Divadlo Aréna

Arena Theatre is one of the oldest public theatres in the city of Bratislava. It was built in 1828 on the Petržalka bank of the Danube river, in the vicinity of a historic park. Originally, the theatre was conceived as a summer outdoor stage, hence the name Arena. In 1898 a new covered theatre building was erected on the original site and the new theatre appearance has remained almost unchanged until nowadays.

Since its foundation until the end of the World War II many Hungarian, Austrian and German theatre groups performed at  Arena. One of them came from a popular Vienna theatre Theatre an der Wien, which performed here regularly since 1921.

In 1893 Arena Theatre witnessed the artistic beginnings of the German actor Max Reinhardt who later became a Director of Deutsche Theatre in Berlin. Another popular European actor of that time, the prime comedian and mime of the royal theatres of Paris and London Eduard Klisching made many unforgettable performances in front of Bratislava audience.

Unfortunately, after the World Word II the theatre was closed down and was used as a  depository warehouse of the Slovak Television. It took almost fifty year before Arena Theatre reopened; in 1994 a  Slovak actor Milan Sládek first founded the Foundation for Arena Theatre revival and the following year restoration works began. The grand opening night took in place 1997 in the already newly restored original historic building and saw a performance of Grand Pierot. Other plays soon followed: King Ubu, The Marriage of Figaro, Carmen, The Threepenny opera, and many others. An international mime festival Juggler took place at Arena Theatre every year between 1996 and 2002.

In September 2002 the Bratislava region government, the theatre´s new supervisory body, appointed a popular Slovak actor Juraj Kukura the new director of Arena Theatre. Director Kukura introduced a new concept of a multi-genre theatre and under his management the theatre is nowadays also used for various cultural activities and events. The first performance staged in the new Arena Theatre was a play You (2003) by a contemporary Russian author Olga Muchina.

One of the greatest successes of Arena Theatre was Edward Albee´s The Goat or else Who is Silvia? (directed by Martin Čičvák), which received five nominations and won two awards in the prestigious theatre competition Dosky 2004 (Juraj Kukura for the best male performance and Emília Vášáryová for the best female performance of the year). Both actors also received the Literary Fund Award 2004 for their artistic performance in this play.

In March 2005 Arena premiered a new play Tiso (written and directed by Rastislav Ballek), a story of a Catholic priest Jozef Tiso who during the World War II became a president of the Slovak puppet state and sent over 70,000 Jews to Nazi concentration camps. Also this play received several nominations and awards - Marián Labuda won the Dosky 2005 award for the best male performance, while the play received The best play of the year award.

However, Arena Theatre is not only about theatre plays nowadays. Since 2002 Arena runs unique cultural events directed by Jozef Bednárik with participation of some of the most popular Slovak and foreign artists - The Jewish Night (2003), The Austrian Night (2004), The German Night (2005), The Swiss Night (2007), and The Italian night (2008). During the all-night event the theatre visitors have a chance of experience a culture of a geographically close yet culturally distant country, along with its traditions, customs, languages and cuisine.

Since 2003 Arena Theatre has also been organizing a unique summer holidays project in cooperation with Comenius University of Bratislava – the Children Comenius University. Every year during the months of July and August hundreds of 9- to 13-year-old children from the whole Slovakia have a chance to experience a life of university students. The Children University project includes lectures on many interesting topics brought by famous university professors and adapted to the children´s age. Upon completing the presentations every participant graduates from the Children University and receives a Children University Graduate Diploma.