Reconciliation or Adventures at the Obžinkoch, Kubo, Statky – zmátky, Herodes a Herodias… We have known the works of Slovak classics since our student days. We will offer them to the DPOH audience in a playful and really funny form. The upcoming premiere of the production Kopny! Buchny! Ric! will feature three generations of actors – Anna Šišková, Sáva Popovič, Kristína Tormová, Juraj Bača, Bronislava Kováčiková and Lukáš Frlajs. We asked the director of the play – Gejza Dezorz – what the audience can look forward to.
Your name is associated not only with television and film, but especially with puppet theater, which is intended for adult audiences. Now you have accepted the offer of DPOH and are directing the theater comedy Kopny! Buchny! Ric!, which is completely different. What attracted you to the play?
The idea for the production came from the head of the DPOH management department, Valeria Schulczová. Even during the second wave of the Covid 19 pandemic, she approached me with an offer to direct the internet comedy series Hravé čitanie, which the PO Hviezdoslava Theatre together with BKIS produced and presented on their social networks. We all liked the concept very much and I think the first two episodes also had a decent viewership. Based on this, the idea arose to create a stage version, namely a comedy. This genre is very close to me, since we also work with satire, exaggeration and clever comedy in my home Dezorz Puppet Theatre. Lucia Ditte, who wrote the scripts for this mini-series, was also approached to write the text for the stage version and I somehow naturally swam into these waters and landed on the DPOH stage. As a director, I often combine different genres, and ultimately also types of art. Sometimes I direct for television, sometimes for theater, so it's nothing new for me and to tell the truth, I was looking forward to this direction, since I'm staging a new author's text with an excellent acting ensemble. We are trying to create a clear, tasteful and entertaining comedy, which should first and foremost be communicative and convey, not only to young viewers, the gems of classical Slovak drama in a modern guise.
What was the most challenging part of this performance?
The most challenging part was how to process the given topic, which is Slovak classics. The author of the text and I spent a long time looking for ways to grasp it so that the resulting form would not be boring, but understandable and entertaining. Very important inspiration also came from the theater. Since we were based on the aforementioned web series, we had some idea of how to build the story and which characters to "use". However, the most challenging part of creating this production was how to incorporate Slovak classics into our story, and it was also difficult to coordinate the actors' dates so that we could all meet at the rehearsal.
The description of the performance, which "presents classic works of Slovak literature in a playful and entertaining way," may not be clear to every viewer what to expect. How would you present the performance from the director's perspective?
Not only with actors and actresses, but also with set designer Lucie Šediva, musician Martin Hasák and dramaturge Roman Olekšák, we are trying to create a story in the concept of so-called theatre within a theatre and to parody cheap so-called door comedies a little. However, we are also making fun of us theatre people and of the theatre microworld and processes in theatre operations that are unknown to the audience. We are staging a comedy about a failing theatre, whose director, in order to avert the collapse and save the theatre, decides to try an undemanding production based on Slovak classical dramatic literature. She engages various faces of show business, but also unknown "talents" and offers to lead this confused, colorful company of various actors and non-actors to a crazy director who thinks he is a genius. They are all thrown into the turbulent waters of theatre, mutual doubts and ambitions, and at the end of their efforts they do not see the bright light of success, but rather a fiasco that slowly and inexorably approaches the premiere date. At the same time, they know that when the worst comes to the worst, all they have to do is kick up a fuss on stage, swear vulgarly and the audience will be satisfied.
