HOLLYROTH or Robert Roth Sings the Story of Ján Hollý

Studio, the new building of SND, Saturday 7. January 2012 - 19:00

Dramaturgy:	Peter Pavlac
Set and Costume Designer:	Jozef Ciller
Music:	Martin Ožvold

holly / roth:

Robert Roth

The object of interest of the creators is undoubtedly rather curious. The life of the writer, translator and Catholic priest Ján Hollý (1785 – 1849), whose name is best known for a certain dead-end project of the Slovak language is full of tragicomic moments and striking paradoxes, so characteristic for an intellectual practicing in the circumstances of Slovak cultural life.

The director (author) Rasťo Ballek who has long been interested in figures in Slovak history (Tiso, Vajanský, Dohnány etc) this time takes a completely different approach. He “uses” the actor Robert Roth as a key to life of Ján Hollý, to his language, his thinking and his fate, which is in its tragic-comic objectiveness in a clear contrast with the depth of his imagination, and his inner world. As if this patient ascetic in his most intimate privacy – creating the first Slavic epic about King Svatopluk – became a dancing Slavic minstrel, professing the cult of nature, his tribe and violence. Which closer analogy presents itself, than to enlist “the angry young rebel” Robert Roth, who will speak the words of the classic in this time and era and make the melody of this strange language a basis for an entirely different handling of its substance – musicality, rhythm… That is where the realistic quotations from Hollý´s diaries and letters intersect with the reality of today. The production does not aim at a didactic presentation of the life and work of Ján Hollý but rather at a form close to a generation that uses entirely different means to discover the world around us and its place in it, than just researching and memorizing historic facts.

 

Running time: 1 hr 15 mins with no interval

 

 

Rastislav Ballek - HOLLYROTH, anebo Robert Roth spívá Jana Hollého mrzkoti a pomerkováňá

(MP4, 398,6 MB)

 

Plan of performances

Premières: 16 September 2009 New Building Studio

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