Matko Sršen
Matko Sršen is a director, playwright and poet. He has directed more
than one hundred productions, both in Croatia and abroad, for stage and
radio. He has received numerous awards, prizes, and recognition for a
lifetime devoted to the theater, including Best Theatre Director for his
production of Dostoyevsky’s „Brothers Karamazov“. For several years he
was the theater director for the annual Dubrovnik Summer Festival. In
1983 his interest in Marin Držić, „the Croatian Shakespeare“, led to the
first production in four hundred years of the play „Venus and Adonis“,
directed by himself. At the 2003 Dubrovnik Summer Festival he saw his
reconstructed lost play by Držić, „Pomet“, performed. As a playwright,
Matko has had more than twenty of his own works produced for theater and
radio. Four books of his plays, essays, and poetry have been published.
He was the Head of Theater Directing Department at the Academy of
Dramatic Art at Zagreb University. His novel „Odohohol and Cally Rascal“
is a first one in a series about two friends, combining many genres:
science-fiction, fantasy, psychology and teenage drama. It has been
translated to English and Macedonian.
MAIN WORKS:
- Dubrovnik Comedies (Komedije na dubrovačku), plays, 2012
- Odohohol and Cally Rascal (Odohohol i Lupe Mangupe), novel, 2009
- Cvijeta Zuzorić (Cvijeta Zuzorić quasi una fantasia), play, 2008
- Oedipus Repeatedly Multiplied (Edip multiplex: grčke figure), poetry, 2004
- The Persuasion to Philosophy (Nagovor na filozofiju), non-fiction, 2002
- Pomet by Marin Držić / An Attempt of Reconstruction (Pomet Marina Držića / Rekonstrukcija), play, 2000
- Iphigenia, Plays and Masks (Ifigenija: drame i maske), play, 1989
About „Odohohol and Cally Rascal“:
Odohohol is a boy with special powers, living in the future world in
which Evil prevailed. He is a new hope for the entire life in the
Universe, but also in the parallel dimensions he learned how to travel
to after he met a few other people who, after the Evil won over the Good
on Earth, formed a secret resistance. Him and his best friend Lupe
Mangupe travel to the Wonderland – one of the many other dimensions – to
fight the battle with Evil. After almost getting killed but winning the
battle in the Wonderland they are returning to Earth where they live in
their ‘Safe Haven’ away from the evil men who rule the world. And they
start planning how to throw Evil from power…
About „The Persuasion to Philosophy“:
Inspired by 'Aristotle's Protrepticus', this book is an attempt to
rethink and recreate all those lost dialogs between the philosopher and
Non-philosopher about the basic principles of philosophizing, from
Socrates to Hegel, all the way to nowadays. These scholarly written
texts about famous philosophers' lives may even seem as short stories,
because the author chooses fiction to complete the facts; he uses
imagination to portray the unquestionable truth: The philosophy
represents the ultimate understanding of the human existence.