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The Competing New Drama 2008 Productions

Iveta Horváthová: THE FETISHISTS
The Slovak National Theatre

Directed by: Soňa Ferancová a. h.
Dramaturgy: Darina Abrahámová, Iveta Horváthová
Stage and Costume Design: Eva Rácová
Music Selection and Choreography: Laci Strike

Cast:
Maryla, a famous movie and theatre actress: Zdena Studenková
Sonja, Maryla´s friend, a manager for everything: Kamila Magálová, Božidara Turzonovová
Michaela, a student, Maryla´s daughter: Táňa Pauhofová
Tina, a double: Judit Lax a. h., Lucia Molnárová, posl. VŠMU
Biba, a double: Judit Lax a. h., Petra Molnárová a. h.
Wet Ditta, Maryla´s sister: Lucia Lapišáková a. h., Zuzana Kanócz a. h.
Robko, a photographer: Marek Gudiak a. h., Andrej Palko a. h.
The One who could have been her son, a DJ: Awangarda (Street Dance Academy), Švoňo (Street Dance Academy)
The Only One, a director: Jozef Vajda
Uhrík, a warrant officer: Emil Horváth

A totally present-day story of a local media star with a global image. What´s more? A fetish or love?

The devoted theatre public, and not only the one from Banská Bystrica where Iveta Horváthová works in the Na Rázcestí Theatre, knows very well the work of this sympathetic author and director who has opinion and ideas. The Fetishists were second in the Dráma 2005 competition’s final and the play was staged for the first time on the stage of our Studio. It attracted our interest for it was captivating, swift and modern text about a famous movie and theatre actress, about her manager-of-all-trades, about her sympathetically problematic daughter and about the past from which a beautiful model emerges. She is a sister of famous Marila, who committed suicide to remain a cherished fetish for her closest ones. Add also a few doubles, admirers, important male voices in the phone, hip-hop DJs and you will get the newest theatre cocktail from the intimate backstage of small, but our media stardom.
Source: www.snd.sk

 

Roman Polák: PIARGY
The Andrej Bagar Theatre, Nitra

Based on short stories by František Švantner, Margita Figuli and Dobroslav Chrobák.
Directed by: Roman Polák
Costumes: Peter Čanecký
Stage Design: Jaroslav Válek
Music: Roman Žiaran
Movement Co-operation: Marián Hlavatý
Dramaturgy: Dano Majling

Cast:
Evelína: Eva Pavlíková
Katarína: Daniela Kuffelová
Paľo: Branislav Matuščin
Lajčiak: Marcel Ochránek
Jašek Mihálik: Juraj Loj / Lukáš Dóza
Auntie Uľa: Žofia Martišová
Old Choma: Dušan Lenci
Ondriš Choma: Daniel Fischer / Peter Oszlík / Martin Kollár
Eva Halahíjová: Alena Pajtinková / Eva Holasová
The Splutter: Martin Nahálka
The Stranger: Vladimír Bartoň
Karo Plžúch: Martin Fratrič
Michal Vrbický: Peter Kadlečík
Vrbický, a factory owner: Ivan Vojtek st.
Dara Vrbická: Eva Cibulková / Sabína Čižmáriková
Bora Cirbusová: Kristína Turjanová / Ľudmila Trenklerová
Stupid Léna: Daniela Pribullová
Magduša: Zuzana Porubjaková
Old Ďurčiak: Anton Živčic
Maco Ďurčiak: Milan Ondrík
Zuzana Ďurčiaková: Zuzana Moravcová
Jano: Jakub Rybárik
and others

Even though the production is named after the famous Švantner´s short story about a village that “one night disappeared from earth as if devils would have taken it to the Hell”, a specialist in Slovak lyrical prose (naturism or neo-romanticism) would easily identify in it story lines, motifs, fragments or characters from other works of this literary movement. Through works by Margita Figuli , František Švantner and Dobroslav Chrobák the imaginary chronicle of present-day Sodom is written. The Piargy´s cottages standing along the road turn into pages of a breviary of sins. The linking elements of the selected short stories are various forms of violence, cruelty or sins that can appear in the relationship between a man and a woman.

The Piargy is a story of a magical Shrovetide night that ends in a natural disaster. The house of a woman of spoiled morals is full of people. The room is filled with passion and lust. The men drink, mood and behaviour are gradually loosing, the space between the sweating dancers is more and more narrowed. Next to the room with the noisy company there is another room. A quieter one. There are women in it preparing for the labour of a deaf-mute simpleton who, the gossip says, was with a wolf. On the bed next to her an old woman is dying. Being in the sate between the life and death she foretells the Piargies destruction and a birth of the Devil. In the moment when the orgies culminate in one room and the deaf-mute girl gives birth to a dead baby in the second room there comes a sudden end. Piargy is buried by an avalanche.
The production is presented within the monothematic Slovak classics season called RODINNÉ STRIEBRO (THE FAMILY’S SILVER).
Source: www.dab.sk

 

Christopher McKey: BIRTHDAY
The SkRAT Theatre, Bratislava

Translated by: Lenka Bednárová
Music: Ľubo Burgr
Stage Design: the creative ensemble
Directed by: the creative ensemble

Cast: Ľubo Burgr, Inge Hrubaničová, Milan Chalmovský, Zuzana Piussi, Dušan Vicen

A birthday party that would have been better not to come to. Who can bear so many truths, semi-truths and lies about one’s self, one’s past and future? Music, singing, absurd as well as realistic sketches, and “everything loved and disliked” by people who found themselves in the middle.

Coincidence does not exist. It was more than a year of searching for a way of staging an idea about a birthday party where themes we live and perceive as socially current are spoken about. At the same time the ensemble wanted to go further in its searching and offer to people a production different in form and content than they were used to. In September, in the middle of rehearsing and rewriting many hours of material, the ensemble visited the Ex Ponto Festival in Ljubljana. They met Christopher McKey there, an Irish dramatist who offered to the SkRAT theatre his play named Birthday. Since the ensemble had so far produced only its own texts, Mc Key´s Birthday was promised at least to be read. As the text was very similar to the poetics of the SkRAT Theatre´s plays the ensemble decided for the first time in its history to stage a play by a living contemporary dramatist and present it in the world’s premiere, and also for the fact that Irish drama has been very popular in Slovakia. The ensemble deserted its principles because of the respect for the talent of the foreign author.
Source: www.skrat.info

 

Roland Schimmelpfennig: BEFORE/AFTER
The Slovak Chamber Theatre, Martin

Translated by: Peter Lomnický
Dramaturgy: Peter Lomnický
Stage Design: Emil Drličiak
Costumes: Emil Drličiak
Music: POO
Photographs: Braňo Konečný
Directed by: Eduard Kudláč

Cast:
Renáta Rundová, Jana Oľhová, Milena Minichová, Lucia Jašková, Petronela Valentová, Eva Gašparová, Ján Kožuch, František Výrostko, Martin Horňák, Miloslav Kráľ, Dano Heriban, Marián Andrísek

Through quick, almost film edited sections that seem to be arranged without any plan, Roland Schimmelpfennig, a star of contemporary German drama, successfully managed to create something like a picture of everydayness and also, without exaggeration, the world and the place of man in it.

The play is about people on the road, people before or after some episode in their lives, sometimes a banal one, which significantly changes their lives. The characters come to and go from a hotel room, for a short time they stay in the place where other unknown, anonymous people stayed, and summarize their “before” and “after”. They may be stories of unimportant people – the first infidelity, a stereotype in a relationship, waiting for a split-up, old age, memories of the past, unfulfilled dreams. All of them want to love and to be loved and at the same time to comprehend and change their lives and themselves. They would be happy if love was the way of the change and fulfilment of their life, like in an ancient myth or a fairytale. The worst end is experienced by those who are not able to change, who stayed clinched between the before and after.
Source: www.divadlomartin.sk

 

David Mamet: SEXUAL PERVERSITY IN CHICAGO
The Malá scéna VŠMU Theatre, Bratislava

Translated by: Juraj Šebesta
Directed by: Michal Vajdička
Dramaturgy: Daniel Majling, Lenka Dubníčková
Stage Design: Barbora Gregáňová, Ján Jeník
Costumes: Lucia Baranová, Barbora Gálisová
Produced by: Janka Večerná, Matúš Benža

Cast:
Bernie: Gabriel Tóth
Danny: Martin Križan / Radoslav Gažo
Deborah: Zuzana Konečná / Jana Gavačová
Joan: Zuzana Porubjaková
Ramon: Jakub Rybárik / Pavol Katrinec

Sexual Perversity in Chicago – a black comedy about young people who became victims of today´s world – the world without spiritual values, moral principles, the world in which weakness and failure are not allowed. They go to the work and besides this they only exist. They do not have any dreams, desires or interests. They have only each other. In their own egoism and inability to communicate and express feelings they destroy the purest thing they have - the friendship. Their shallow communication is full of vulgarisms and clichés. They fill their meaningless existence with sex and speaking about it in order not to feel unwanted and completely lonely.
Source: www.vsmu.sk

 

Michal Ditte: TERRA GRANUS
The Pôtoň Theatre, Levice

Dramaturgy: Michal Ditte
Dramaturgical Co-operation: Zuza Ferenczová, a. h.
Musical Co-operation: Pavel Graus, a. h.
Stage and Costume Design: Iveta Jurčová
Produced by: Michal Somoš, Veronika Mezeiová
Directed by: Iveta Jurčová

Cast: Henrietta Rab, Michaela Hrbáčková, Gabriel Tóth, Kristína Sihelská, Kristína Tóth/Katarína Vakrčková, Réka Derzsi / Mária Danadová

Terra Granus (the ground along the River Hron) is based on ground research in the Lower Hron Region and workshops of acting that were thematically connected with the findings of this research. The primary theme for the creators was “the search of home”. This theme was not selected by a coincidence because the region the creating team works and lives in has been a region of deportations, displacement, dislocation, transportation, departures and arrivals… The attention is pointed at repatriating exchanges between Hungary and Czechoslovakia (the Beneš´s Orders) after the WWII, the displacement of the people of the village of Mochovce in the 1980s because of the construction of a nuclear power plant, and the view of a contemporary – the creator himself.
Nevertheless, the resulting text does not work with gathered facts at a documentary level. Every situation is hyperbolised, severally multiplied in tits course; the real, imaginative and absurd very often intermingle. The text is a collage of six story lines based on old and past events as well as the ptresent ones. And not only for those living and working in the Lower Hron Region.
Source: www.poton.sk

 

Eduard Kudláč: STAMINA REPORT (the first part of a trilogy: FEED THE VIPER IN YOUR BOSOM (a sentimental concept))
Phenomenontheatre & Žilina-Záriečie Station

Concept/Directed by: Eduard Kudláč
Lights: Richard Černý

Cast: Ivana Danková, Lukáš Puchovský, Juraj Tabaček

Feed the Viper in your Bosom is a “sentimental concept” for three actors, an original authorial performance based on real records, press headlines, blogs, diaries, scientific articles and subjective cries. The Stamina Report is a first part of a newly created trilogy by Eduard Kudláč. The author and actors created a map of an individual, without any context and ethical revaluation, based only on the blog by Stamina at the kyberia.sk. There has not been a performance with more vulgar text in Slovakia before. Immediately after its premiere pirate versions emerged on the web seen by approx. 400 people in one week.
Feed the Viper in your Bosom (a sentimental concept) is an absurd grotesque with an open end, with no ambition to offer solutions but rather to uncover hidden connections between the behaviour and inner state of the characters. Therefore, the extreme religious, social and family acts become only a result, not a beginning, of the search of the depth of social estrangement of the characters. Even though the acts of characters are similar, there is a personal and unique story of failure hidden behind them that is not designed to be a guide, mockery or condemnation but rather an analysis and understanding.
The production was created in the association with the Truc sphérique and Phenomenontheatre at the Žilina-Záriečie Station.
Source: www.stanica.sk, www.phe.sk

 

Jozef Belica, Táňa Brederová, Henrieta Hanzalíková and Matej Lauko: REDUCTION (AZAS), the Fórum Theatre and S.T.O.K.A.

Screenplay created and performed by: Jozef Belica, Táňa Brederová, Henrieta Hanzalíková a Matej Lauko.
Produced by: Zuzana Ferenczová
Costumes, Make-up: Denisa Falbová
Screenplay, Stage Design, Directed by: Blaho Uhlár

An authorial production created by the method of collective improvisation. Four actors in a cramped place create an authentic world in which ordinary and trivial things are valuable.

The reduced beige world is a neutral form in which colourful steps of every-day uncertainty and courage of the present ones are reflected. From 1991 to 2005 director Blaho Uhlár founded and led an independent theatre named Stoka that wrote the most important chapter in the history and present of Slovak alternative theatre. Today he co-operates with the amateur theatre Disk from Trnava and prepares independent projects.
The Fórum Theatre is a newly launched civic association focusing on producing theatre performances. The aim of the Fórum Theatre is to re-activate theatre makers who are able and willing to create authorial theatre.
Source: www.stoka.sk

 

Conor McPherson: RUM AND VODKA
The Kontra Theatre, Spišská Nová Ves

Directed by: Klaudyna Rozhin (Poland)
Translated by: Peter Čižmár and Klaudyna Rozhin
Cast: Peter Čižmár

The story of a crazy alcoholic weekend during which a young Irishman loses everything he had and falls to the abyss where he meets a woman he is convinced is able to “ heal his life”…

Conor McPherson has a gift to see into the hearts and stomachs of real men, not stereotypes we know from TV or cinema. One of the best-known young Irish dramatists is staged in Slovakia for the first time.
“In his writing Conor comes back to the very roots of drama: to the tradition of narrating a story. I like his beloved form – a monologue - for its urgent easiness. It is as if we were– like in old times – sitting around the fire listening to a narrator’s story … who takes us into his world by the only meaning he has, his language. Conor is exactly this kind of a master narrator telling stories of lost souls and spoiled lives. The lyricism of his writing, his ability to see the core of human nature, the poetry and potential of his language – and most importantly his gift to tell stories on the stage openly but at the same time easily - all of this attracted me in his plays. I am happy to present Conor McPherson to Slovak audience.” - Klaudyna Rozhin
In co-operation with the Theatre Institute, Bratislava.
Source: www.studio12.sk

 

Marguerite Duras: INDIA SONG
The Aréna Theatre, Bratislava

Directed by: Hans Hollmann
Stage Design: Hans Hoffer
Costumes: Marija Havran
Sound Design: Stanislav Kaclík
Light Design: Laco Kraus
Dramaturgy: Martin Kubran
Sound: Rastislav Pardupa

Cast:
Anne-Marie Stretter: Ingrid Timková
French Vice-consul from Lahor: Ján Gallovič / Marián Prevendarčík
Michael Richardson: Sava Popovič
The Young Attaché from the Embassy: Martin Hronský
Stretters´s Guest: Matej Landl
A Pauper: Mara Mainga Ngueve Lukama
George Crawn: Vladimír Bartoň
The Ambasador: Jozef Šimonovič / Laco Konrád
A Servant: František Balog
Female Voice No. 1: Monika Hilmerová
Female Voice No. 2: Tatiana Pauhofová
Male Voice No. 1: Milo Kráľ
Male Voice No. 2: Branislav Matuščin
Voices at the embassy party: Eva Matejková, Diana Mórová, Elena Podzámska, Martin Kubran, Juraj Kukura, Ľubo Roman, Marcel Nemec
The British Military Attaché: Laco Konrád / Jozef Šimonovič
A Diplomat: Marcel Nemec
The Honorary Consul´s Wife: Mária Kleinová
A National Geographic Magazine Photographer :Elena Podzámska
The Diplomat´s Sister: Petra Lenártová
A Spanish Woman: Jana Gavačová
The Prince of Wales Hotel Manager: Marcel Nemec
A Hotel´s Boy: Andrea Balcerčíková
Dancers: Erika Mináriková, Božena Nemcová, Daniela Nemlahová, Heidi Šimková, Róbert Fógl, Jozef Lehotský, Peter Minárik, Vojtech Šuver
The sound recording carried out in co-operation with Slovak Radio.
Make-up: Juraj Steiner,
Assistant of Director: Svetlana Waradzinová,
Stage Manager: Katarína Rozborilová,
Produced by: Marcel Nemec, Oľga Jaklová

The story of colonial India in the 1930s, the story of Anne-Marie Stretter, the wife of French Ambassador, who spreads around her an illness called passionate love, and the story of people who succumbed to this love and this story. The story told by the voices of those who lived it, those who remember it or those who only heard about it. Each voice knows only a part of the story and experienced only a part of passion. They are jealous. They long to be a single voice that can speak…
This is how the story of Anne-Marie Stretter becomes a narrating and the narrating a new story – the story of people leprous by love.
The India Song was staged at the Aréna Theatre by Austrian director Hans Hollman who has for more than thirty years worked for the most important German and European theatres. In this production he co-operated with Austrian artist and stage designer Hans Hofer and Slovak actors and theatre professionals.
Source: www.divarena.sk

 

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