This collection of award-winning plays features works from the cutting edge of Central and Eastern European theatre.
With a foreword by Gerald Lidstone, Eastern Promise brings together seven women writers who have all experienced living at a time when their countries were part of a larger political entity. For Gabriela Preissova, it was the Austro-Hungarian Empire, for the others, the soviet bloc. Some of the moral and political dilemmas their characters face range from the killing of a child, to the betrayal of a comrade, to reinventing oneself as a way of living in exile.
Includes the plays: Belgrade Trilogy, The Tender Mercies, Tulip Doctor, The Chosen Ones, Jenufa (Her Stepdaughter), Nascendo, and The Umbilical Cord.
Gabriela Preissová born in 1862, in Kutná Hora near Prague. From childhood almost to the end of the century she lived in the Slovácko region of Moravia, where she was fascinated by the local traditions and dialect. Her first published writings were Tales from Slovácko, one of which, the Beginning of a Romance was used by Leos Janáèek as the basis for his first opera. Both her plays were also set in Slovácko, The Farmer's Woman (National Theatre, Prague 1889) and Her Stepdaughter (National Theatre, Prague 1890). Both were also turned into operas; The Farmer's Woman as Eva, by J.B. Foerster and Her Step-daughter as Jenufa by Leos Janáèek. Preissová, who died in 1946, never again achieved the success of her earlier works.
Krystyna Kofta lives in Warsaw. Husband professor of psychology, son biologist. Graduated with M.A. in Polish in 1970. Novels: The Visor (1978) - (Faustian themes), Sawdust (1980) - (The Stalinist era seen through the eyes of children), The Small Predator House (1988) - (a woman gaining her freedom from the power of her mother and then her husband), No-one's Body (1988) - (a gothic romance), In Praise of Witches (1994) - (on female power), The Secret Diary of Melanie R. (1997) - (balancing between the real and virtual worlds), The Thief of Memory (1998) - (today and the memory of childhood).
Other work: The Man who didn't die (1990) - (a collection of short stories), How to get, keep and drop a man (1992) - (a parody of a self-help manual), Harpies, piranhas, angels (1997) - (a dialogue with journalist Malgorzata Domagalik on the subject of the lack of solidarity among women).
Film scripts: I like Bats (horror), Femina (based on The Small Predator's House).
Other Plays: Professor Mephisto's Salon - (Faust and Mephisto are women).
On-going work for the women's magazine Your Style.
Whether I try myself here and there, or other people try me now and then, it is to this day - I swear, that is 25 years, (Vera you're getting old - a secret). Do I see things or hear them, or just feel them under my skin or above? It's not at all clear, as my life isn't crystallising either...
I have to work on that - I am not alone in this, am I?
'The worried one
makes dates
Later
the future'
I'm quoting myself there but 'it's all the same' whatever you fancy, such is your sensitivity.
Anyway, after directing Genet, Durenmatt, Picasso and Cocteau adaptations, I didn't become modest and took up residency inside myself. After I served up Tulip Doctor on the table at the Playwrights and Theatre Practitioners, I wrote Keresok (Searchers) which was published in the magazine Szinhaz (Theatre) and puzzled over at the Inter-Play in Berlin. The play Allj-ulve (Stand-sitting) was published in the periodical Theleme. Egyenesen (Straight) won the playwriting competiton of the Miskolc Theatre. Currently I am preparing for the Orkeny Istvan Playwrighting Scholarship by fighting a word and image battle - the working title is Ariel (Smoke-stripe)... my God, why don't you sigh this way a little?
I also draw comic-strips. I write poetry too. These are somehow more accepted by the people here. I don't know why.
Sladjana Vujovic is a Yugoslav-born writer, theatre director, producer and actress.
An honours graduate, her academic background includes studies of English, drama, mathematics and archaeology. She moved to Britain in 1984.
She has worked in a number of theatres in the UK, and toured in Yugoslavia, Slovenia, Germany and Switzerland.
Alina Nelega born in 1960, in Targu-Mures, Transylvania. Graduated the Cluj/Kolosvar University in 1984. She has had short stories, plays, essays and reviews published in various literary and theatre journals. She is currently running a theatre quarterly founded by The University of Journalism of Bucharest and an alternative group of critics, based in Bucharest and Cluj.
At present she is the Artistic Director of the International New Writing Festival Dramafest and runs The Romanian New Writing Project. She is an associate lecturer at the Theatre University in Targu-Mures and runs the International Department of the National Theatre in the same city.
