Abstract
Written in 2010, Unterstadt is a modernist novel compiled and by Ivana Sojat, the Osijek-based authoress who selects interesting but quietened topics while exploring the archives and a true history of events that have happened in Eastern Croatia. The novel is a familial saga portraying a quadruple of the main female characters throughout different generations: it is a narrative of dreams, hopes, philosophies and tragedies, founded on the time in which each respective generation spent its life span. Likewise, it is a story of faith and free will of the protagonists who have testified to a change in politics on the ex-Yugoslavian territory, from the First World War up to the initial decades of the 21st century. They have made their right or wrong choices, having made their life paths different, impassable, or even perilous. Thus, the novel is intertwined with the intermezzi of silence and untold tales, repercusionally unfabulated because of a fear that affected each generation of the family. Very well-received and acclaimed by the critics and readership alike, Unterstadt was also adapted in a theatrical play, being dramatized by Nives Madunic Barisic and Zlatko Sviben as an Osijek Croatian National Theater’s production, having premiered on July 29, 2012, the first day of the annual Osijek Summer of Culture manifestation. As the production was an extremely demanding one, the paper will examine a contemporary theory and practice of dramatization and theatrical adaptation, exemplified and presented by an analysis of this novel’s adaptation into a rewarded masterpiece of the Croatian theater, complemented by the elements of New Historicism, fragments of Miroslav Krleža’s drama In the Camp (U logoru), and the authentic historical documents ever since the First World War up to nowadays.
Highlights
Having selected the critically and theoretically intriguing subject matter of adaptation, the case of Ivana Šojat’s Unterstadt: A Novel About an Osijek Family, the authors used a comparative method and a potentially interesting approach to detect, analytically extend, and relevantly circumstantiate the similarities and differences between the novel and its revisions throughout the adaptation process
Premièred on June 29, 2012 at the Osijek Summer of Culture manifestation (Biskupović), the Unterstadt theatrical performance is frequently a brutally sincere, historical, and local story about a city, family, and an individual that quadri-generationally portrays the tragic destinies of the Osijek Swabians, Essekers, and Jews
It was supplemented by authentic music, Vladimir Geiger’s documents on the plights of the Danube Swabians (693‒722), and the parts of Miroslav Krleža’s play In the Camp to graphically and sonically personify the characters and reveal the tragedy of their semi-centennial pogroms (Ljubić 11‒16)
Summary
Having selected the critically and theoretically intriguing subject matter of adaptation, the case of Ivana Šojat’s Unterstadt: A Novel About an Osijek Family, the authors used a comparative method and a potentially interesting approach to detect, analytically extend, and relevantly circumstantiate the similarities and differences between the novel and its revisions throughout the adaptation process. Premièred on June 29, 2012 at the Osijek Summer of Culture manifestation (Biskupović), the Unterstadt theatrical performance is frequently a brutally sincere, (neo-) historical, and local story about a city, family, and an individual that quadri-generationally portrays the tragic destinies of the Osijek Swabians, Essekers, and Jews As such, it was supplemented by authentic music, Vladimir Geiger’s documents on the plights of the Danube Swabians (693‒722), and the parts of Miroslav Krleža’s play In the Camp to graphically and sonically personify the characters and reveal the tragedy of their semi-centennial pogroms (Ljubić 11‒16). Textual evidence from Šojat’s auctorial exemplar of the 2010 Unterstadt, signed with her former last name (Šojat-Kuči) and thoroughly revised on September 7, 2012 for the sake of an Osijek-based Croatian National Theater performance, very frequently demonstrates a versatile typology of Marotti’s and Sviben’s individual adaptational interventions and stage directions in Madunić Barišić’s radio play. That is . . . the Serbs should be immediately settled on the German estates. . . . The Serbs, Montenegrins, . . . Lika denizens . . . the poor ones . . . and honest families . . . . (Šojat-Kuči 60)
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