To the podcast Off Record with musician Teri Čikoš a well-known Slovak actor accepted the invitation. Pavol Plevčík felt his first touch with art thanks to his parents. He worked in a children’s folklore ensemble since he was a childwhere he was confronted with the viewer, the stage, the auditorium or the microphone.
His steps on the stage led to singing, dancing, then to opera as a choir member. “And from there, for example, Jožko Bednárik came to choose us for the musical Jozef and his miraculous colored cloak, where I saw all the stars, such as Pali Habera, Zdena Studenková, Sisa Sklovska, Janko Galovič. And it was just amazing from that child’s point of view. To smell the scent of the theater and to perceive these things in a playful way,” he described his magical artistic childhood. He gave professional performances in theaters from the age of nine.
As he mentions in an interview with Teri Čikoš, the profession of an actor is not always easy. “The problem is when you feel bad, when you are sick, when someone dies, when my girlfriend broke up with me three hours before the premiere of the comedy and she had exclusive tickets in the second row in the middle. And now you have to go entertain those people, the curtain rises and you are the product. They just bought a roll and you have to entertain them. They are not interested in your life, your personal problems. You are now the one they paid for and you have to be a professional and just do the job. This is difficult in this profession and someone does not understand it,” Plevčík explained.
“Maybe we don’t save lives, we don’t operate on brains, but mentally it is very tense and demanding. We here… Somewhere abroad there are film actors, theater actors, dubbing actors, they all make a living from that industry. You have to do everything here. That means, I get up in the morning for dubbing, then I go to rehearse in the theater, I play in the evening, maybe I shoot something in the morning the next day or I have a tour. This is pure madness. At the same time, it’s not really about anything,” zoomed in on his busy schedule.
The actor also spoke openly about the embarrassment that happened to him during the performance and made him infamous for a while. “I also had a nasty case at the end of one tour. We blew it with alcohol and I fell asleep on stage. Well, it was like a huge scandal. This was probably the biggest professional f*ckup in my life. I don’t have a problem talking about it, because it’s all settled already. It was not a state theater, it was a private theater. It didn’t come from people’s taxes. People were compensated, people got a replacement show, they wrote to me personally, they asked me again and again. People took it differently. And there will always be haters, they always have been,” explained Pavol Plevčík.
According to him, it was a trip. “It happened and paradoxically, you know what, I have a high tolerance for alcohol and there was…I actually drank very little. It was just at the end of a simple three-week streak where I was playing every day, traveling, I didn’t feel like eating anymore, two farts was enough and I was done. There are already funny stories about it, because our Ukrainian, Slovak-Rusyn colleague played with us, Bača from Jednota,” mentioned the well-known man from TV commercials.
“Well, Žena Libezňuk. And as I was lying there anyway, they had already cleared me from that scene, one of my colleagues screamed at me: “That’s unprofessional! Don’t do that! You wake up, we have to finish it!” And that Žeňa had such a suit, he played such a sbskár there and says: “That’s normal here. We just always finish it.” So, as with them, the Rusyns, the Easterners, they wake up even at the church. I’m not advocating it, but just yes, it was a failure, but I’m saying that there are already funny stories out of it. Everyone is compensated, there are other cases, other problems. It was a warning finger and now I’m very careful,” he closed this topic with a funny ending.
Actor Plevčík also has interesting external projects. He makes fairy tales for children, for example he dubbed Jin from Aladdin in the Slovak version. In addition to the fact that he graduated from the conservatory and the piano was compulsory there, he found a connection to the accordion, which he also played at the end of the interview. You can watch it in the VIDEO at the beginning of the article!
In Off Record you will also learn:
- what did he enjoy besides theater
- why his mother wanted him to be an opera singer
- what is the difference between acting live and from movies and series
- about his dream role
- how he dubbed Will Smith’s character and was given permission by the star himself
- about working in the Mysteries of the body
- what awaits him this year
