Karol Horák: Reality, metaphors, the stage

 – Slovakia

Karol Horák (* 1943) is one of the most important Slovakian playwrights. His plays have been performed by professional theatres in Sloavakia and abroad. In the early 1960s, he was instrumental in the creation of the Student Theatre of the Faculty of Philosophy of the Pavol Jozef Šafárik University, where he experimented with creating unconventional alternative genre forms within the framework of poetry theatre and movement theatre. He is one of the co-founders of Akademický Prešov, a festival of artistic creativity for university students with over half a century of tradition.

His work, through language games and formal experiments, speaks urgently about man and society. He applies scepticism and comedy, especially its ironic, grotesque or absurd modes. Horák’s characters solve existential problems: loneliness, emptiness, life and death. As a playwright, he expresses himself through the slow gradation of conflict, which often results in personal and collective catastrophe. He also devotes himself to theatre studies, literary studies and writing prose texts: Dve prózy (Two Proses), Cukor (Sugar), Súpis dravcov (List of Predators), Medzivojnový muž (Interwar Man). In 2020, he received the prestigious Krištáľové krídlo award. He was nominated for the Anasoft Litera award for his collection of short stories Sírny kotol (Sulfur Cauldron, 2024).