*1962, Humenné, Slovakia
playwright
Graduated from Prague FAMU (scriptwriting and film dramaturgy). He published in the magazines Romboid, Smena na nedeľu and on radio. After graduating he worked as marketing consultant and in advertisement. His first novel, Let’s live, let’s see later (Žime, potom uvidíme), showing the image of contemporary business milieu, was published in 2003. Both a novella The Revenge (Pomsta) and a short story Dream&Reality, written for a collection Sex the Slovak Way (Sex po slovensky) were published in 2004. His play, Female Friends, opened in 2006 at the Astorka/Korzo´90 Theatre, and his play Família (Bajmann Brothers) was shortlisted for the Dráma 2005 competition.
FEMALE FRIENDS (PRIATELKY)
A play in two acts
1 man, 2 women
Two women meet in a city flat: both middle aged, around forty, one of them is married and already used to the monotonous home work and the stale love relationship, the other is single, constantly changing partners but trying to find both security and “peace at home”. The desperate efforts to find happiness and love is the thing they have in common. Their common past and common love experience separate both protagonists; the conflict is exacerbated by first woman’s husband – a model of a successful manager trying unsuccessfully to hide his love affairs. Marriage and adultery, both women’s life-long “friendship”, loneliness and pain are the main ingredients of this play with its unusual perspective of love relationships and friendship among today’s “higher society”. The author depicts complicated inner states of his female protagonists with sensitivity, detachment and fine – although sometimes quite rough – humour, offering mature actresses exceptional acting challenge and opportunity.
The world premiere took place on March 2, 2006 at the Astorka KORZO ´90 Theatre in Bratislava. The play was directed by Roman Polák.
The play is currently being translated into German.
BAJMANN BROTHERS
3 men, 2 women
Bajmann Brothers play is defined by the quote from Erich Fromm: “I am what I have.” Maybe it is thanks to this creed that the characters in the play – a family named symbolically after big American companies such as Warner Brothers – change into pigs swines, similar to those the family keeps and breeds. Nevertheless, the human pigs desire plenty but have nothing – and that leads to them being petty, superfluous, naïve, treacherous, plodding on trying to reach for a vision of the American Dream of successful businessmen such as Rotschilde clan, those who “started with little and gained unbelievably much”. But the Bajmann family keeps failing: Frenk Bajmann is “too simple” for business, his younger brother is an egotist and a smart aleck ready to rob his own family without any qualms. The youngest brother Marek’s position in the family is similar to his mother, sclerotic and always half-drunk; nobody takes him seriously, he is a simpleton, always manipulated, and first to run away from the stifling environment of the would-be family enterprise. The family members are ready to keep a dead father in the larder for several days to be able to collect his pension, they constantly try to figure out tricks to get the most of the family inheritance and swap partners. The chamber-sized world of total abuse and evil mirrors the modern entrepreuneurial society of enterprising people who, while chasing after mammon, lose all their sense of moral values and all their humanity. In fairy tales, when a father dies, the sons manage the inheritance fairly and justly, trying to expand and use the wealth to have a nice life. In a naturalistic and cruel world of Weiss’ play, the worm of greed eats the family apple all the way to the core and leaves nothing but decaying rot of painful sadness.
The world premiere directed by Roman Polák took place on March 15, 2007 at the Astorka KORZO ´90 Theatre in Bratislava.