Throughout the history, Slovenian drama and theater have often referred to the social events surrounding them and responded to them in a critical manner. From World War II until Slovenian emancipation, the political viewpoint of theater and drama manifested in criticism of the socialist political system, but this manifestation lost its political edge when the country shifted to a new, democratic governance in 1991. Slovenia later joined the European Union, incorporated the capitalist economic system, and suffered an economic crisis which gave way to the renaissance of the Slovenian political theater at the break of the millennium. The purpose of this master's thesis was to define the social changes that occurred after 2008 and may once again lead to the writing and performing of contemporary, socially-engaged plays. The focus is on the economic and political changes in Slovenia from 2008 onwards - specifically those relating to the labor market and social politics - and their impact on human subjectivity. This thesis scrutinizes whether contemporary Slovenian drama still responds to the social reality that surrounds it. To answer this question, 14 Grum Award-winning plays written between 2008 and 2018 were analyzed to establish to what extent the texts thematize the aforementioned social changes, and to determine the genres of plays that were used to express them.
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