THE BLOODY SONNETS

Pavol Országh Hviezdoslav
Translation by John Minahane

"Song of blood: — what a wild notion!? — And of which blood?"

With this striking question begins the cycle of thirty-two Bloody Sonnets by Pavol Országh Hviezdoslav. In them, the poet prophetically responds to the realities and consequences of the First World War, while simultaneously addressing the future — epochs unable to learn from the horrors of the past.

This historical experience of humanity's inability to halt the repetition of violence creates the need to rearticulate Hviezdoslav's appeal against the madness of war and, at the same time, to free the text from the ideological interpretations imposed during the previous regime.

The Bloody Sonnets is an expressive stage poem about the collapse of one world and about a century that carried within it the hope for the emergence of a new one. Through powerful theatrical imagery, original music, and John Minahane's uncompromising English translation, the production creates the image of a wreckage of ideals and utopias — a vision of horror of biblical proportions without divinity and without redemption, in which individual destinies dissolve in the vortex of historical chaos.

The project is a performative requiem for the futile illusions of national grandeur and at the same time a quiet manifesto of conscious pacifism.

PREMIERE: 17 January 2024

Venue:
Divadlo P. O. Hviezdoslava
Laurinská 20
811 01 Bratislava
Slovakia

Creative Team

Direction: Dávid Paška
Dramaturgy: Darina Abrahámová
Scenography: Julius Leon Seiler
Costume design: Maria-Lena Poindl
Original music: Samuel D. Abrahám
Photography: Robert Tappert

Cast

B-POSITIVE: Katarína Morháčová
0-NEGATIVE: Annamária Janeková

with +421 Foundation (@plus421foundation)