Contemporary European and American drama, above all, have established themselves. Slovak drama is less well represented, even in the Slovak National Theatre, a fact which has drawn sharp rebuke from the critics. The more important initiatives in terms of the progress of Slovak theatre in the 1990s have tended to come from smaller, fringe types of companies and the dramatists writing for them, including Rudolf Sloboda, Viliam Klimáček, Laco Kerata and Blahoslav Uhlár. Postmodernist principles have made their appearance. For commercial reasons several theatres have mounted lavish productions of musicals, and on the whole repertories feature more commercial productions than in the past. From the historical point of view it is an extremely interesting phenomenon how, in the space of a century, a strong national theatre culture has evolved from humble amateur origins – a culture historically continuous, internally richly structured and standing comparison with any other developed European theatre culture.