Sláva Daubnerová
M. H. L.
Producers P.A.T. and Štúdio 12, Bratislava (SK)
Opening 22. 12. 2009 Štúdio 12
Running time 1 hour 20 minutes. No interval.
Script, stage concept, direction & cast by Sláva Daubnerová
Dramaturge and sound designer Pavel Graus
Video-art Lukáš Kodoň
Choreographer Emil Píš
Voices in the performance Emil Píš, dr. Oleg Dlouhý, prof. Vladimír Štefko, dr. Miroslav Dacho
M.H.L. as an documentary solo piece is inspired by the life and work of the first female Slovak professional theatre director Magda Husáková Lokvencová (1916–1966). An intimate tragedy of a quiet dying-out of love and deadness of the life in loneliness. A balanced play of words and movements exceeding the Slovak staging traditions. Based on historical documents about the life of the wife of Gustáv Husák, a leftist intellectual, political prisoner and later the president of Czechoslovakia during the normalization period, she uncovers a stirring story of the forming and destruction of the artistic ambitions in a collision with the rolling mechanism of totalitarian politics. She was a woman-director in the environment which tolerated it but considered it a bizarre exception. She was a promising and progressively thinking artist. She was a progressively thinking intellectual and a quieted theatre artist.