Exhibition on the occasion of the 90th anniversary of life
10. 3. to 10. 4. 2015
Slovenian playwright and dramaturge Janez Zmavc turned ninety last year. To mark his anniversary, we will be celebrating two events at the Celje Central Library – an exhibition about Žmavec's dramatic, dramaturgical and literary work and a reading performance of his dramatic text Pindar's Ode 2.
Janez Žmavc was born on October 6, 1924 in Šoštanj.
In 1936, he enrolled in high school in Celje, but during the war he was a German soldier by force, so he only graduated in 1948. After completing his studies in dramaturgy at the Academy of Dramatic Arts in Ljubljana and completing his military service, he was a dramaturg at the Prešeren Theatre in Kranj from 1953 to 1955, and then a librarian at the Study Library in Celje until 1960. He started working at the Slovenian People's Theatre in Celje in 1960. First he was a lector, then the in-house dramaturg until his retirement in 1990.
In addition to theatre journalism, some translations of stage works, and editorial work for theatre magazines, Žmavč's authorial work is entirely dedicated to drama.
Early dramas (e.g. Outside the Society, 1952, Rok and Lea, 1961 and others) critically and in a realistic chamber form present the problems of the (slightly) bourgeois environment in post-war society, and are characterised by the author's interest in individual intimate human destinies, depicting them in a moralistic and at the same time sentimental form. Later, his drama increasingly focuses on a more modern allegorical stage expression, depicting generational tensions, hardships and dilemmas, and devalued interpersonal relationships in the world of acquisitiveness and consumerism (The Attic, 1967, The Visit, 1969, Pindar's Ode, 1978 and others). Dramas from his later period are characterised by a more pronounced shift towards the absurd and grotesque, and a dominant irony in the marked theatrical language (The Queen of the Netherlands, 1981 and others).
Žmavc also wrote several successful plays for children, such as Homework on the Go, Little Red Riding Hood and Santa Claus, Pavliha and a Little Cross Over the Wood, and others.
As a house playwright, Žmavc mostly published articles about theatre in the theatre papers of the Prešeren Theatre and the Slovenian People's Theatre in Celje, as well as in the Celjski zbornik, the Maribor Večer and elsewhere. For the needs of the theatre, he translated from English, for example M. Anderson, The Sun Has Set; W. Saroyan, Listen Up, People! (both performed in 1954 in Kranj), W. Inge, Picnic (performed in 1955 in Kranj), H. Pinter, Birthday Party (performed in 1979 in Mest. gl. Lj.), German, for example C. Krüger and L. Volker, Maks Žvižgač (performed in 1975 in Celje), R. Hachfeld, Žmurkovi otroci (performed in 1978 in Celje) and Serbo-Croatian, for example V. Lukić, The Long Life of King Osvaldo (performed in 1964 in Celje).
He was the editor of the high school newspaper Iskra (Celje 1947-1948), the Theatre Bulletin of the Prešeren Theatre in Kranj (1953-1955) and the Celje Theatre, and the anthology Ob 55-letnici Slovenskogo Ljudskego Gedališča Celje (1986).
Janez Žmavc is still writing plays. In 2011, he published a new book of dramatic texts: Nekaj tretjega (four one-act plays), then followed the adapted versions At the Coronation in Budapest (2011), Krista and Vstajenje Ivan Podkolesnik (2014), this year also published a revised version of Pindar's Ode from 1978: Pindar's Ode 2 and The Queen of Holland. In 2005, he described his youth and experience as a German soldier in the autobiographical prose Otok Walcheren.
The text of Pindar's Ode 2, which the author describes as a "bourgeois drama with an exclusive love triangle", is characteristic of Žmavč's work and a reflection of his search for ever-new expressive possibilities in a time of hollowed-out interpersonal relationships.
At the opening of the exhibition, a reading performance based on the idea Marijana Pušavca carried out Sonja Mlejnik, Kristian Koželj, Mateja Ajdnik Korošec, Niko Korenjak, Andrej Hribernik and Anica Milanović.