BERTOLT BRECHT V SLOVENSKOM DIVADLE V ROKOCH 1975 – 1985

The study focuses on the productions of Bertolt Brecht’s plays in Slovak drama theatre between 1975 and 1985. It sheds light on Brecht’s views and his demands made on epic theatre. The study also presents a fundamental view of his aesthetics and poetics of (dialectic) theatre and drama. Timewise, it links up with an older study by Martin Porubjak published in Slovenské divadlo (Slovak Theatre) in 1975 which focused on the 1947 – 1974 period. The authoress elaborates on another decade of the production tradition of Brecht’s plays in Slovak professional theatre. She makes a point that despite an ever-growing frequency of the staging of Brecht’s plays, there are only exceptional cases when Slovak theatre professionals managed to comprehensively capture Brecht’s creation, such as, for instance, in the production of Muž ako muž/A Man’s a Man (directed by Stanislav Párnický, 1975), Malomeštiakova svadba/A Respectable Wedding directed by Ivan Krajíček, 1978), or Život Galileiho/The Life of Galileo (directed by Ivan Petrovický, 1979). Following entertaining, satirical, and socio-critical interpretations, so typical of the decade in question, it was not until the latter half of the 1980s, when staged productions captured the feeling of an entire (totalitarian) epoch and heralded an inevitable toppling of communist forces, while making it clear that positive heroes were no longer attractive, as they had been weakening our vigilance for many years, for instance, Dobrý človek zo Sečuanu/The Good Person of Szechwan (directed by Vladimír Strnisko, 1986) and Baal (directed by Roman Polák, 1989).