The first presentation of the portrait of theater and film actress Ivanka Mežan, bearer of the Boršnik Ring, directed by Slavko Hren and produced by TV Slovenia.
Ivanka Mežan, a seventeen-year-old “girl with natural nobility” as has often been quoted, was lured by the partisan “happy wind” to the unique Slovenian and European resistance theatre in Črnomelj in 1944. She recited enthusiastically and “acted somewhat reservedly” (Filip Kalan). After liberation, she studied at the Academy of Drama, especially dance with Professor Mlakar, and at the same time, under the gentle mentorship of the great actress Marija Nablocka and with the charismatic directors Gavella and Stupica, she performed throughout her creative life in the Ljubljana Drama Theatre, which remained her artistic home until her formal retirement.
She was charming and fragile, which is probably why her first major role, Ophelia in Shakespeare's Hamlet, which won the then federal award, after the impressive sister Angelika, "full of subversive eroticism", in Krleži's Glembaj - was primarily imbued with emphasized eroticism, which she herself later, always modest, smart, humane and often too self-critical, said she should have played with more passion and erotic temperament. That Ivanka Mežanova, regardless of the aforementioned reservations, broke through the wall of initial acting feelings with these two roles and began to fully assert her acting talent in the midst of the famous Drama ensemble, is evidenced by several later roles: e.g. the expressive Martirio in Bernarda Alba's House and especially the Bride in Blood Wedding by Garcia Lorca, who was praised by all critics, especially their elder Fran Albrecht, who wrote a real panegyric for Ivanka, concluding with the words: "The words and screams revealed the precious artistic power of this little-known actress"; or the Gypsy in Forced Marriage, about which the stern Vladimir Kralj said that the author Molière himself could have been happy; or Miss Supo in Anouilh's Ornifle, where she shone in the role of a secretary, an unattractive girl and a strict moralist in a brilliant performance with the excellent Stane Sever in the character of a ruthless womanizer. This series also includes the very original, ironic undertones of Charlotte in AP Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard, the temperamental Jenny from Bezniška in Brecht's The Threepenny Opera and the elegiac Dominika in Remča's The Workshop of Clouds. Of course, these are just a few selected looks from a long line of Ivanka's creations. A series of similarly mature and artistically refined roles remain in the memory from the last two decades in the Ljubljana Drama, among which Cassandra, one of the most difficult roles in the Oresteia, the famous ancient tragedy by Aeschylus, is foremost, an extremely subtle creation in the anthological Korunov play, an artistically refined synthesis ritual and "extremely demanding transitions from wakefulness to trance and from trance to wakefulness". (J. Vidmar).
This was followed by masterful portrayals of Olga in Chekhov's Three Sisters, Sgricia in Pirandello's Giants of the Mountain and finally, outside of Drama, another striking Gypsy, now in Šelig's Wedding (Prešeren Theatre Kranj) and finally Varvara Petrovna Stavrogina in Delusions by Dostoevsky and D. Jovanović (Slovenian Youth Theatre), about whom A. Berger wrote that she was full of "ceremonial elegance, sovereign, even with evil undertones, rich conversation and bitter maternal love". Kindness, relaxation and openness, human consideration and uprightness, artistic fragility and genuineness - all this and of course much more of this and internally richly experienced are the characteristics of Ivanka Mežanova's acting. An artist who was always so warmly modest and remains - also for this reason - unforgettable. Dušan Moravec, Vasja Predan: One Hundred Slovenian Artists, Calendar Collection, Prešeren Society, 2001
