The Work of Blaho Uhlár

Blaho Uhlár one of the most controversial Slovak directors of the 'eighties, went on to become a leading personality in Slovak alternative theatre before, in 1991, setting up the first non-state funded theatre - STOKA, which means 'sewer'. The characteristics of his poetics-often the result of collaboration - can be traced already in the productions of the late 'eighties - notably Predposledná večera (The Last But One Supper, 1989) and Téma Majakovský (The Subject is Mayakovsky, 1987; both for the Theatre for Children and Youth, Tmava).
Both of these works were fragmentary narratives with rich visual elements, created in colaborarion with the painter Miloš Karásek. The actors wore masks, ranging from the abstract to the symbolic-anthropomorphic. The Last But One Supper, alluding to the biblical betrayal, created a Kafkaesque atmosphere of existential absurdity in which the characters are waiting for a decision to be made by'someone behind the door' who will become Judas, the traitor. Téma Majakovský comprised fragments of Mayakovsky's poems interwoven with biographical events.
Uhlár's productions of the 'nineties - Impasse (1991), Dyp inaf (Deep Enough, 1991), Slepá baba (Blind Man, 1992), and Tváre (Faces, 1997) - are examples of his nonconformist theatre approach which is largely non-verbal, with struccures fragmented and linked by the association of images. McConnell calls Stoka's productions 'existential postmodernism', citing their concern with the'spheres of very soft, delicate, subtle relationships and moments of human existence’9, and in an interview for the Slovak theatrical journal Divadlo v medzičase Uhlár emphasizes his desire to create in his work 'authentic experience’ through which the audience can 'modify and re-evaluate' their beliefs and values.10
 

9.  Lauren MrConnell, 'Postmodernist Theatre in Post-Communist Slovakia’, in Tibor Žilka, 
     ed., Tracing Literary Postmodernism (Nitra:University of Constantine the Philosopher, 
     1998), p. 192.
10. Interview in Divadlo v medzičase, III, No. 4 (December 1998).