Some Theatrical Elements in the Carnival Rites of the Balkan Peoples

Abstract

Although there has lately been more and more worldwide research which has focused on the oral tradition of folk theatre, in the field of Balkanology, with the exception of isolated studies, no systematic or comprehensive work has as yet been done on this type of folk tradition. For this reason the Balkanological Institute of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts took an important step recently in organizing a special conference devoted to the study of folk theatre in the Balkans. With a view to further and more probing investigation of this interesting question, I shall try to review and isolate certain theatrical elements in Balkan masked carnival rites.