Projects
The current project aims to study the legitimisation of the communist regime in the so called era of early communism (Stalinism) in Bulgaria through national identification as one of the actual elements of modern individual identification. The object of study will be theatrical discourse (as historically constructed expression) between late 1944 to the end of 1950. I will be interested in how the symbols communism were asserted by breaking and transforming the elements of an already existing expression, established in the pre- World War Two period symbols of national mythology, which meanwhile it ideologically declared "reactionist and "fascist". Or otherwise, I will be looking for the answer of the question how the communist regime redirected national identity.
The goal of the research will be to find out how the communist regime along with the institutional changes and symbol terror it introduced in public activities also dealt with images, cultural attitudes and stereotypes that consolidated society, among which those relating to national identification in order to acquire social legitimacy and support. Historical reconstruction and discursive analysis of theatre as a socio-symbolic practice from the point of view of redirecting national identification would reveal some mechanisms of transforming cultural experience and its ideological utilisations. It would help understand how images and notions were produced in theatre (as a community with a memory of its own), but also how they were presented in society - through the new audiences theatre attracted and their interpretation in the media.