Zuzana Uličianska

Zuzana Uličianska is theatre critic, journalist, manager and playwright. Since 1996 she has been an initiator and co-organiser of a theatre awards DOSKY - BOARDS. From 2002 she has been head of the Slovak Section of the AICT. She has lectured theatre management and cultural policy at the Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts (VŠMU). As a theatre critic she has co-operated with Divadlo v medzičase and Kod theatre magazines. She was a member of the artistic team of the Divadelná Nitra International Theatre Festival.

Zuzana Ulicianska’s paper entitled "Two Degrees of Separation" begins with the proposition that if we go along with the thesis that everyone on Earth is at most six steps from another person, then in Slovakia the distance between friends is three steps, and decreases further to only two steps within the theatre community. Although 5 million Slovaks do not know each other personally, the author’s experience proves that the same cannot be claimed for the two thousand strong theatre community. Such a situation challenges the professional and personal integrity of the theatre critic. How can one avoid writing about friends, employers, past or future colleagues, old friends or even past lovers? The situation involves conflicts of interest of various degrees, which in a small country like Slovakia take on unusual forms, consistent with the critic’s clashing activities.