HĽADANIE NOVÉHO DRAMATIKA (SEDEMDESIATE ROKY 20. STOROČIA V SLOVENSKOM DIVADELNOM KONTEXTE)

• Authors: Andrej Maťašík

Title variants

EN

Search for a new playwright (seventies of the 20th century in the context of Slovak theatre)

• Languages of publication: SK

Abstracts

EN

In the sixties, Slovak Theatre eagerly adapted modern European and world drama and did not hesitate to stage inventive interpretations of home and foreign classics and some of their outstanding productions even earned respect in the wider European cultural context. Since 1965, Slovak theatres staged only a few original plays written by Slovak playwrights that could withstand the demanding criteria and deserve to be staged again. In the early seventies, the majority of Slovak dramatic productions were just variations on a reliable model of psycho-realistic „images of life“ The model of drama employed by Karvaš tried to form a more or less logically constructed model story with the real world characters and situations that would reflect everyday experience and feelings of the audience. This approach to dramatic text was only modestly questioned by the practice of a small group at the end of the sixties and early seventies still beginning amateur artists, such as Stanislav Štepka and Milan Markovič in Radošina Naive Theatre, Ivan Hudec and Ján Belan in Theatre at Roland, Karol Horák and student theatre at the Faculty of Philosophy in Prešov UJPS and young students in the Theatre Behind the Gates in Bratislava and later their younger followers, who wrote their texts directly with the idea of their practical implementation. In the first half of the seventies, a strong generation of young artists gradually integrated into the Slovak professional theatres. Rather than „truth“, they preferred the stage imagery and metaphor, rather than practiced precision they preferred playfulness. An important attribute of texts that young theatre makers consistently sought for and which they directly inspired was the resignation from the classical structure of the dramatic text construction. The significant difference between the older and younger generation of playwrights was the rejection of the principle of process causality in the construction of situations and characters. Another significant and defining feature common for this new type of plays that were gradually added into the repertoire of Slovak ensembles thanks to the young staging teams was a strong reluctance to word as a bearer of meaning. The second half of the seventies was a turning point, when the creative energy of young theatre artists generated the first dramatic texts written for the needs of specific ensembles and respected the effort of particular theatres to modernize their repertoire.

Keywords

EN

PLAYWRIGHT; SLOVAK THEATRE; 20TH CENTURY

• Publisher: Institute of Theatre and Arts, Slovak Academy of Sciences
• Journal: Slovenské divadlo (Slovak Theatre)
• Year: 2011
• Volume: 59
• Issue: 4
• Pages: 349 – 365

Contributors

author

Andrej Maťašík

• Ústav divadelnej a filmovej vedy SAV, Dúbravská cesta 9, 841 04 Bratislava, Slovak Republic