Even though a small country, Slovakia is rich in playwrights. Although almost none of them makes a living from it. This proves the need for theatre, not only here, but everywhere in the world. Theatre as a mirror, as a reflection of the world.    The Theatre Institute in Slovakia supports contemporary drama in various ways: it prepares projects educating young playwrigts, translation workshops, staging of contemporary plays, publishing Slovak authors; project New Drama and festival New Drama also call for new challenges. In 2000 the Theatre Institute founded a competition called Drama as one of few competitions of Slovak original plays. Through it, the Bratislava Theatre Institute has supported publishing and presenting of original Slovak texts. Five volumes of Contemporary Slovak Drama in English, two publications in German and one in Russian were published here in last years. Presently Theatre Institute prepares Slovak drama in French, Hungarian and Serbian languages.    CD Slovak Drama in Translation collects at one place all translations of contemporary Slovak authors that we managed to lay our hands on. It introduces several generations of Slovak playwrights: those, who started writing even before the Velvet Revolution and continue up to today (Ján Solovič, Osvald Záhradník, ...); the middle generation reflecting the changes of political regimes, sometimes using irony and parody (Eva Maliti-Fraňová, Viliam Klimáček, Silvester Lavrík, ...); and the youngest authors writing about contemporary world (Roman Olekšák, Ján Šimko, Jozef Gombár, ...). The choice of plays is great and yet it is not complete. You can find all the plays on the website of the Theatre Institute  www.theatre.sk/slovakdrama, which will be constantly updated with new information.    We hope that this CD will help you to orientate in Slovak contemporary drama which is rich in topics and subjects, as well as in genres. We wish you pleasant reading and hope that you will find a lot of interest in Slovak contemporary drama in future.