MY WIFE'S HUSBAND
- A Comedy -
THEME: Bigamy
NUMBER OF CHARACTERS: 2 (2 males)
NUMBER OF ACTS: 1 scene
SETTING: A Dalmatian kitchen
TIME: Now
WRITTEN FROM: 1989 to 1991

SUMMARY:
Two middle-aged men have been married to the same woman for five years without either of them being aware of the other. How is that possible? Their wife works as an attendant in a train which plies between Ljubljana and Split. She spends two days with one husband in Ljubljana, Slovenia and the other two with her other husband in Split, Croatia. One day the Slovenian husband finds a marriage certificate in the lining of his wife's coat and realises that his wife has an additional husband. Shocked at this revelation, he tells her nothing but in two month's time travels to Split to meet "his wife's husband". The two men have to agree on how to continue their lives and whose "their" wife will be in the future. There are a series of ups and downs which make it seem that all solutions are possible.

The play was premiered in 1991 and five premieres followed in professional theatres (in Zagreb, Ljubljana, Šibenik, Tuzla, and Sarajevo). The Šibenik performance was repeated 170 times and the one in Ljubljana played 270 times and was seen by 110 000 people. The play has been translated into Slovenian, English, Slovakian, German and Polish. The text was published in the book Funny Plays in the Croatian Centre of ITI-UNESCO Series Mansions in 1996.

NIGHT OF THE GODS
- A Drama -
THEME: The conflict between politicians and artists
NUMBER OF CHARACTERS: 3 (male)
NUMBER OF ACTS: A one-act play
PLACE: A palace storeroom - a cellar
TIME: 1673
WRITTEN IN: 1986

SUMMARY:
One evening on the tenth anniversary of their friendship and the first time they got drunk together, Louis XIV of France, his Jester and the famous writer Moliere, come together to get drunk together again. In the middle of the fun, the King reveals to his friends that he has heard that the two of them play in a farce about him, in which they make a mockery of him. He forces them to play the farce for him. The farce pokes fun - to the point of grotesque - at Louis's faults and mode of government, while the story focuses on an actress whom both Louis XIV and Moliere had loved, but who had committed suicide when the King had tried to force her to become his mistress. The friendship between the three men is shattered, the King dismisses Moliere, and only then do we learn that the Jester had been pulling the strings. The Jester demands that Moliere be punished by death, that he be forced to take poison before the performance begins.

The play was premiered at the Montenegrin National Theatre in Podgorica in 1986, and at the ITD [Etc.] Theatre in Zagreb in 1987. It has been translated into English, German, Slovenian, French and Czech.

CHEKHOV SAYS GOOD-BYE TO TOLSTOY
- A Drama -
NUMBER OF CHARACTERS: 2 female, 2 male
NUMBER OF ACTS: 9 scenes
PLACE: A parlour, a bedroom
TIME: 1890
WRITTEN IN: 1988

SUMMARY:
The young writer Chekhov and his wife Olga come to visit at the estate of the aged writer Tolstoy, where he lives with his wife Sophia. Soon Tolstoy tries to seduce the young Olga, while Sophia tries her wiles on the young Chekhov. There is a conflict between the old writer and his young colleague. A play packed with irony, humour and a feeling of lonesomeness.

The play had its premiere at the ITD [Etc.] Theatre in Zagreb in 1990, and it has been translated into English, German and Czech.

FORGET HOLLYWOOD
- A Drama -
NUMBER OF CHARACTERS: 2 (male)
NUMBER OF ACTS: 1
PLACE: A rehearsal room
TIME: 1996
WRITTEN IN 1996

SUMMARY:
A young man who has been trying for years, without success, to become a professional actor, starts coming for tutoring to a professor of acting at the Theatre Academy to prepare for his entrance exam. The two establish an unusual closeness which gradually grows into ruthless competition. The interweaving of the comic and the dramatic gradually leads to an unexpected conclusion. Premiered at the Epilogue Theatre in Zagreb in 1997; part of the theatre's repertoire.

DEATH OF AN ACTOR
- A Drama -
THEME: Thespian life and death
NUMBER OF CHARACTERS: 1 female, 1 male
NUMBER OF ACTS: 2
SETTING: theatre stage
TIME: Spring, 1994
WRITTEN IN: 1994

SUMMARY:
A sixty-year-old amateur actor has for a full forty years been following the life and work of Croatia's greatest theatre actress. When her career fades, he invites her to a retirement home to play together with him in a play which he has written for the two of them. Rehearsing the play, they both compile inventories of their own lives - which have unexpectedly flared up since they have been together. The drama is drenched in emotion but is also full of huour. The sole characters are Tom and Eva.

Premiered at the Epilogue Theatre in Zagreb in 1995, and translated into English, German, Italien, Slovenian, Bulgarian and Dutch.

CREON'S ANTIGONE
- A Drama -
THEME: Political manipulation
NUMBER OF CHARACTERS: 1 female, 1 male
NUMBER OF ACTS: A one-act play, 2 scenes
SETTING: A dungeon
TIME: The distant past
WRITTEN IN: 1983

SUMMARY:
The tyrant Creon wants to rid himself of all his political opponents and his wife, his son, his son's fiancee Antigone, and her brothers Eteocles and Polynaeces. So he write a drama - a script - by which their deaths will appear to be a family tragedy. The drama is the same one we know as Sophocles Antigone. Creon has to win over Antigone for his monstrous plan to work and he has her arrested the very same day. And when it seems that everything will work out as he has planned, Antigone rebels - there is a dual turn of events which demonstrates the incredible dimensions of political manipulation. The play has a cast of only two: Creon and Antigone.

Premiered at the Gavella Drama Theatre in Zagreb in 1983, and translated into English, German, Italien, Slovenian, Bulgarian, and Dutch.

GEORGE WASHINGTON'S LOVES
- A Drama -
THEME: A bogus love triangle
NUMBER OF CHARACTERS: 2 female
NUMBER OF ACTS: A one-act play
SETTING: Mount Vernon, Virginia
TIME: January 14, 1800, noon
WRITTEN IN: 1988

SUMMARY:
A month after the death of the great President, his widow Martha invites her husband's mistress, Sylvia Carver, to visit her. In the dramatic encounter, full of emotion, the two rivals for the first time tell each other the truth, and uncover the past in a completely new light. The powerful struggle between the wife and the mistress takes the audience into an unexpected turnabout. The play gives the actresses an opportunity for building of the strong characters.

Number of characters: 2

The play was first performed in the &TD Theatre in Zagreb in 1988, and has been performed to date in fourteen different theatres. It has been translated into English, German, Polish, Esperanto, Slovenian, Bulgarian, Slovakian and Persian.

ROYALTY AND ROGUES
- A Drama -
THEME: Love and political scheming NUMBER OF CHARACTERS: 3 female, 8 male NUMBER OF ACTS: 2 SETTING: A royal court TIME: 10th century WRITTEN IN: 1983; and then adapted in 1987 and 1999

SUMMARY:
The play takes place at the court of the first Croatian king, Marun. Marun's Chancellor tries to take the King's crown for himself. He has been Queen Jelena's lover for several years. The Chancellor's daughter, Dora, is engaged to the King's son who has hatched his own plot to cheat both his father and the King. This is a thought-provoking play about political intrigues, women in politics, and the struggle for power. The psychology of wartime and contemporary political manipulation testify indirectly to the Balkans in recent years.

Number of characters: 11

This play in written in Shakespearean style but definitely has a modern air. Premiered at the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center in Waterford, U.S.A., in 1999.

SHAKESPEARE AND ELIZABETH
- A Drama -
THEME: Love and politics
NUMBER OF CHARACTERS: 2 female, 2 male
NUMBER OF ACTS: 1, 10 scenes
SETTING: The actors' dressing-room, the court
TIME: Late 16th century
WRITTEN IN: 1992

SUMMARY:
The young thirty year old playwright, William Shakespeare, is deeply and unhappily in love with Queen Elizabeth, who is almost twice his age. The only person in whom he confides is his friend Jane. At the same time Queen Elizabeth falls in love with the young Shakespeare, and she tells her secret to her court advisor, the Earl of Wales, who opposes for political reasons the Queen's attachment. A meeting between the Queen and the playwright soon takes place with an unusual interweaving between the world of the theatre and the world of politics.

Premiered at the Italian Drama in Rijeka, 1997. The play is available in English and Croatian.

DR. FREUD'S PATIENT
- A Drama -
NUMBER OF CHARACTERS: 2 male, 1 female
NUMBER OF ACTS: A one-act play, 7 scenes
SETTING: A psychiatrist's consulting room, a hotel room
TIME: 1919
WRITTEN IN: 1993

SUMMARY:
This grotesque takes place in 1919 in Vienna. The thirty-year-old Adolf Hitler comes to Sigmund Freud's consulting room with his girl-friend Christine, look for help. Their sex life is not developing as Adolph would hope. Freud agrees to treat these unusual patients, but it is not long before unexpectedly unpleasant things start happening. The characters of the young dictator-to-be and the world's most famous psychiatrist are sketched with a great deal of humour.

The play was first performed at the Zagreb Youth Theatre in 1994. It was later premiered in Hungary and in Slovenia. Freud has been translated into German, English, Hungarian, Slovenian and Czech.

SUMMARY:
Each of the three female actors in this play plays five different roles. The play is structured in an unusual way with five life stories alternatively interweaving. In one story, the heroines are two sisters who have been on bad terms for years because of a man whom they both loved, while their mother tries to reconcile them. The second story is about two friends whose relationship undergoes a crisis when a third woman appears. In the third story, the heroines are three secretaries, each of whom wants to advance her career. The fourth story concentrates of three old ladies living in a retirement home. The heroines in the fifth story are little girls at a kindergarten.
The play was premiered in the autumn of 2000 at the Epilogue Theatre in Zagreb. It has been translated into English.

BIOGRAPHY:

Miro Gavran (1961) received his B.A. in Dramaturgy at the Academy of Dramatic Arts in Zagreb. He writes plays, novels, screenplays and young people’s literature. His plays have been translated into seventeen languages and staged 108 times with seven thousand re-runs and over a million two hundred thousand viewers in Croatia, the Netherlands, USA, Slovenia, Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria and other countries. He is the sole Croatian playwright whose play was performed at the celebrated “Eugene O’Neill Center”. He is the winner of fifteen literary and theatre awards, among them the “Central European Time Award” in Budapest, an award given to the best Central European writers. In 2003, the Gavranfest festival was established in Slovakia, dedicated exclusively to his plays and comedies, making him one of the rare living writers in Europe with their own festival. Major plays produced in professional theatres: Creont’s Antigone, Night of the Gods, George Washington’s Loves, The Cheerful Rectangle, Chekhov Said Good-bye to Tolstoy, It’s Hard to Say Good-bye, Othello from the Island of Susak, Death of an Actor, Shakespeare and Elisabeth, Royalty and Rogues, All About Women, My Wife’s Husband, Dr. Freud’s Patient, Forget Hollywood.

ADDRESS:
Miro Gavran, Dugi Dol 58c, 10000 Zagreb
E-mail: miro.gavran@zg.tel.hr; www.tel.hr/mgavran2