MAJA GREGL


LUCRETIA BORGIA'S SMILE

- A Drama -


THEME: Woman - the secret through the Borgia family myth
NUMBER OF CHARACTERS: 3 (1 male and 2 female)
NUMBER OF ACTS: 24 scenes
SETTING: A modestly furnished room with mirrors
TIME: The 16th century and today
WRITTEN IN: 2001

SUMMARY:
Lucretia Borgia became a myth in her own relatively short lifetime as an extraordinary beauty, the daughter of Pope Alexander VI. She inspired Renaissance painters and poets, and had a reputation as a harlot, poisoner and desecrater. Five hundred years later the play transforms the myth: Lucretia is no longer (only) a female criminal; she herself is the victim of crimes - those which take place somewhere in the darkness of a bedroom, far from the eyes of the public and morals. Lucretia Borgia's Smile is a drama of female identity, a creature searching for her own self. The young Lucretia, at the beginning of her life's journey, confront the Lucretia at the end, and their dialogue gradually tears away the layers of myth in the search for artistic truth - the denuded human being who yearns for the right to a life of her own and does not want to be instrumentalised.

A Happening for Lucretia was held at the Museum of Arts and Crafts in Zagreb on July 6 2001.

The play has been translated into English.

CLARA SCHUMANN

- Radio play -

TOPIC: Clara Schumann's biography
NUMBER OF CHARACTERS: 3 male (F. Wieck, R. Schumann, J. Brahms) and 1 female (C. Schumann)
TIME: the mid-19th century

SUMMARY:
The German pianiste and composer Clara Wieck-Schumann lived from 1819 to 1896. Brahms, Mendelssohn, Franz Liszt and other famous composers dedicated their works to her. Her childhood, ingenuity, strict upbringing with piano playing as its focus, love for her husband Robert Schumann, who suffered from mental disease early in his life, and a futile search of comfort in her relationshipwith Brahms-all ofthese topics have been touched upon in Maja Gregl's play, in an attempt to revive the atmosphere of love and the state of being torn between family and music, the altruistic giving of self - of more than self.

This play was broadcast on Croatian Radio in June, 1994.


FOUR ROSES

- Radio play -

TOPIC: a psychological and love triangle
NUMBER OF CHARACTERS: 2 male and 1 female
NUMBER OF ACTS: 1
PLACE: Zagreb (streets, cafes), the coast
TIME: the present

SUMMARY:
The radio play "Four Roses" deals with a typical love triangle. The characters' natures are shown in their main contours, but with emphasis on the main problem common to them all: the impossibility of establishing contact on the one hand, and the desperate wish and endeavour, on the other, to realise this contact in orderto avoid loneliness and boredom. He and She wish to be together, but they are both burdened with the past and excessive analysis of their lives, to the extent that they fail to realise theirwish. They blame each other for lack of understanding, pettiness of mind, boredom, for everything that they have brought upon themselves single-handedly. She will regard a Friend - the third character - as a possible way out of the situation.

The play was originally broadcast on Croatian Radio in May 1993.


ALMA - A BREATH OF LOVE, A BREATH OF DEATH

- A Biographical Radio Play -

NUMBER OF CHARACTERS: 2 female, 5 male
NUMBER OF ACTS: 5 scenes
PLACE: The Mahler Home
TIME: The Viennese Secession [Art nouveau] Period
WRITTEN IN: 1993

SUMMARY:
This radio play tells of the life of Alma Mahler wife of the famous composer Gustav Mahler Her wondrous personality and life full of inspiration excitement and woe left deep traces both in the unique music of Gustav Mahler, and in the works of other great artists of the Viennese circle, such as Walter Gropius Gustav Klimt Franz Werfel and Oscar Kokoschka. This is a particularly nostalgic memoir of the atmosphere of the Viennese Secession era shown through love and artwhich seektheir sensors in all periods.

The play was first aired on Croatian Radio in 1993.


THE SECRET OF THE CRAG

- a Radio Play -

NUMBER OF CHARACTERS: 1 female, 1 male
NUMBER OF ACTS: 3 scenes
PLACE: In an automobile on a road, in a room
TIME: The Present
WRITTEN IN: 1994

SUMMARY:
The conversation between a psychiatrist and a woman suffering from post-traumatic shock is the thread of this drama on the theme of doubles. The theme is gradually built up in layers each stage having its threshold: first there was love, then a happy marriage followed by motherhood and finally by a feeling of desolation disorientation in time and space destruction of the being by everyday life and the struggle of the soul between supremacy and subordmation. The secret of a traffic accident - whether planned or a chance occurrence - has left behind a wounded woman, her inner being shattered who has to continue life with her husband after the death of her child.

This play was first performed in the Radio Atelier of Croatian Radio in April, 1994.


SHIPBOARD ENCOUNTER

- A Psychological Drama-

THEME: A love triangle in war-time
NUMBER OF CHARACTERS: 5 (3 male, 2 female)
NUMBER OF ACTS: 3 scenes
PLACE: A room at the university, on board ship, the Baroque staircase beside the Jesuit Monastery in Dubrovnik
TIME: 1991 - During the Homeland War.

SUMMARY:
The action takes place on the ship Slavija I which sailed for besieged Dubrovnik in 1991. Lucija is travelling to her boyfriend, a war-time journalist and photo-journalist who has been in the cut-off city for a month, without electricity and water. Lucija wants to examine her relationship with him in a place where memories bind them. For some time now, Lucija has been having an affair with her professor, a married man who is too old to change his life. On the ship she meets Ana, the wife of her lover, who has the wisdom and experience to help Lucija to overcome her fear and frustration in relation to men, but also to force her to reveal her secret. Ana is not on good terms with her husband, and is a woman who is no longer prepared to put up with his scholarly criticism of everything she does. Despite his objections and his offensive behaviour towards her before she left, she had been determined to leave on the ship. For Ana, the journey by ship in a war environment and the friendship she strikes up with the pianist on the ship will have a cathartic effect - still in love, she will leave the husband with whom she has lived for years in a bad marriage, abused and wounded as an individual, but with courage enough for life without him.

The play has been translated into English, while the radio version had its premiere in 1997 on Croatian Radio.


THE BLACKMAILER

- A Psychological Thriller -

NUMBER OF CHARACTERS: 3 (2 female, 1 male)
NUMBER OF ACTS: 2
PLACE: A drawing room
TIME: Act 1 - the beginning of the century; Act 2 - the present
WRITTEN IN: 1999

SUMMARY:
The play was inspired by Stefan Zweig's novel Fear. Act 1 deals with the psychological relationship of a man and his wife who is cheating on him a type of mental torture. The woman's guilty conscience has already reduced her to a state of mental instability, and she is being frightened by a woman who is blackmailing her and threatening to tell her husband about the affair. As the blackmailer had been waiting for her when she had come out of her lover's flat, she believed the threats and finds the money to pay her off. However, the blackmailer does not go away... Caught in the net of hex own lies, the woman decides to confess everything to her husband, but finds that her husband had hired the blackmailer to frighten her and to bring her back to him.., Aci 2 takes place in the present with the role of the blackmailer taken by the wife's best friend who uses her infidelity to seduce the husband...


BIOGRAPHY:

Maja Gregl (Zagreb, 1957) graduated from the Faculty of Philosopy (1983) and the ADA (1982) in Zagreb. Since 1982, she has been writing radio plays and adaptations of works from Croatian theatre heritage, particularly from the time of the Modern. Her plays What On Earth Happened to Them? (1982) and Alma Mahler have won prizes (the Marin Držić, 1996, and the Marul, 1999). In collaboration with Ivica Boban, the theatre director, her Alma Mahler was premiered on April 14 1999 at the &TD Theatre in Zagreb, it went through some 100 performances and won important awards at theatre festivals throughout Croatia. Maja Gregl works for the Croatian Radio Television Drama Programme and has been script editor for a series of films for established young directors (such as Brešan, Nola, and Hribar), and for television adaptations. She has written radio plays including Yvette's Letters, Four Roses, The Secret of the Cliff, Klara Shumann, and Alma Mahler, and radio short stories, Brest on the Kupa, Letters to Tomas, Answer and The Promise. Her most recent play, Lucretia Borgia's Smile, published by Modern Times, has been written for Veronika Durbešić, the actress.

ADDRESS:

Maja Gregl, Drama Programme, Croatian Television,
Prisavlje 3, 10000 Zagreb
Tel.: +385 1 634 3533; Fax: +385 1 634 3534;
Cell Phone: +385 98 418 078