Peter Himic, General Director of the State Theatre in Košice, Slovakia

The Slovak day at the premiere of the TRANS/MISSIONS festival contains in its program, in the spirit of the main idea of the festival, the Slovakia’s and, above all, Košice’s cultural environment with an emphasis on presentation of Košíce as a city of multi-nationality and multiculturalism.

It starts with opening of exhibition of the Slovak Technical Museum in Košice “Masters of Spirit” which, on 25 panels, introduces the viewers to the most important representatives of science and technology in Slovakia, many of whom have links to Košice. An interesting intercultural Slovak-Hungarian dialogue (according to pars pro toto principle applicable to any international discourse) shown in “Robinson& Crusoe”, the first feature film shot and produced in Košice.

This experimental combination of cinema and theatre will be presented at the festival by its director Ján Sabol. For children, but not only for them, we bring a fairy tale “Looking for Snowman” of the Puppet Theater in Košice in which the tramp Boni, in search of his friend snowman, encounters interesting fairy-tale creatures in the Arctic Ocean and learns a lot of new things. The hosts of the “literary five-o-clock tea” will be writer Karol Horák and literary scholar Peter Káša.

The evening part of the program will belongs to theatre. An exhibition of the State Scientific Library in Košice will show how many years ago, on pages of the theatre magazine “Kassai Szinházi Ujság” (“Košice Theatrical News), the Košice bohemians presented themselves. The State Theatre of Košice, as one of partners of the festival, will stage the play of Czech author Arnošt Goldflam “At Hitlerite’s Home — Stories of the Kitchen” which evokes the most disturbing events of the 20th century with irony, cynical humour, and satire. For laughter is one of remedies that heal.

The Slovak day will end with well-known melodies of various genres played by the Peter Balogh trio. I hope that for visitors to the first year of the TRANS/MISSION festival in Rzeszów, the Slovak and, to a great extent, the Košice day, will be a pleasant and inspiring experience.

Peter Himič
director general
of the State Theatre Košice