Liker quoted in Kačić Rogošić).
As opposed to the subtle intervention into everyday life conducted by Fourhanded, the 
performance group and production platform Montažstroj advances with much more 
urgency and force. In addition, their project with the suggestive title 55+ (2012) is the 
only one among those presented in this text (regardless of their more or less evident 
social function or the legacy of the same kind), which is categorised as community 
theatre with a more direct utilisation and a clear goal. That status of applied theatre 
project provides a better understanding of its key features, as recognised by Kees 
Epskamp, “the exchange of the ideas between the participants and leaders/actors”, the 
connection between the content of the performance and “the life surrounding of the 
12 Dramaturgy: Maja Sviben; sound design: Luka Gamulin; performers: Lada Bonacci, Slavica Jukić, Jasna Palić Picukarić, 
Barbara Prpić, Urša Raukar, Dijana Vidušin. 
13 The term is used by the director Marina Petković Liker as one of the experimental elements of her methodology.

60 participating community”, problematisation of issues which are “of direct importance 
for the community where the performance or the workshop are happening” and 
encouragement of the audience “to directly participate in the event during or after 
the performance” (Lukić 22–23). Therefore, the comprehensive enterprise targeted 
at the population aged 55 years and over thematises the position of that population 
in contemporary Croatian society. According to the author of the concept and theatre 
director Borut Šeparović, the members of that age group are considered less potent 
and rendered “invisible”. Therefore, the multiphase project is designed to call 
attention to their forgotten potential. To enable the circulation of ideas that will result 
in the performance 55+ – Years Are (Not) Important
14
 (Vatroslav Lisinski Concert 
Hall, opening night: 23 September) and a documentary film Consumed
15
 (2014), the 
project starts with the week-long interviews with the possible future participants and 
continues with workshops for the 99 invited non-professional performers. Divided 
into four media categories (theatre, movement, new-media and group discussion), 
they aim at activating the participants and providing them with new skills while at the 
same time fusing the individual members into a “micro-community”. Interaction with 
the audience, however, is tackled in different ways with varying success. On the one 
side, a long final theatre performance “provides a voice” for each of its 44 performers 
by giving them the opportunity to present the most important minute in their lives as 
well as give an engaging speech on current social problems, intended for the audience. 
However, as noted by the theatre scholar Una Bauer, our ethical responsibility to hear 
and react to those voices is significantly weakened by the representational frame of the 
theatre, which transforms soul-stirring reality into a dramaturgically monotonous line 
of approximately one-minute long confessions followed by an equal number of mostly 
uninventive speeches by non-professional speakers (2012). On the other side, the 
two-month-long joint preparations for the grand finale succeeded in creating an age-
determined community of project participants who, for example, initiate additional 
socially-engaged activities or offer suggestions for their manifesto (“Vremeplov”). 
Since 55+ is not presented as a one-time endeavour but is offered as a “model-project”, 
which can be transferred to another context with different participants (Šeparović 
77), it opens a parallel channel for the dispersion of communal experience. In the 
words of Šeparović: “I believe that art has great potential when it is created in strong 
correlation with the transformation of the local community. If we want to consider 
the power of political theatre at all, it has to take from the community and give back 
to the community” (76).
14 Dramaturgy and transcript adaptation: Nataša Mihoci, Borut Šeparović, Jasna Žmak; performers: Miljenka Androić 
Marić, Jadranka Barlović, Miran Cencić, Renata Dossi, Mira Egić, Zvonimir Fritz, Marijan Frković, Josip Grosek, Mira Inkret, 
Branko Ječmenjak, Barbara Juraja, Ante Kaštelan, Lidija Kleščić, Ana Knežević, Marica Komljenović, Nada Kos Balen, Zlata 
Lešković, Blaženka Levak, Marija Lovinčić, Gordana Lovrić, Jasna Paravina, Stanka Pavuna, Nada Pejša, Emil Pernar, Eduard 
Pešun, Ljudmila Peterfai, Božidar Petrina, Miljenko Pinterić, Višnja Pleško, Žarko Potočnjak, Ljubica Radmanović, Vlasta 
Ritting, Hermina Rukavina, Franciska Šimenić, Vladimir Šimenić, Slavko Šoić, Miro Šola, Dražen Tišljar, Sonja Tomac, Vojko 
Tomašić, Rozalija Travica, Predrag Vrabec, Mirjana Žerjav, Nevenka Žigić.
15 The film was written, directed and produced by Borut Šeparović. 

61
Conclusion
Despite the different reasons, means and ways of confirming, reaching or testing 
performative unity, the analysed performances share specific characteristics. 
Firstly, the perception of community in all of the examples (and even some creative 
processes) is extensive, not limited to the hermetic group of authors but open to those 
conventionally perceived as recipients. The invitation to participate varies in the level of 
its directness. It occasionally leads to the immediate establishment of the “autopoietic 
feedback loop” (Fischer-Lichte 38–74) while at other times inspires potential future 
project participants. However, it always remains an invitation, although sometimes 
issued with no “theatrical” alternative. I still remember an elderly visitor of Explicit 
Contents who refused to follow actors-guides at the beginning of the show only to be 
left alone in the empty auditorium of the Zagreb Youth Theatre where she could ponder 
her dismissal of the group and, I assume involuntarily, of the performance in general. 
Accordingly, regardless of the emphasised bodily presence, physical invasiveness is 
steadily avoided. If any “aggression” towards the audience appears, it is in a familiar 
and mostly acceptable form, for example, intellectual provocation or loud music. 
Somatic experience is enriched with the mental engagement of the spectator (who is, 
respectively, in different shows, challenged on both the thematic and formal levels) 
and their emotional involvement. In the attempt to achieve the latter, the authors can 
again rely on the content (for example, the documentary material of the performance) 
as well as the creative methodology (for example, the assumption about the increased 
personal investment and personal risk of the performer-co-author in the devising 
process). In both cases, it results in the additional responsibility on the part of the 
spectator who is reminded to respect the story or the effort and encouraged to 
respond in kind; for example, as Una Bauer reminds us, the audience members of 
55+ – Years Are (Not) Important are burdened with a “guilt trip” if they leave and once 
again deprive the ordinarily voiceless performers of their voices (2012). What the 
artists aim for is, however, a short, total joint experience that would not only result in 
the temporary aesthetic community defined by theatrical conventions but potentially 
remain as a pledge for future recognition, connection or even closeness between those 
who shared it. To quote Petković Liker: “That sharp cut which happens in the classical 
theatre when you see, clap and leave is sometimes good and needed but for me, wasn’t 
correct. This, somehow, doesn’t end.”  (Petković Liker quoted in Kačić Rogošić) 

62 Literature
Bauer, Una. “Nevolje s reprezentacijom,” Kulturpunkt, 25 Sep. 2012, www.kulturpunkt.
hr/content/nevolje-s-reprezentacijom. Accessed 30 Jun. 2020. 
Bauman, Zygmunt. Community. Seeking Safety in an Insecure World. Polity, 2001.
“Četveroruka manifestno. Problem izvedbenog razmišljanja.” cetveroruka.hr/
manifestno/. Accessed 19 Jun. 2020.
Fischer-Lichte, Erika. The Transformative Power of Performance: A New Aesthetics. 
Routledge, 2008.
Ivšić, Radovan, Dalibor Foretić. “O Družini.” Družina mladih. Čudesna teatarska igra, 
edited by Seadeta Midžić, and Nada Bezić, ArTresor, Hrvatski glazbeni zavod, 2017, 
pp. 155–157.
Kačić Rogošić, Višnja. “Conversation with Marina Petković Liker.” 10 Jun. 2020. 
unpublished.
Kugla glumište. “Što je Kugla?” Gordogan: časopis za književnost i sva kulturna pitanja, 
vol. 1, no. 1, 1979, p. 79.
Lukić, Darko. Uvod u primijenjeno kazalište. Čije je kazalište?. Leykam international, 
2016.
Malec, Ivo, Seadeta Midžić. “Radovan je u svemu bio spiritus movens. Razgovor u 
povodu smrti Radovana Ivšića”. Družina mladih. Čudesna teatarska igra, edited by 
Seadeta Midžić and Nada Bezić, ArTresor, Hrvatski glazbeni zavod, 2017, pp. 158–
166.
Marjanić, Suzana, Anica Vlašić-Anić. “Narušavanje teatra kao kocke. Razgovor sa 
Zlatkom Burićem Kićom”. Zarez. Dvotjednik za društvena i kulturna zbivanja, no. 
211, 2007, pp. 48–49.
Mor, Ivan. “Kugla govor”. K. Časopis studenata komparativne književnosti, no. 4–5, 
1980, pp. 76–91.
Shadow Casters. [R]evolution Master Class. Programme, 2010.
—. Explicit Contents. Promotional material, 2010.
Šeparović, Borut. “Proutnapad. Odabrani fragmenti teksta o izvedbenom aktivizmu”. 
Kazalište. Časopis za kazališnu umjetnost. vol. 14, no. 47–48, 2011, pp. 66–77.
“Udaljenosti – fokusiranje”. cetveroruka.hr/2017/12/01/udaljenost-fokusiranje-
posustajanje/. Accessed 22 Jun. 2020.
“Vremeplov”. 55plus.montazstroj.hr/?cat=3. Accessed 30 Jun. 2020.