Starting from the 1960s, major playwrights such as Peter Karvaš and Ivan Bukovčan dispensed with ideological constraints and numbered among their sources of inspiration the modern world theatre – including Durrenmatt, Miller, Williams, Albee, Mrožek, Sartre, Beckett and Camus – which began to appear on Slovak stages. Set-designer Ladislav Vychodil enjoyed a particularly creative period, and a Bratislava school in the profession was established.
If the 1950s were years of inertion and obscurity, the 1960s brought a new florescence and constitute Slovak theatre’s second apex of the century. No longer, however, was this due solely to Bratislava theatres, but also to a number of others, primarily those in Nitra (director Pavol Haspra), Martin (directors Miloš Pietor and Vladimír Strnisko) and Košice (director Jozef Palka). It is interesting that many of those who in the 1950s had enthusiastically embraced the ideas of the then ascendant Communism soon returned to sobriety and from the 1960s fought against the failings of the regime, against the abuse of power and the growth of provincialism and careerism. The 1950s and 1960s thus seem to belong inseparably to each other like the two sides of the moon, two poles of the same generation.
The end of the 1960s brought a further differentiation within the theatre. A new generation came forth and in drama gravitated to Bratislava’s Theatre on the Corso (Divadlo na korze, 1968-1971). Professional mime made its appearance, mostly thanks to Milan Sládek and Eduard Žlábek, while theatre cabaret had its exponents in Milan Lasica, Július Satinský and Stanislav Štepka.
There was substantial movement, too, at the end of the 1950s in puppet theatre. After 1948 most of the touring companies that had operated in the first half of the century had disappeared. A historic impetus came with the visit in 1948 and 1949 of Moscow’s State Central Puppet Theatre led by Sergey Obraztsov. This company used rod puppets (controlled from below) and it was these that gradually achieved prevalence in Slovakia. A number of professional puppet theatres were established in the 1950s, in Žilina, Nitra, Bratislava, Košice and Banská Bystrica. At Nitra Ján Romanovský developed a distinct technique of control which was adopted by other companies. Starting in the 1960s the State Puppet Theatre (Štátne bábkové divadlo) in Bratislava became the focus of a group of aspiring individuals – artist Bohdan Slavík, repertory adviser Vladimír Predmerský and writer Ján Ozábal – who created an environment conducive to the staging of a number of poetic and symbolist productions, including Moment muzical (1967) and Concertino unisono (1973).