Scénograf v súradniciach javiskovej tvorby (Vladimír Suchánek a 90 rokov SND)
The scene designer in the coordinates of his work (Vladimir Suchanek and the 90th anniversary of SND)

Summary/Abstract: This year, Slovak National Theatre celebrated its 90th anniversary. Not many of those active here in the previous years or those who are employed here recently spent all their creative life as part of this institution. One of those few who did was the scene designer Vladimir Suchánek (1934), engaged immediately after the graduation. Over the forty years he created dozens of scenic compositions and influenced the artistic views on art in the National Theatre, insights into his own aesthetic aims and objectives of this theatre. At the same time, however, he stood in the shadow of his mentor and ‚superior‘, chief of creative arts section and theatre workshops – Ladislav Vychodil. And even the international success and awards at the Prague Quadrennial did not change this situation. Vladimir Suchánek worked in tandem with the director Paul Haspra. Genre palette of his scenic works was done predominantly on request. Haspra was especially in favour of heartbreaking stories and full blooded characters. He especially saw into the folder entitled „drama“, while tragedy or comedy were not so understood. He believed, and it seems that he had found the key to unlock a genre of tragic farce as showed his original adaptations of King John (Dürrenmatt, 1970), The Magnificent Cuckold (Crommelynck, 1972), An Attempt to Fly (Radičkov, 1980) Pigeons and Šulek ( Podhradský, 1981). The director and the designer shared a common understanding of artistic shortcuts and combinations of „quasi“ genre attributes, symbols, visualizations, which often tended to gain almost a naively childish form. It was as if knowledge or resolution of comic element returned back on the scene, so characteristic for the work of this funny, playful man from Záhorie, Suchánek. At least in the „A Flying Cart“ or „Calendar of Life and Death“ (both of these plays) was Suchanek not just „a set designer“, but together with Haspra also a co-director. Study by Anton Kret, who for decades closely cooperated as a literary advisor with Vladimir Suchánek, gives an account of a remarkable personality of Slovak scene design active in the second half of the 20th century.

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