Branko Gavella (b. Zagreb, July 29, 1885 – d. Zagreb, April 8, 1962), theatre director, general manager, pedagogist, theatrologist, theatre critic and translator. Wrote under the pseudonim Brankač and Aleksandar Mautner. Graduated in Zagreb and studied philosophy, germanic and slavic studies in Vienna, where he obtained his doctoral degree in 1908. From 1909 he worked in the University Library in Zagreb and in 1914 he started to direct in Zagreb Theatre. Here and afterwards in all southern slavic theatre centres, Czech Republic, Slovakia and Italy too, he staged 279 dramas and operas, out of whom the productions of Držić, Gundulić, Brezovački, Krleža, Begović, Shakespeare, Pirandello and Wagner especially stood out. He was the founder of the Academy of Theatrical Arts in Zagreb (1950) and one of the founders of Zagreb Drama Theatre (1953), today Gavella Drama Theatre. He was a fellow of JAZU (the Yugoslav Academy of Science and Art) from 1961.

In 1910 he appeared in literature with theatre reviews, published in the Agramer Tagblatt, the journal that came out in Zagreb, written in German, which he, at intervals, wrote until 1918 contributing, at the same time, articles to the Savremenik and Hrvatska njiva. He analysed theoretical problems of the actor's creativity in Krleža's magazine Danas (1934) postulating the essence of acting as a co-play between the actor and the audience, based on the psychological ''multiplicity of the actor's personality''. Since the 1950 he had published a series of studies and essays on Croatian playwrights and poets (Držić, Mažuranić, Šenoa, Vojnović and especially Krleža), literary portraits (D. Boranić, M. Kombol, LJ. Babić) and continued his earlier research on '' the aesthetics of theatre and acting'', while using the method of theatrological sociology to discuss the stylistic characteristics of the Croatian performative environment and its relation toward its theatrical neighbourhood. Gavella sought the meaning and the purpose of his own activity in a permanent and unbreakable reciprocity of ''literature and theatre'', which was imbued in his directing poetics and woven into his literary creation.

His fiction includes a ten-act ''speech choire'' Pjesma radu (''Spremnost'', no. 62, Zagreb, 1943) and a ''speech oratorium'' in verse Put Hrvata (1944; kept in ...) left in manuscript and written in the manner of Nazor's Hrvatski Kraljevi.

He translated plays and opera librettos from French, German, Italian, Czech and the English language (Shakespeare's Macbeth, As You Like It, Henry IV)

Works:

''Hrvatsko glumište – analiza nastajanja njegova stila'', Zagreb, 1953, 1971, 1982
''Glumac i kazalište'', Novi Sad, 1967
''Igralec in gledališče'', Ljubljana, 1968
''Kniževnost i kazalište'', Zagreb, 1971
''Izabrana djela'', PSHK, knj.86, Zagreb, 1971
''Drama i teatr'', Moskva, 1976

The productions which were directed by Dr. Branko Gavella at Zagreb Drama Theatre, today Gavella Drama Theatre:

Miroslav Krleža: In the Camp, 1954
Miroslav Krleža: Golgotha, 1954
Marijan Matković: At the End of the Road, 1955
William Shakespeare: As You Like It, 1955
Jovan Sterija Popović: Kir Janja, 1956
Slavko Kolar: The Master of One's Body, 1956
William Shakespeare: Macbeth, 1957
Graham Greene: The Living Room, 1959
Marin Držić: Tirena, 1959