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Ľudmila Várossová
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After her studies at the Secondary School of Applied Arts in Bratislava (1971–1975), specializing in interior design and exhibition design under painter Rudolf Fila, Ľudmila Várossová studied puppet scenography at the Theatre Faculty of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague under Prof. Václav Kábrt between 1975 and 1977. From 1977 to 1980, she studied stage and costume design at the Academy of Performing Arts in Bratislava under Prof. Ladislav Vychodil. As a freelance costume designer, she worked in theatre, television, and film. In 1986, she began her long-standing collaboration with director Jozef Bednárik, which lasted more than twenty years. During this period, she was his chief costume designer.

However, the beginnings of her professional career are tied to television, where in the early 1980s and later in the 1990s she created costumes for poetry shows, dramatized programmes, children’s projects, fairy tales, feature series, and gradually also larger productions and films. She designed the costumes for such films as Pavilion of Predators (1982, directed by Dušan Trančík), A Fountain for Susan (1985, directed by Dušan Rapoš), Leg Up (1989, directed by Dušan Rapoš), among others.

As a costume designer, Ľudmila Várossová has collaborated with numerous theatres in Slovakia. She began her career at the Andrej Bagar Theatre in Nitra with director Martin Kákoš, for whom she designed costumes for several productions, such as The Naked King (1985) and Jeppe of the Hill (1997). Her first collaboration with director Jozef Bednárik at this theatre began with the production of Panicum (1986), followed by Zorba the Greek (2001) and Cabaret (2004), among others.

Ľudmila Várossová’s name is closely associated with the most famous musicals staged at the New Stage Theatre in Bratislava. She has designed costumes for more than thirty productions there. She has worked with Jozef Bednárik on the productions The Gospel of Mary (1992), Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat (1994), Fiddler on the Roof (2007), with Martin Kákoš on Saint Francis of Assisi (2009), Mata Hari (2013) and Madame de Pompadour (2016), and with Ján Ďurovčík on Painted on Glass (2005), Don’t Take Our Princess (2006) and many others.

But Várossová created the largest number of costume designs for grand opera productions staged at the Slovak National Theatre, mainly with director Jozef Bednárik – The Master and Margarita (1989), The Tales of Hoffmann (1992), Don Quixote (1995), Don Carlos (1997), with Pavol Smolík – Madame Butterfly (1990), Falstaff (1999), with Juraj Jakubisko – The Whirlpool (1999) and Svätopluk (2008), as well as with choreographer Libor Vaculík, for whom she designed costumes for the ballet Romeo and Juliet (1990) or the production Snow White and the Seven Racers (1991). Among her significant collaborations with theatres, we cannot overlook her costume designs for the State Opera in Banská Bystrica with directors Pavol Smolík, Dana Dinková, and Peter Oravec, as well as costumes designed for several ballets at the National Theatre in Košice with choreographer Ondrej Šoth.

Várossová’s costume designs are also frequently seen in Czech theatres. In the 1990s, she worked primarily with director Jozef Bednárik at the National Theatre and the Ta Fantastika Theatre in Prague. Since 2000, she has collaborated with directors and choreographers in such scenes as the Kalich Theatre in Prague, the Pod Palmovkou Theatre in Prague, the National Theatre in Brno, the Moravian-Silesian National Theatre in Ostrava, among others. She has received multiple awards for her work, such as the Slovak Television’s Annual Award for the television film Germinie (1997) and the 2017 Award of the Minister of Culture for her exceptional and unique contribution to the development of costume design in Slovakia and abroad. She was nominated for the DOSKY Award for the best costume of the season with the productions Cinderella, or Goodness Triumphant (2003, Slovak National Theatre), Cabaret (2004, Andrej Bagar Theatre), Turandot (2006, Slovak National Theatre), The Little Sweep (2011, Slovak National Theatre), and The Abduction from the Seraglio (2017, Slovak National Theatre).