Pavol Haspra a jeho divadlo vášní a emócií

Andrej Maťašík

Article type: 1 štúdia / st

Full text

A monothematic issue of the magazine the Slovak Theatre publishes the contributions which were presented at the 3 rd Theatrological Conference in the cycle Today and Here held in Banská Bystrica on 9th December 2005. The conference was organized by the Cabinet of Theatre and Film of the Slovak Academy of Sciences, the ANDREJ MAŤAŠÍK 14 Faculty of the Historionic Arts of Academy of Arts, the Slovak Theatrological Society, the Association of Slovak Theatrical Critics and Theoreticians and the Association of Philologists Self-Help with the contribution of the Minister of Culture of the Slovak Republic, and the organizers formulated the topic Pavol Haspra – Theatre of Passions and Emotions. Pavol Haspra, a director who has been for the period of four decades an integral part of the Slovak National Theatre drama, is a significant personality of our theatrical history. There is his art that has remained. A long list of theatrical productions, even a more extensive map of his creative work for television, recollections of his contemporaries and co- workers, and his texts. The strongest weapon of a theatre is its contemporaneousness and vividness, which is at the same time its own curse, since storing a staging in a wardrobe, and waiting for a more favourable time for art and culture to come, waiting for the time when different aesthetic ideals would reign among the chosen, and then simply taking it out, is impossible. The conference initiator, a theatrical critic and historian Andrej Maťašík in the introductory study focuses on the characteristics of Pavol Haspra´s theatrical opinion. He observes that: It is known that by a stature, Haspra was quite short, but by his temperament and zest, and the ability to kindle others, by his eruptiveness and resourcefulness, he grew taller than his surroundings. To find him not in a hurry was quite rare, since he was thus trying to save the time needed to dedicate to his almost uncontinuous working. In line with the theatrical work, he was oen writing scripts for television and adaptations. The most convincing evidence on the scale of his TV productions serves the enclosed list. With the Slovak National drama he outlived the increase of the sixties, but also complexities of normalization, a respite in the end of eighties, but also an aer upheaval fumbling and an endeavour to look for a new position of a theatre in new social conditions. Aer Borodáč, Haspra owns in his account maybe the majority of opening stagings of new Slovak productions in the Slovak National Theatre, and alongside with that he bacame the first Slovak director who was entitled to study the continental opening of Miller´s Cena(The Price).He loved Dostoevsky and was trying hard to return back to him, he drew out – straight from the archives slot – never then played play by Podhradsky Holuby a Šulek (Pigeons and Šulek), and Palárik´s tragedy Dimitrij Samozvanec (Dmitrij the Self-Appointed) in order to – expressed allegorically – by the second hand selected between a Serbian Kovačevič and a Bulgarian Radičkov, and now and then he diversified the whole thing by the world classics. He was the type of a director who was a blessing to a theatre repertoir, he who did not have a rigidly chosen topic, and did not insist on on its continual developing. He did not re–created the theatre into his vision, rather than that he rendered himself in order to serve honestly without deceiving, and providing the maximum effort possible. Aer he had started working for the Slovak National Theatre drama (1962), he became the fourth director to direct the repertoir not very a ractive then for profiling directors. Haspra´s luck was, that it happened in the same era when other eminent author personalities like Edward Albee, Friederich Durrenma , Mel Gibson or John Osborne were trying to reach the favour of dramaturgies. And indeed, as a result of inevitability, Haspra – aer acccessing to the Slovak National Theatre – became the director of mainly contemporary plays, and since he performed the substantial part PAVOL HASPRA A JEHO DIVADLO VÁŠNÍ A EMÓCIÍ 15 of stagings in the sixties at Malá scéna (The Small Stage), in fact in conditions of a chamber space where there is a close contact of an actor and a spectator, hence we can consider Haspra also the initiator and effecter of the cardinal transformation of the Slovak dramatic art in the sixties. To the ecyclopeaedic traits of Haspra´s poetics as a director belongs also the fact, that he inclined to „plays with a strong dramatic conflict“, that he „emphasised a passion and a burning emotion“. The space of Malá scéna (The Small Stage) was forcing him to ask for a maximum authenticity from the actor, since every single fraud could be easily detected by the spectator, and so deceiving by a magic of generous mizanscene, by a loy and pathetic gesture, or a showy articulation of the text was beyond possibility. At the same time he was aware that these, very oen seriously looking dramatic encounters of antagonistic views, are just boring talks on positions, explanations of philosophical disputes, while for an eruptive explosion of an authentic emotion to happen, sometimes only a li le mite is needed, other time just a neglected or tolerable impuls. This is why he was willing to painstakingly look for those naggings or ostensible reasons even where their occurence was just potential. This was also the reason why he was willingly cooperating with actors who were prone to such „ squeezing“ of human emotions. Of course, such creative method is not riskless – it can cause also that a director and actors, for the sake of a detail, lose the overview on the whole, for the sake of a moment of thrill, seriously savage the message of reflections.