Sacrum v pragmatickom svete – divadlo v chrámovom a predchrámovom priestore a v tichu
Sacrum in the pragmatic world. Theatre in church , and “TICHO a spol .“ (sile Nce and company ), theatre Club in Bratislava

Summary/Abstract: The author of this paper examines the development of theatrical forms connected to liturgical space and the liturgical year. Although Polish theatre-makers display incomparably greater formal courage compared to ours, there is something essential that we share with Polish culture – a similar religious substrate. Unlike Slovakia where monastic orders were disbanded in the 1950s, Poland did not experience a violent disruption of continuity of church theatre. The author brings a testimony about a project which was started before the fall of socialism: The initiative of a group of Bratislava students staging The St. John Passion Play was not a generational theatre but a return to the discarded. Since the church was not allowed to organize cultural events at that time, only church space could be used, and this only during the Holy Week, when a theatre production replaced the singing performance of The St. John Passion Play during the ceremonies of Palm Sunday and Good Friday. The production in Bratislava’s Trinity Church was characterized by fascinating modern dance expression presented against the background of Gregorian chant. The passage about Christ’s death made the audience kneel down. Not all actors were practising Christians and only few of them realized that it happened exactly where liturgy prescribed it. They were therefore dumbfounded by the audience’s powerful reaction. The production was shown in the Trinity Church in 1988, 1989 and 1990 and in St. Martin’s Cathedral in 1992. The lifespan of this project proves that 1989 was not a turning point for this kind of dramaturgy. The theme did not lose its currency. The author then analyzes a production by the Brno theatre ensemble Malé divadlo kjógenu (The Little Kyogen Theatre), Kvítky svatého Františka [Litlle Flowers of St. Francis] premiered in 2010. She also focuses on two projects by Slovak artists. Confronting stone and the body, Anna Sedlačková and Ľuboš Kľučár created a dance performance entitled De Profundis (27 – 29 Oct. 1992) to the music of Arvo Pärt and Cum Angelis (June – August 1995) to Pavol Malovec’s original composition for chamber orchestra and African water drums. Besides the stone statues of Viliam Loviška and A ndrej Rudavský, the De Profundis production worked also with candles, water and clay in which some of the statues were installed. It was performed shortly before All Saints’ Day. The space of the Cum Angelis production was delineated by two lines of Viliam Loviška’s peculiar polychrome and gilded angel heads which incorporated fragments of old disintegrated stone sculptures. In the depth of the space, immediately in front of where an unused altar table stood, there was a marble statue of the Lamb protruding from maces bread. The production loosely dealt with the topic of visualization of the invisible and was related to the autumn holidays of angels and archangels.

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