Famous Humorist and Playwright Milan Lasica Dies Aged 81

Bratislava, July 19 (TASR) - Slovak humorist, playwright, novelist, lyricist, actor, director, moderator and singer Milan Lasica died on Sunday evening at the age of 81, TASR learnt on the same day. According to information from SME daily, Lasica collapsed at the annual Bratislava Hot Serenaders concert. "He wasn't able to recover," said the newspaper. Lasica was born on February 3, 1940 in Zvolen (Banska Bystrica region) but soon his family moved to Bratislava, where he spent most of his life. During his studies he started appearing with Julius Satinsky, and the partnership began to perform comic authorial dialogues. Their approach to humour was in the tradition of Czech comedians Jan Werich and Jiri Voskovec. They developed a new, original form of speech and text in which they took banal, everyday-life situations and twisted them into absurd stories. am/df