Managing Institutional Trauma: Post-Socialist National Theatres as Spaces of Memory, Continuity, and Strategic Adaptation

This paper examines post-socialist management processes in national theatre institutions of Southeast Europe, viewing them as spaces in which institutional memory, cultural tradition, and contemporary managerial demands intersect. It starts from the assumption that cultural institutions, despite the political and economic transformations following the dissolution of the SFRY, largely retain patterns of the socialist institutional model. By combining theoretical analysis with qualitative methods particularly semi-structured interviews with key actors of the Croatian National Theatre in Zagreb (prof. art. Mladen Tarbuk, who served as intendant from 2002 to 2005, and assoc. prof. art. Vlatka Peljhan, long-time concertmaster of the Opera of the Croatian National Theatre in Zagreb from 2006 to 2025) the paper explores how national theatre institutions adapt to contemporary European models of governance while simultaneously preserving elements of historical continuity. The results show that post-socialist theatres develop hybrid forms of management, in which remnants of institutional trauma and administrative structures inherited from the socialist era can be recognized, alongside a tendency toward professionalization and the autonomy of the cultural field. Such a hybrid structure reveals that theatre institutions in transitional societies do not function solely as carriers of tradition, but as active agents negotiating between past and contemporary governance models. The paper contributes to an interdisciplinary understanding of cultural management as a field that connects social theory, artistic practice, and institutional studies, emphasizing the importance of memory and strategy in shaping cultural systems in post-socialist Europe.