SLOVAK THEATRE AND THE CHANGES OF GENERATIONS (Generacne preskupovania v slovenskom divadelnictve)

The author examines the formation of every generation of artists that has contributed to the shaping of Slovak professional theatre. In the late thirties, a generation of young artists already trained at the Bratislava Academy of Music and Drama entered the world of theatre and gradually replaced the founding generation around the director Jan Borodac. Although their formative process was not completed until after World War II, they had a decisive influence on the development of Slovak theatre until the 1960s. At the turn of the 60s and 70s, for the first time a new generation stepped forward not only as an alternative to the efforts of their senior colleagues, but also on the basis of consensus and unity. Between 1968- 1971 a group of actors, directors and others involved with the Divadlo na Korze (Theatre on the Corso) laid the foundations for a new artistic program that was later extended, modified and directly or indirectly accepted widely among theatre artists during the seventies and eighties. The fourth generation of theatre artists should logically have followed, but the social changes have brought the withdrawal of the theatre from its previous positions in the social hierarchy. Only an increased interest of commercial TV companies in the production of original Slovak TV series and the renewed public interest in such production gives us some hope that a new artistic program as a platform for a new generation of theatre artists might appear recently.