Juraj Benčík is an actor and director specialising in mime, and an acting teacher, he have been active in the theatre world for over 40 years, 27 of which on a professional level. As an actor, he gave his face to at least 50 characters in over 40 plays, and displayed his acting skills in 32 countries over the globe. He authored not less than 15 shows and directed altogether over 30. As a scriptwriter, he created, as of now, at least 120 journalistic and documentary TV scripts. He dubbed more than 300 characters and hosted over 600 shows. For longer than twenty years, he has also been involved in acting teaching and drama education. Juraj Benčík jr. was born to a family of a journalist Eva Benčíková and a succesful athlethics couch Juraj Benčík sr. who led Jozef Pribilinec, a Slovak race walker, to win the gold medal at the Summer Olympics in Soul 1988. He spent his youth in Banská Bystrica where from early childhood, he was active in various amateur dramatic societies, and enjoyed doing folk dance, theatre, music, and visual art as well. He made his way into audio dramas, produced at that time at the regional studio of the Slovak Radio, and into dubbing for the local production base of the Slovak Television. After succesfully graduating from the Academy of Performing Arts in Bratislava, he begun his adult acting career in the Slovak National Uprising Theatre in Martin. In 1992, he accepted an offer for the post of the Artistic Director in the Jozef Gregor Tajovský Theatre in Zvolen. He achieved institutional independence of the Zvolen dramatic ensemble from the Banská Bystrica Opera. His career continued in the Puppet Theatre On the Crossroads in Banská Bystrica. He moved to Bratislava, and he authored, directed, and acted in several shows for the Ludus Theatre there. When Milan Sládek established a mime ensemble in the Arena Theatre in 1996, he joined his group and became the famous mime’s close collaborator. Under his guidance, he appeared in the role of Cassander in the show Grand Pierot, which celebrated the famous French mime Jean Gaspard Debureau, as well as in the Puppetry adaptation of Marriage of Figaro becoming then Sládek’s personal assistant. At this time, he travelled over the whole of Europe with Sládek’s mime shows and continued to act in the Arena Theatre until 2000. From 2000 to 2006, Juraj Benčík performed as a mime actor in the evening show of the magnificent Primadona trip boat, navigating the Danube from Passau in Germany to Budapest and back. During the summer season, he would regularly present his solo mime shows to the tourists from all over the world in the centre of Bratislava and in the Ruby Studio in Prague. In 2003, he created his first educative and immersive solo production about the art of mime for families with children: Captain Panto and the Parrot Mimo. (Later, its name was changed to The Voracious Parrot) He received the great honour of representing Slovakia at Slovakia’s EU-entry celebrations with his mime piece The Expulsion from Paradise, based on the biblical story and Beethoven’s Ode to Joy in front of the Branderburg Gate on the Pariser Platz in Berlin during the Kulturjahr der Zehn Festival on the first May of 2004. In the November 2005, Milan Sládek invited Juraj Benčík into Pantalon und Columbine, a project aiming at reconstructing the group mime of the same name written by Mozart (KV 446 Pantomime). The project was undertaken by Sládek’s Pantomimen Theater Koeln am Rhein, with the help of the city of Vienna and the Theater Schwechat Forum for the 250th anniversary of Mozart’s birth, celebrated in the form of the Mozartjahr festival. The production premiered in the late June 2006 in the Jugendstil Theater, Vienna, and was put on over 70 times in Germany, Switzerland and Austria. In May 2007, Juraj Benčík succeeded in the auditions to the world-renowned Cirque du Soleil, becoming thus registered at the database of the potential collaborators, and begun to receive invitations to video-auditions for the particular roles in specific Cirque du Soleil productions. First came the challenge to become the character of Devil in KA in 2008, and then a chance to play the character of Sergant Pepper in Beatles Love. In both cases, however, Cirque du Soleil chose a different applicant. In the same time, he founded the Mime Studio at the a.ha Theatre in Bratislava. In the studio, he and his colleagues created and rehearsed their first group mime Circus “Insects” and alone, he created two solo projects aimed at the high-school and college students: Pantomimarium and DeuSEXmachina. He led a number of workshops and appeared with the studio productions as its director at the Fringe festival in Prague and Na prknech, dlažbě a trávě festival in Brno. So far the most prestigious solo appearances of Juraj Benčík were the the ten nights of Captain Pantho and the Parrot Mimo performed at the first year of the international EUROKIDS festival in USA, 2008. He had the honour to open the festival at the Millenium Stage in one of the most acclaimed centers of culture in America – the Kennedy Culture Centre in Washington DC. From May 2010 to January 2012, Juraj Benčík was the first and so far the only Slovak actor who was working for the largest and the most succesful circus in the world, Cirque du Soleil, from Montreal. In Montreal, he went through two months of training during which he learned the lines for two roles in English, Russian, French and German, learned to play a suzaphone and wine-glasses, and to walk upside down on a rope. He was custom made a beautiful Rococco-inspired White Clown costume and the grey costume of the Dreamer Clown and taught how to put his elaborate make-up on properly for each role before the show. After the training, he joined the show Corteo in Petersburg to play the White Clown and provide back-up for the Dreamer Clown role. With this show, he travelled to Petersburg, Kazan and Moscow in Russia, to the European capitals, such as Brussels, Vienna, and Madrid, as well as to Valencia, Alicante, and Sevilla in Spain. The final part of his tour with Corteo was the three months of performing in Paris. During the tour, Juraj Benčík appeared in more than 600 performances of the Corteo show for altogether more than 1.5 spectators. Since he returned back to his homeland, Juraj Benčík have become a freelance artist and an acting teacher again. He worked, for example, on projects with the Drama and Opera departments of The Slovak National Theatre in Bratislava (2012), with the balets of The State Theatre Košice(2016) and The State Opera Banská Bystrica(2018). At The University of Konštantín Filozof in Nitra he published a university course-book: The Small School of Mime: Methods of Teaching Mime and Creating Physical Theatre. In 2013, he led a workshop at the 15. International Festival of Amateur Theatre in Monaco as so far the only Slovak coach, as well as a number of other workshops abroad. In 2014, he participated in the production of the Slovak fairy-tale movie Láska na vlásku. Together with the first New Circus school in Slovakia, CirKusKus, he also created an immersive production Try Circus (2013), open air performance Circus Love (2014) and a stage show Christmas of St.Nicholas (2017) for families and children, inspired by his experience of the work in Cirque du Soleil. From January 2015 he works also as a founder and artistic director of Theatre KOMIKA. He is courently living in capital city of Slovakia BRATISLAVA.
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