Christmas as a Dramatic situation in Slovak modernist drama of the first decade of the 20th century (Vladimír Hurban Vladimírov, Vladimír Hurban Svetozárov)

Christmas Nativity plays had long been a traditional part of Slovak folk theatre. Christmas performances were also popular with amateur theatres in the late 19th century. In the early 20th century, Nativity motives also inspired dramatists adhering to the new modernist style. Vladimír Hurban Vladimírov (pseudonym VHV, 1884 – 1950, play Vianoce – Christmas, 1904) and Vladimír Hurban Svetozárov (pseudonym VHS, 1883 – 1949, play Vianoce – Christmas, 1908) pushed the enactment of Christmas ceremonies to the background and concentrated on individual actions and experiences of their heroes. Both texts bear numerous features of period European modernist drama (preference for short dramatic form, character reduction, restricted dialogues, intensified dramatic conflict, communication crisis as a theme). Their innovative – emotionally and morally subversive – handling of Christmas topics employed modernist dramatic techniques and gave the developmental line of biblical, folk and didactic Nativityplays a new dimension. It gave birth to texts of expressively escalated emotional and moral dramas describing family break ups which focus on intimacy rather than on the religious message