Marija Havran

Biography

Studied graphic design in Novi Sad, Serbia, and subsequently at the Academy of Fine and Applied Arts in Belgrade. Between 1991 and 1996 she studied set and costume design under Prof. Jozef Ciller at the University of Performing Arts in Bratislava (VŠMU). She worked briefly at the VŠMU in the set design department and the department of theatre studies. Yet her main profession remains set and costume design, primarily for a number of Slovak and Czech theatres. Extensive indeed has been her work for the Slovak National Theatre in Bratislava, for which she has created costumes for numerous productions, including Sherman’s When She Danced..., Weiss’s Marat-Sade, Schimmelpfennig’s Arabian Night, Büchner’s Leonce und Lena (nominated for the DOSKY Slovak theatre award for Best Costumes) and Schiller’s Intrigue and Love (DOSKY 2007 award for Best Costumes). In Slovakia she also worked for the Astorka-Korzo 90 Theatre and the alternative GUnaGU theatre. She has collaborated most frequently with the stage directors Silvester Lavrík (for example, on his own plays Alžbeta Báthory and Yellow Lilly), Roman Polák (for example, Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing and Puccini’s Tosca at the State Theatre in Košice, Turgenev’s A Month in the Country at the Astorka-Korzo 90 Theatre, etc.) and, above all, Martin Čičvák, in whose productions she has participated not only at the Slovak National Theatre (Arabian Night, Intrigue and Love, Leonce und Lena, etc.) but also at the National Theatre in Brno (Kafka’s The Castle, Goldoni’s I pettegolezzi delle donne (Women’s Gossip), Sophocles’ Antigone), at Prague’s Činoherní klub (for example, Moliere’s Le Misanthrope and Chekhov’s Ivanov), at the J. K. Tyl Theatre in Pilsen (Bellini’s I Capuleti e i Montecchi, under the title Julie, and Mozart’s Die Entführung aus dem Serail) and at the National Theatre Drama in Prague (Brecht’s The Good Person of Setzuan – 2003, The Thousand and One Nights – 2005, Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice – 2009). She has also worked for theatres in Wroclaw, Budapest and Ljubljana. Moreover, she has created set design for dance projects, including Women for the Adato Dance Group, and Soliloquy and Dolcissime sirene for Bratislava’s Debris Company. Photo: Ilona Sochorová