Stanislav Štepka is an original and versatile theatre artist: he is a dramatist, lyricist, actor, director, founder and chief of the Radošina Naïve Theatre. He has performed in almost all of the plays he has written, wrote the song lyrics and from the outset also directed. In 963 he founded in Radošina, his native village, an amateur theatre group. The first performance was the staging of his play
Dumb Faces, or the Animal Is Spelled with a Capital A. There were three performances. From 1968, the group has called itself the Radošina Naïve Theatre and from 1970 it has performed in Bratislava. As an author and actor, Štepka was influenced by the activities of Prague theatres at the end of the Fifties and the beginning of the Sixties, particularly by the Semafor theatre of J. Suchý and J. Šlitr. Of the Slovak authors, he was most influenced by M. Lasica and J. Satinský. He was inspired by a specific genre of literary cabaret, a product of big city environment. Štepka`s innovation combined the characteristic features of a village amateur theatre and city intellectual cabaret. He writes and performs his plays in his native Radošina dialect mixed with city jargon. At the same time, we find here echoes of Viennese local farce and
commedia dell`arte. Particularly so in the sharply defined typology of the characters and their plebeian point of view. The protagonists of Štepka`s plays are like the little characters of Nestroy who perceive the world in a childishly guileless manner and thus reveal its absurdity and abnormality. The Radošina Naïve Theatre is naïve in the manner in which the clowns are naïve, or in which Charlie Chaplin is naïve. It is exactly the "look from below" that is unmasking, penetrating, and plebeian. It speaks to a very wide audience, and during the forty years of its existence it became a well-known and popular phenomenon. Many expressions of Štepka`s dramatic characters became legendary and entered the spoken language. In his plays, Štepka often parodies social conditions, clichés, ideological phrases (some plays were therefore censored and prohibited by the Communist regime). Štepka does not shy away from the pathos of a moralist, albeit relativized by his kind irony. Many of his plays unmask national myths (particularly
Jánošík) and critically interpret Slovak history (
How we Searched for Ourselves , How it Was , Erase it and Write it Down). Stanislav Štepka is one of today`s most popular theatre authors and actors, and the RNT is one of the most popular theatre ensembles in Slovakia.
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