There is a personal story in each of my realizations

V každej z mojich realizácii je nejaký osobný príbeh
If you are one of those people who do not believe that a small country like Slovakia can conquer the world, maybe you will be convinced by an interview with the world-renowned Slovak scenographer Boris Kudličko, who succeeded. Although his path was not easy, sometimes it is enough to approach your work sincerely and honestly, and success will come by itself. You were born in Ružomberok, you studied at the Academy of Performing Arts in Bratislava at the Department of Scenic and Costume Design. How does a graduate of a Slovak art school suddenly find himself in the capital of Poland, where he can also make a successful professional career? It happened during my studies at the Academy of Performing Arts, when I met Andrzej Kreutz Majewski, a very important figure in the world of scenography, at the Academy of Sztuk Pieknych during my first completely random trip to Krakow. And that meeting and conversation with him resulted in an offer to assist him at the Bolshoi Theater in Warsaw, where he was then the chief scenographer. However, at the time it was such a surprise to me that I had to take half a year to think it over. I was only in 3rd year so I needed to finish school and honestly at that time Poland wasn't even my dream destination. As students in the period after the gentle revolution, we rather dreamed of one day working in Vienna, Berlin or Paris. That's why I needed to think it all through. Fortunately, the rector of the school, Professor Milan Čorba, helped me a lot with the issue of finishing school at the time, who saw it as my chance in life, and at the same time I realized that if I wanted to move somewhere professionally, I should develop under the supervision of a great personality, which Andrzej Kreutz Majewský was definitely the guarantor. So after half a year I called Mr. Majewski with little hope in my soul that the offer was still valid and in the fall of 1995 I suddenly found myself in Warsaw, where my journey began. What were your first years like in Warsaw, where you started at the National Opera as an assistant to this important Polish scenographer? Wasn't it difficult to get used to a foreign environment, approach to work, or the language barrier? It was actually the first time I touched a theater on such a large scale, not only in terms of ideas, but also in terms of the size of the physical space. And these were such strong and interesting impulses for me, as a young person, that it completely absorbed me. Fortunately, I have such a personality that I can easily establish new contacts. And thanks to Andrzej Kreutz Majewski, who was perceived as a great artistic personality in that theater, because even then he had completed projects in Milan's La Scala or London's Covent Garden, his colleagues, whether in the carpentry, welding or tailoring workshops, accepted me very quickly and heartily. I never felt that, as a foreigner, I had to somehow justify the reason why I was there, why I was doing it and not someone from the local environment. And not only in the theater, but also in other areas in which I later worked. During my work, I got to know young talented directors, with whom, in addition to opera, I also did decorations in films, commercials, or scenography in drama. Later, he started working at the National Opera as an independent scenographer, and in 2005-2006 he even became the chief scenographer of the Bolshoi Theater in Warsaw, where he created stage designs for several well-known operas and ballets. Where does your original artistic expression come from, what are you inspired by and what materials do you like to use in your work? I'll admit honestly that I don't really like the definition of my own style. In the theater or in architecture, I am much closer to contextual thinking, that is, the analysis of the people I work with, the place where I work and the text I work with. This has a major impact on the way you think about the show. I don't like to follow a scheme that is only mine. I like to learn, I like to follow the path where cooperation with different people makes my work here more interesting. So maybe rather than a style, I would call this diversity an approach to creation. Because the result may be different in the end, but the approach to the topic always starts with my internal analysis of the music and the text and then a very intense debate with the directors, during which we exchange a lot of impulses, metaphors, signs, analyzes from the point of view of psychology or sociology of the environment in which the production will take place. And from all this we create a kind of map, and it is the basis of specific solutions. What probably characterizes me is that I see opera as a contemporary genre. I am not a scenographer who reconstructs historical environments. All my scenographies draw inspiration from the contemporary or abstract environment, and if a historical element happens to appear, it is a consciously quoted element of the current story. I like to use different methods, different styles, different colors. Sometimes it is a decoration based on one large sculptural gesture, and sometimes it can be about thirty film images, which allows us to attract a much younger audience to the opera. If the story takes place, for example, in a castle, as in Béla Bartók's opera Bluebeard, where the space is actually a metaphor for Bluebeard's inner world, in my idea of ​​a man who tries to manipulate a young woman in a relationship and opens idealistic spaces for her. And those spaces can be contemporary, it can be a modern bathroom, a beautiful living room or a fantastic bedroom. He collaborated with renowned world directors, but most often with the Polish director Mariusz Trélinský, for whom he created scenographies for famous operas such as Madame Butterfly, King Roger, Otello, Don Giovanni, Eugene Onegin, Queen of Spades, Bohemia, Orpheus and Eurydice, Boris Godunov , La traviata, Turandot, The Lost Dutchman, Salome and others. Do you have a special relationship with this director when you prefer to work with him? A scenographer is a person who is invited to cooperate. Mariusz and I met right at the beginning of my time in Warsaw, and since we are close by generation, we started looking for a common path in the opera, which was much more interesting. We started opening doors to each other and learning together. Cooperation with Mariusz has always been organic. We never precisely defined our roles during the creation. I often spoke to the director and Mariusz, on the other hand, to the set designer. I trusted him in his artistic intuition and he often expected from me the ideas that the space offered. Well, this method of cooperation has been working for us for almost 26 years. It is true that I worked with Mariusz probably the most intensively, but later my work was also noticed by directors abroad, such as the renowned British opera director Keth Warner, or the Japanese director Amon Miyamoto, or the Slovak director Sláva Daubnerová, with whom I worked on several projects. Through Warsaw, the doors to most of the famous opera houses around the world opened for you. Let us mention, for example, the Metropolitan Opera in New York, Covent Garden in London, Festival d'Aix-en-Provence, Théatre Royal de la Monnaie in Brussels, State Opera Berlin, Washington Opera, Opera in Los Angeles, Welsh National Opera in Cardiff, Theater an der Wien, Tokyo Bunka Kaikan, Opéra du Rhin in Strasbourg, Semper Opera in Dresden, San Francisco Opera, Frankfurt Opera, Royal Swedish opera in Stockholm, the Royal Danish Opera in Copenhagen, the Mariinsky Theater in St. Petersburg and the Festspielhaus in Baden-Baden. What is the difference between making scenography in Poland and abroad? Can it even be compared? It certainly can, because the Warsaw Opera is now a European institution and is a very interesting partner for European or world opera houses, because an interesting repertoire and interesting realizations are created here. And over the past 15 years, almost every production that Mariusz and I have created at the Velky Theater, where he is the artistic director, has been in co-production with one or more foreign opera scenes. And in most cases, the decoration and costumes were made in Warsaw in such a way that we were able to set them up also on the partner stage abroad. This is a very common phenomenon today, that leading opera institutions combine their forces and financial possibilities, when the stage, costumes and artistic concept are common property, but each opera then has its own musical team, singing team, conductor, etc. Therefore, from the point of view of the creation itself, I do not see any big differences in that work. The differences are more in the fact that each of the opera houses has a different repertoire or a different system in which it is performed. Some operas play a different title every day, some play 5 titles in 1.5 months, and some play 1 title for a whole month. So the demands are placed more on logistics. If I know in advance that the stage has to leave the stage at the New York Metropolitan Opera within 4 hours and at the same time the stage has to be set up for the next opera performance, then I have to think about it in advance and at the same time know the technical and logistical possibilities of the individual opera houses. Sometimes you also return to Slovakia or the Czech Republic for work. He did scenography for the Slovak National Theater in Bratislava, but also for the Czech National Theater in Prague. You still feel some nostalgia when you return to the home scenes. How do you cooperate with Slovak artists, if you look at it through the lens of experiences gained abroad? Returning to the environment that shaped me as a young person is always interesting for me, because Czechoslovak culture will forever be a part of my DNA. These are very pleasant meetings with people with whom we studied together or started a professional journey through the theater. But it must also be said that we have many interesting Slovak or Czech artists in the field of world opera, whom we meet on foreign stages, and our mutual contact is then all the more natural thanks to our origins. However, opera primarily has an international dimension, while each artist who participates in it may come from a completely different part of the world, from a different cultural environment, but what unites us is a common work. I admit that I don't really distinguish where I work because I am constantly on the go, I always quickly adapt to the given environment and my way of thinking is independent of where I am. I always try to find the best shape, the best form, the best concept of an opera theme, to make an interesting story out of it, to be attractive to the audience and to be an active element in moving a multidisciplinary genre like opera forward. You are the holder of a gold medal from the Prague Quadrennial of World Scenography from 2007 and also from 2015. In 2011, you were even appointed its general commissioner, responsible for the light and sound section of this exhibition. What led you to participate and work at this important international event? I even had the fourth experience with this event, and as students we participated in this prestigious international festival of performing arts. But at that time I never even dreamed that one day I would exhibit there as an independent artist. Just as I could not have imagined that one day in my career I would work on stages such as London's Covent Garden, the Metropolitan Opera in New York or the Vienna State Opera. All this just happened in my life. And it happened similarly in the case of the Prague Quadrennial. In 2007, I received an invitation from Silvia Hroncová from the Slovak Theater Institute for a monographic exhibition, because I already had many scenographies in European and world theaters in my portfolio, but then in Prague the organizers of the Prague Quadrennial approached me directly with an offer to be the general commissioner of the event. And later, another offer came from the Theater Institute from Vladi Fekete to realize the Slovak pavilion as a tribute to Professor Milan Čorb, who was a very important person in my career, so it was a matter of course for me to take part in it. In addition to working for the theater, in recent years he began to devote himself more to architecture. You were a partner of the architectural studio WWAA and today, under the brand Boris Kudlička and partners, you implement interior design proposals for luxurious commercial and private spaces. Probably the most famous projects in which you participated were the interior of the Europejski Hotel and the Belveder restaurant in Warsaw, the renovation of the interior of the Malachowski Palace in Naleczow, but also several private investment projects in Qatar or Switzerland. What leads a successful scenographer, who certainly has no shortage of work in the theater, to dedicate himself to architecture? I like to try new things in life and they then move me forward. I was already close to architecture at school, but in the 1990s architecture was quite gray in our country, so theater won. The world exhibition EXPO was such a turning point towards architecture for me. I realized two Polish pavilions for EXPO, one in Hanover and the other in Shanghai, where I entered the architectural space with theater experience. After this experience, I joined forces with the architectural studio WWAA and later created my own brand, where perhaps the biggest milestone was the realization of the interior of the luxurious Hotel Europejski in Warsaw. And with that, together with my team, we gained such a huge experience in this area that we thought it would be a shame to keep it only at the level of a random project. In addition, many people became interested in us, especially Polish investors who implement their projects abroad, so we are currently working on several projects at the same time. We carry out, for example, the reconstruction of a historical building in Malta, we start with a large project in South Africa or the reconstruction of an apartment in Paris. For me, architecture is similar to telling a story in the theater, where I have to analyze the given space at the beginning, then the story and the needs of the people who will live in it, and on this basis I then create a concept, which is very close to my approach to the theater. He has won many awards during his rich career. For example, the Theater Institute award for scenography for the Richard II production at the National Theater in Warsaw, the Polish Gloria Artis bronze and silver medal for cultural contribution, the Dosky Slovak theater awards, the Polish Culture.pl Superbrand award, the CK Norwid Masovian Voivodeship awards or the Gwarancja Kultury television awards . The 2010 EXPO pavilion in Shanghai, China, on which he collaborated, won a silver medal. The operas Madame Butterfly, Bohéma or Don Giovanni, which you did with Mariusz Trélinský, were staged by Placido Domingo in Washington and Los Angeles. What do you consider to be your greatest achievement in life? I would not like to define what my greatest success is, I would rather call it what makes me happy. And that is probably my freedom and independence in making decisions, in choosing the projects I want to implement, in choosing the people I want to work with, and the fact that I am not bored in my work. She makes me happy, she develops me, and in each of my realizations there is some personal story that will always remain in me as some new experience, whether it is from meeting interesting people, places or cultures. I like my job and I try to approach it honestly. In our work, the most important thing is that I can name the certainty of the story I'm working on in five sentences. Someone can't do it at all, and someone needs a thousand sentences to express it. The power of the story lies mainly in its essence, which opens up certain images, but at the same time leaves room for the audience to enter and interpret it for themselves. Well, I am definitely the greatest joy from my family, because it actually gives meaning to everything I do. And what about Ružomberok? With your workload, do you ever find time to visit your hometown? After all that you have been through in life, what is your relationship with the small town where you come from? My relationship with Ružomberok has not changed in any way. It is my home, I have family and friends there, and the contact with the city is still very close. It is a city that is surrounded by mountains on all sides, and that always evokes in me the association of my native nest. I visit it two to three times a year, I follow what is happening there, just as I follow the situation in the entire Slovak society. There are things that make me happy, but also things that bother me terribly. I live by it and I am not indifferent to it. The native region evokes in a person a feeling of some kind of anchoring or essence from which he arose and that is unchanging. The interview was prepared by: Vladimír Dubeň
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