Ivo Brešan

The Croatian writer Ivo Brešan was born 27 May 1936 in Vodice (near Šibenik), into a well-to-do family. During World War II, the family suffered because of Ivo's father being a member of Communist Party of Yugoslavia and supporter of Tito's Partisans. After the war the father became an important local official and Ivo went to study at University of Zagreb.

Overview

Brešan began to write in 1955, but his big break came in 1971 with the play "Predstava Hamleta u selu Mrduša Donja" ("A production of Hamlet in the Village of Mrduša Donja"). The play is set in the late 1940s, and is about an official in a small mountain village and his attempt to put on a production of Hamlet. It was interpreted as sharp criticism of Communism as manifested through tyranny of petty and ignorant officials, and the phrase "Mrduša Donja" entered Croatian vocabulary as a description of all the phenomena associated with it. The play enjoyed great success among public and critics alike, and was adapted into an equally well-received feature film by Krsto Papić three years later.

Brešan continued to write plays in which he explored conflicts between modernity and tradition, Communism and Catholicism, urban and rural cultures, as well as ideology and everyday life. Some of those plays continued to be critical of Communism, and because of that he incurred hostility from the authorities. Some of his texts were banned in various republics of former Yugoslavia.

When Croatia became independent in the 1990s, Brešan maintained his reputation by writing scripts for his son Vinko Brešan, the only Croatian film director to fill Croatian cinema theatres in the 1990s with his comedies "Kako je počeo rat na mom otoku" (How the War Started on My Island) and "Maršal" (Marshal). The latter was often interpreted as a not-so-subtle criticism of Franjo Tuđman and his regime.

In 2003 Brešan, inspired by the growing influence of Catholic Church on Croatian politics, wrote a science fiction novel "Država Božja 2053" about a future Croatia becoming an Iran-style theocracy.

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