Žarko Petan

Who is Žarko Petan?

Žarko Petan is a Slovenian writer, essayist, screenwriter, and theatre and film director. He is most famous as writer of aphorisms.

Petan was born in a relatively wealthy urban middle-class family in Ljubljana, Slovenia, then part of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. He spent his childhood in Zagreb, Croatia, where his father owned a hotel in the city centre. In 1940, the family moved to Maribor in Slovenia, where they owned a café. After the Axis invasion of Yugoslavia in 1941, they moved to Trieste to escape Nazi German persecution. After the end of World War II, they returned to Maribor.

Petan soon entered in conflict with the new Communist regime. In 1949, while serving in the Yugoslav People's Army, he was accused of enemy propaganda and sentenced to 9 years in jail. He was released already in 1951, and enrolled to the University of Ljubljana, where he studied economics. After graduation, he enrolled to the Academy for Theatre, Radio, Film and Television in Ljubljana, where he studied theatre directing.

In the late 1950s, he worked together with Jože Javoršek and Bojan Štih at the Drama theatre in Ljubljana, which was one of the first theatre to introduce the theatre of absurd on Yugoslav stages. Together with Dominik Smole, Taras Kermauner and Dane Zajc, he was one of the co-founders of the alternative theatre Stage 57, which challenged the rigid cultural policies of the Titoist regime. After the abolition of the theatre by the authorities in 1964, Petan returned to the established theatres.