Theatre Breakfast at HNK2: How Do We Read 'Maria Stuart' Today?Drama — 04. May 2026.
On Tuesday, 5 May 2026 at 11 a.m., the Croatian National Theatre in Zagreb will host a Theatre Breakfast at HNK2, ahead of the premiere of Maria Stuart by Friedrich Schiller, directed and choreographed by Matija Ferlin, with dramaturgy by Goran Ferčec.
The Theatre Breakfast is an interactive programme that brings our audience together with theatre artists and experts in the performing arts, offering a closer insight into the upcoming production from behind the scenes. It brings together diverse perspectives and experiences that deepen the experience of watching a performance, in a format that invites dialogue and reflection. The Theatre Breakfast gathers the production’s authors, practitioners and theorists, those who are working closely with the explored material.
Schiller’s play Maria Stuart premiered in 1800. In Croatia,it was first performed in 1863 and has since had around ten further stagings. This historical drama is often described as a neoclassical tragedy and was written in the spirit of Weimar Classicism, the cradle of classical German literature.
Today, we are particularly concerned with the play’s continued relevance, which is most clearly reflected in the themes it explores: the vehement and dangerous entanglement of power and violence; the construction of female identity within a patriarchal society that shapes the relationship between women and power; and the distinction between justice and fairness, which continues to resonate today. We are witnessing recent wars and hostilities between states and nations fuelled by opposing religious confessions – once Protestantism and Catholicism, today Christianity and Islam. Schiller’s drama is dominated by a deeply sceptical, dark vision of history, mirroring our own sense of an uncertain political and economic future.
We will discuss the challenges of reinterpreting a dramatic classic, the actor’s creative agency, and the contextualisation of the play’s time and setting, as well as that of its author, with Dr Marijan Bobinac, university professor and specialist in German literature, director and choreographer Matija Ferlin, dramaturge Goran Ferčec, and actresses Jadranka Đokić and Nina Violić, who perform in the production. The discussion will be moderated by Željka Turčinović.
