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THE ROLE OF THEATRE AND DRAMA by Vienna architects Ferdinand Fellner and Hermann Helmer, who also designed theatres in numerous other places of the monarchy, among them Budapest, Prague, Zagreb, and Sofia. Several institutions that represented the authority of the Czechoslovak Republic in Bratislava (for example, the Police Headquarters, the Slovak National Museum but also the Czechoslovak National Bank, Tatra Bank, the Central Slovak Credit Bank, and others) had new buildings constructed, but some other institutions (besides the Slovak National Theatre, for example, the government) used already-existing AustroHungarian imperial (informally referred to as “Kakanien”) structures.’ In the 1920s, the building of the Slovak National Theatre in Bratislava was shared by German, Hungarian and Czecho(Slovak) theatre groups: an agreement on the division of the season was reached after negotiations with the Municipal Council". Multilingualism in the theatre reflected the situation seen and heard in the streets of the town. The next aspect in the relation between the national theatre and the national identity perceives theatre as a materialization of intentions present in dramatic texts belonging to national literatures. Drama, based on a text written in a national language, can imply “national spirit” more directly (even though any national literature also belongs to the general contexts of literature as such); theatre, combining extra-linguistic means (such as body, gesture, facial expression, along with a set of visual and acoustic means) with linguistic ones might be more cross-cultural and universal.” Speaking of the language, the interwar period meant a new stage in the development of Slovak: whereas the awakening between 1780 and 1850 brought codifications of standard Slovak, a new code of Slovak was discussed in the early 1930s. However, since the original proposal was prepared by a Czech “Kakanien” (also k.u.k.) refers to “kaiserlich und königlich” (imperial and royal), that is, to the Austrian (Austro-Hungarian) Empire/Habsburg Monarchy. For more details, see Lajcha, Ladislav (ed.): Dokumenty SND, Vol. 1, Zapas o zmysel a podobu 1929-1938, Bratislava, Divadelny üstav, 2000. Even though music and dance genres are not discussed in this paper, it is also relevant to mention that the first Slovak opera, named the Krutnava (the Whirlpool), only originated in the 1940s. It was thought of by the commissar of the Slovak National Theatre during the Slovak Republic in 1940. Its composer, Eugen Suchon (1908-1993), who, along with Stefan Hoza (1906-1982), also wrote the libretto based ona short story by the Slovak fiction writer Milo Urban (1904-1982), began to write it in 1941; it was premiered in December 1949 but some Christian motifs were already unacceptable for the Communist regime in Czechoslovakia; thus a new version was prepared in the early 1950s. * 475 +
