With great affection and without embellishment, Ivan Kovačić's diligent pen rescued Split from the oblivion of the early 20th century, spanning thousands of pages. Through a series of prose sketches, he gave us an authentic testimony of a time and people living in a vastly different reality. Not because they were poor, uneducated, or technologically less advanced than us today, but because they lived by principles. The play Tears and Laughter of the Old Split offers an opportunity to pause, remember, and move forward with the awareness that the principles of those people were not mere emptiness but a way of survival and nurturing a cultural and urban identity, which we now witness crumbling.
The old Split and its sensitive chronicler, Ivan Kovačić, have been neglected, even erased from our collective memory. That is why Laughter and Tears of the Old Split, directed by Goran Golovko, will compel us to pause and contemplate the kind of existence we are chasing while trying to escape our yesterdays.