Blaho Uhlàr and the Slovak Theatre of Crisis

Abstract

When we published Barbara Day's introduction to modern theatre in Czechoslovakia in NTQ7 (1986), we could little imagine that by the turn of the decade we would be carrying regular reports from Eastern Europe on the effects of the disintegration of the Soviet empire upon the theatres and theatre people of the former satellite states. In NTQ27 (1991), we included an overview of recent developments in the Polish theatre – following this up in NTQ28 with a detailed feature on the work of a single company in the new era, Gardzienice. Here, we similarly complement Premsyl Rut's report in NTQ27 on ‘The State of the New Czech Theatre’ with a study of the work of one of the directors who, like so many people in the arts, served as a herald to the ‘velvet revolution’ – Blaho Uhlár, whose career began, in the difficult years after the Soviet invasion of 1968, with the Theatre for Children and Youth, and whose most recently completed production with the Divadle Alexandra Duchnovic company, Nono, visited the Chapter Arts Centre in Cardiff during the city's festival last October.