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Czech Theatre 24 Czech THEATRE 24 Czech THEATRE cover24_1k.indd 1 24 9.7.2008 17:18:32 CONTENTS Jana Machalická COMEDY THEATRE – THE LAST REFUGE OF TRUE ART? .......................................... 5 Jana Patočková A NEW TRIAL ................................................................................................................ 21 Kamila Černá J. A. PITÍNSKÝ AND THE CLASSICS............................................................................ 27 Jana Machalická THE CZECH WEB OF THEATRE – CZECH AND MORAVIAN REGIONAL THEATRES ...........................37 Roman Vašek A SURVEY OF CZECH BALLET BETWEEN 2005 AND 2007 ....................................... 53 Marie Zdeňková LOOKING BACK AT THE PRAGUE QUADRENNIAL IN 2007 ...................................... 65 Lenka Šaldová A NEW MUSEUM OF CZECH PUPPETS ....................................................................... 75 Jaroslav Blecha TXEKIAR TXOTXONGILORA LEIHOA – VENTANA AL TÍTERE CHECO – A WINDOW ONTO CZECH PUPPETRY ..................................................................... 79 KALEIDOSCOPE ............................................................................................................ 85 NOTEBOOK .................................................................................................................... 95 CZECH THEATRE 24 Issued by Theatre Institute Prague Director / Pavla Petrová Editor / Barbara Topolová Assistant editors / Kamila Černá, Zbyněk Černík Translation / Robin Cassling Cover and graphical layout / Egon L. Tobiáš Printed by / Tiskárna TOBOLA, Jinonická 329, Praha 5 July 2008 Editors’ e-mail: [email protected] Subscription: Divadelní ústav, Celetná 17, 110 00 Praha 1, Czech Republic fax: +420 224 811 452, e-mail: [email protected] ©2008 Divadelní ústav Praha ISSN 0862-9380 ½Franz Kafka, The Trial / Divadlo Komedie, Praha 2007 / Directed and set design by Dušan David Pařízek / Costumes Kamila Polívková > Photo Viktor Kronbauer 001-004_Editorial_3k.indd 1 9.7.2008 17:10:50 2/ EDITORIAL EDITORIAL T he contents of this year’s edition of Czech Theatre includes a special section devoted to regional theatres, three of which are profiled in more detail (authors Jana Machalická, Jan Kerbr and Marta Ljubková), a text about the most recent work of the director J. A. Pitínský (author Kamila Černá), and a comprehensive look at the work of the Comedy Theatre (Divadlo Komedie) in Prague, which in the last several years has sharply defined the focus of its dramaturgy and choice of productions (authors Jana Machalická and Jana Patočková). Roman Vašek writes about traditional ballet productions, and Marie Zdeňková takes stock of last year’s international scenography exhibition, the Prague Quadrennial. 001-004_Editorial_3k.indd 2 In the Kaleidoscope section you will find reviews of noteworthy productions staged in Czech theatres last year, and the Notebook section calls attention to important recent publications on Czech theatre and presents information on the theatre award-winners for 2007. Current events in the theatre scene in the Czech Republic, however, offer us different food for thought. Last year and this year were seasons that for the first in a long time had an abundance of new plays by playwrights from the older generation. In the winter of 2007 the Theatre on the Balustrade (Divadlo na zábradlí) staged Milan Uhde’s Miracle in the Black House (Zázrak v černém domě), in the autumn of 2007 9.7.2008 17:10:50 EDITORIAL /3 Václav Havel, Leaving / Divadlo Archa, 2008 / Directed by David Radok / Set design Jaromír Vlček and David Radok / Costumes Zuzana Ježková > Photo Viktor Kronbauer the National Theatre (Národní divadlo) in Prague staged the premiere of Pavel Kohout’s A Little Might Music (Malá hudba moci), and just before this publication went to press, in May 2008, Archa Theatre (Divadlo Archa) put on the long-awaited production of Václav Havel’s Leaving (Odcházení). However distinctive the poetics and lives of each of these authors, they all have something in common. All of them made their name during the “golden sixties”. They were thus witnesses of and had a hand in shaping the most important era in Czech theatre and a decade later were among the initiators and first signatories of Charter 77, the most significant and most influential anticommunist movement in Czechoslovakia in the 1970s, and 001-004_Editorial_3k.indd 3 through their systematic cultural and political activities in dissent they gradually broke down the seemingly indestructible fortress of totalitarian power and its belief in itself as omniscient and – according to one of its favourite mottos – “eternal”. There will be a large article on the new works by these playwrights in the next issue, but now, the dramatic curves of their lives and the fates of their works give us an opportunity to reflect once more on the relationship between art and the representatives of power, an issue that has become relevant again in recent months. Prague theatres (specifically Theatre on Dlouhá Street / Divadlo v Dlouhé, Theatre below Palmovka / Divadlo pod 9.7.2008 17:10:50 4/ EDITORIAL Palmovkou, City Theatres of Prague / Městská divadla pražská, Studio Ypsilon / Divadelní studio Ypsilon and Švanda Theatre / Švandovo divadlo) have been presented with the imperative from City Hall to transform themselves from contributory organisations – which regularly receive public funding, but are subject to strict financial controls and return their revenue to the state budget – into unspecified legal subjects, which will receive funding through a grant system. This is a fundamental change. From the start of the 18th century, when cities began building their theatres, the backbone of Central European theatre has been its permanent repertoire system. Theatre and the way theatre is done have in the past two centuries obviously undergone major changes, yet it is not the attempt at transformation itself that has provoked so much resistance in theatre and cultural circles but rather the fact that there was no preparation and planning pursued in advance of the change, and although it is to take effect by the end of this year the rules and the direction of this transformation are still unclear. The current grant system suffers from some serious shortcomings, and those theatres that work within it find themselves in a difficult situation (for example, this year the grant process fell so far behind in its work that it left Archa Theatre on the edge of collapse). The trial transformation process that some Prague theatres were a party to four years ago was never subjected to serious debate in a review process. City Hall has moreover taken other incompetent steps. The most criticised among them is the plan to tie subsidies to ticket sales, a move that, in contradiction of all previous practices, the city counsellor for culture agreed to under lobbying pressure from commercial theatres, which means that public money will actually be subsidising private commercial activities (the appreciable decrease in funds available within the grant system will result from subsidies for commercial theatres). Theatres feel these steps as an attack on their work, the continuity of which cannot be guaranteed through a system of grants, not even multi-year grants. Petitions and demonstrations have been organised. There is a prevailing and well-grounded fear that this is just an attempt to shed responsibility and under the banner of an expedient interpretation of democracy gradually commercialise the Prague theatre scene and even the entire cultural sector (some festivals, such as the international dance festival Dance Prague / Tanec Praha, and a number of Prague galleries are also in a similar situation). The situation is all the more critical in that the steps taken in the capital have not gone unnoticed by municipal counsellors in other Czech towns. The acclaimed playwright, dissident, and, after 1989, Minister of Culture Milan Uhde has expressed solidarity with the Prague theatres threatened by this change, and he wrote an open letter that was printed in April in the bimonthly Theatre News (Divadelní noviny). He writes: “The forthcoming measures planned by Prague City Hall for me constitute a threat that yet again – and by no means for the first time – I will be deprived of the opportunity to engage publicly as a playwright. I will fight this threat with all the strength that I still have and with all my experience of the past. That experience tells me that a theatre that strives truthfully to portray the age it exists in will weather through any kind of adversity and pressure, even censorship and financial strictures, and that unlike administrators, who can only argue about money, it is immortal. History will rightly forget these administrators, but for us, who have only the limited perspective of a single lifetime at our disposal, these administrators are the dangerous descendents of the brutish King Ubu. We must not for a moment yield to their devious visions.” Perhaps we shall not yield, and perhaps the lifetime of experience of this Czech playwright does not deceive! Barbara Topolová EDITORIAL 001-004_Editorial_3k.indd 4 9.7.2008 17:10:50 COMEDY THEATRE – THE LAST REFUGE OF TRUE ART? Jana Machalická ÀBertolt Brecht, Baal / Pražské komorní divadlo, 1998 / Directed by Dušan David Pařízek Set design Jan Štěpánek / Costumes Lenka Rašková > Photo Viktor Kronbauer 005-020_Komedie_4k.indd 5 9.7.2008 17:14:20 6/ COMEDY THEATRE – THE LAST REFUGE OF TRUE ART? ½Werner Schwab, The Presidents / Pražské komorní divadlo, 1998 Directed by Dušan David Pařízek / Set design and costumes Jan Štěpánek > Photo Viktor Kronbauer T he very distinctive character that Comedy Theatre (Divadlo Komedie) possesses today originated a decade ago, in 1998, when Dušan David Pařízek, freshly graduated from the directing programme at the Theatre Faculty of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague (DAMU), founded the independent company of the Prague Chamber Theatre (Pražské komorní divadlo). While the young director was actually born in Moravia, when he was one year old his parents emigrated with him to Austria and then Germany. In 1994, when Pařízek completed studies in drama and comparative literature at Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich, he returned to the Czech Republic. He was led into theatre by his family background and – as he has mentioned repeatedly in interviews – his admiration for the work of the director Jan Grossman. In Prague he felt a need to enhance his education and decided to continue his studies in the field of direction. While a student at DAMU in 1997 he and three of his fellow students put on 005-020_Komedie_4k.indd 6 the existential “faeces play” by the Austrian playwright Werner Schwab The Presidents (Die Präsidentinnen). The production was a great success, especially among younger audiences: it provided a platform for three outstanding performances from three unknown women actors and with the requisite amount of invention and vigour the director introduced the Czech public to an author they were not yet familiar with. The Presidents then de facto represented the first performance of the company founded one year later – the choice of playwright and the type of drama clearly presaged the direction in which the emerging company would be headed. A tight group of colleagues was already taking shape even then; from the start, for example, Pařízek put to work the young and talented scenographer Jan Štěpánek. The Prague Chamber Company played at various theatre venues – Theatre on the Balustrade (Divadlo Na zábradlí), the Drama Club (Činoherní klub), Ponec Theatre (Divadlo Ponec) – and from the start it was oriented almost exclusively towards German-language drama. Pařízek and his new company proceeded to put on performances of Brecht’s Baal (premiere at Dejvice Theatre / Dejvické divadlo, in September 1998) and what was originally a radio play by Karel Steigerwald Fatherland (Otčina, premiere at the Drama Club in May 1999). He worked with the 1918 version of Baal but was unable to extract a strong reading of the play, and even the character contours of the main protagonist, as portrayed by Vasil Fridrich, seemed blurred. The Brechtian songs by Jiří Šlupka Svěrák and the wonderfully versatile Mother, played by Marie Málková, were nice, but otherwise there was nothing that particularly stood out in the production. The same was true of Fatherland. Tellingly subtitled “A Tavern Burlesque about the Mutual Love between the Czechs and the Germans”, the production was annoyingly schematic, the figures remained flat, and they spoke in proclamations. Nevertheless, in 1999 they had a remarkable success: People Annihilation or My Liver is Senseless (Volksvernichtung oder meine Leber ist sinnlos, premiere at the Comedy Theatre in January) by Werner Schwab. After the previous, problematic productions it suddenly became apparent that here was a director with a style of poetics unlike that of his peers, headstrong and full of youthful vigour, but also determined to blaze his own trail. This play, also by Schwab, remained in the repertoire of the Comedy Theatre for nine years, and it is again a macabre, paranoid, perverse and hectically funny play. The plot is played out in three households within a single tenement building, each household offering its own version of a disgusting existence. Štěpánek’s set designs were shown off here in an excellent light and they meticulously differentiated between dwellings: the little flat of Mrs. Wurm and her son Herman, a cripple with a club foot, was a plate-lined pigsty; the Kovacic family was able to boast an interior covered in wallpaper patterned with hideous red roses; and the infernal, blood-red colour of Mrs. Growlfire’s place evoked wild notions. The characters in Schwab’s play speak a kind of meta-language, which Tomáš Kafka translated with exceptional ingenuity. He 9.7.2008 17:14:21 came up with absurd collocations, where elegant and grand expressions were spliced with coarse words and vulgarities, and vice versa. Despite the pataphysics and twistedness of this enclosed micro-world, Pařízek was able to create his own poetic style. He took the bizarreness and the “enthrallment” with revulsion from Schwab, without getting bogged down in superficial arresting details. He deliberately avoided going into concrete details and also left the boundary between reality and what may be a dream pleasingly unclear, though in doing so by the end he may have worn down the edge more than was necessary. The scene in which Mrs. Growlfire, played by Dana Kolářová, kills her tenants resembled a Surrealistic farce that the tone of the direction then immediately undermined. The trio of Karel Roden, Marie Málková, and Dana Kolářová excelled in the production, but the other actors’ performances were also very noteworthy. In the very opening the production introduces Herman Wurm (Karel Roden) as a mad painter, who, tied to a rope, creates his works with the kind of feverish passion that is worthy of a genuine conceptualist. He is permanently frustrated by his mother, who, as portrayed by Marie Málková, comes across as a hysterical crone, with slicked back, pinned up hair. Any effort he made to revolt was crushed from the start by sullen contortions of the mother’s mouth and a look that shot daggers at him. Karel Roden gave a masterly performance as Herman, portraying him as a pitiable monster but also as a fiercely mischievous character constantly vibrating with twitches and gesticulations. He compensates the sense of frustration his mother evokes in him by retreating within a massive mock-up 005-020_Komedie_4k.indd 7 ¿Werner Schwab, The Presidents / Pražské komorní divadlo, 1998 Directed by Dušan David Pařízek / Set design and costumes Jan Štěpánek > Photo Viktor Kronbauer dummy, mute and all-embracing. Daniela Kolářová played Mrs. Growlfire, the tenement owner, as a lethal figure, as though she were a creature from another planet. The Kovacic family is the embodiment of dim-wittedness — a simpleton father of the brawny variety (Martin Zahálka), and a “silly goose” kind of mother who loves vulgar jokes, played by Lucie Juřičková 9.7.2008 17:14:22 8/ COMEDY THEATRE – THE LAST REFUGE OF TRUE ART? ÀBertolt Brecht, Baal / Pražské komorní divadlo, 1998 / Directed by Dušan David Pařízek / Set design Jan Štěpánek / Costumes Lenka Rašková > Photo Viktor Kronbauer 005-020_Komedie_4k.indd 8 in an interpretation that balanced on the fine edge between embarrassment and stupidity. By the end of 2001 the Prague Chamber Theatre already had a relatively distinctive repertoire – Schiller‘s The Robbers (Die Räuber) was added – and cooperation began also with the previously mostly Brno-based director David Jařab, who prepared a performance of Klíma’s Glorious Nemesis (Slavná Nemesis, premiere at the Theatre on Celetná Street / Divadlo v Celetné, in November 2000). A variation on The Robbers titled The Bandits (premiere at Ponec Theatre in December 2001) claimed to be modelled on Schiller’s play, but it did not have much in common with it, all that remained of the original being just a few dialogues and the gang of criminals headed by Karl Moor. Schiller’s tale of betrayal and revenge was transformed in this heavily updated post-modern collage to take on the theme of extremism in contemporary society, whose life is shaped by the media, aggression and instinct. Here Pařízek even used nudity, but it ended up seeming like an unnecessary imitation of German theatre. Despite these criticisms, The Bandits was full of energy, bite, and originality. Dušan D. Pařízek became increasingly aware of how essential it is to have a home venue, and therefore he applied for the “vacated” Comedy Theatre. Michal Dočekal, the artistic 9.7.2008 17:14:22 COMEDY THEATRE – THE LAST REFUGE OF TRUE ART? /9 director there, had left to run the drama division of the National Theatre (Národní divadlo), and City Hall issued a call for tender soliciting applications for a company to permanently occupy the theatre. According to the tender conditions, the new company was to operate as a transformed contributory organisation, and its functioning was to be secured by means of a four-year grant. Pařízek and his company clearly won the tender bid, but protests were raised by unsuccessful candidates from the ranks of former members of the Comedy Theatre, headed by the actor Martin Učík. However, the real blame lay with the lack of transparency in the methods used by Prague City Hall, because the winning project really was interesting, conceptual, thematically distinctive and unrivalled in the Prague theatre scene. Pařízek wanted to introduce German-language theatre and original work and from the start he promoted this sophisticated programme even at the cost of error – and in the age of chasing viewers that was and is an underlying asset. In 2002, when the Prague Chamber Theatre moved into the Comedy Theatre, everything looked very promising, but over the next five years the theatre’s progress was not at all straightforward, and Pařízek did not always devote his full attention to his theatre. He was often in Germany directing, and the first two years in particular turned out to be a very difficult period, even though the company’s dramaturgy continued to pursue its avowed focus, which is centred mainly on Central European drama from the first half of the 20th century to the present. Among the authors whose work Comedy Theatre regularly performs are Ladislav Klíma, Franz Kafka, Bertolt Brecht, Thomas Bernhard, Werner Schwab, Georg Tabori, and Elfriede Jelinek. But it also stages original works, such as the plays of Egon Tobiáš, and maintains an interest in new forms, experimenting with theatre and film as genres, which is reflected both in dramatic form and in efforts to adapt various works of film for the stage (for example, The Crucified Woman / Ukřižovaná, based on a 1921 film; or Schweik / Švejk, a stage remake of the 1926 silent Czech film by Karel Lamač). Dušan D. Pařízek further expanded the ring of like-minded artists, and in addition to David Jařab, Jan Nebeský also regularly prepares productions at Comedy Theatre, and other directors include, for example, Arnošt Goldflam, Natálie Deáková, Tomáš Svoboda and even Katarina Schmitt, a young graduate from the directing programme at Prague DAMU. Pařízek has also established close cooperation with the Drama Studio (Činoherní studio) in Ústí nad Labem. Although in the strict sense of the word the company at Comedy Theatre is not a permanent company, it draws on a solid circle of actors, which includes, for example, Karel Roden, Vanda Hybnerová, Saša Rašilov, Ivana Uhlířová, Alois Švehlík, Roman Zach, Martin Finger, Gabriela Míčová, Ivana Uhlířová, Daniela Kolářová, and Jana Krausová. This stable base of performers is also evidence of how deeply the repertoire system is embedded in Czech theatre: Although the Comedy Theatre hires its actors to work on fixed-term contracts, it basically operates as a permanent company and enables ¿¾Werner Schwab, People Annihilation or My Liver is Senseless Divadlo Komedie, Praha 1999 / Directed by Dušan David Pařízek / Set design Jan Štěpánek / Costumes Lenka Rašková > Photo Viktor Kronbauer 005-020_Komedie_4k.indd 9 9.7.2008 17:14:23 10/ COMEDY THEATRE – THE LAST REFUGE OF TRUE ART? both actors and directors to work uninterruptedly and with a particular vision in mind. The early days of the new theatre were not as rosy as they were expected to be. Brecht’s The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui (Der aufhaltsame Aufstieg des Arturo Ui, premiere in December 2002), which had not been performed in the Czech Republic for many years, was staged by David Jařab in a kind of multimedia variation, which unfortunately lost its thematic focus. Even a production of Kafka’s Metamorphosis (Die Werwandlung, premiere in February 2003), based on a script by Arnošt Goldflam, who also directed the production, failed to engage 005-020_Komedie_4k.indd 10 ¿Friedrich Schiller, The Bandits / Pražské komorní divadlo, 2001 Directed by Dušan David Pařízek / Set design Jan Štěpánek Costumes Andrea Králová > Photo Viktor Kronbauer ¾George Tabori, Cannibals / Divadlo Komedie, Praha 2003 Directed by Jan Nebeský / Set design Jan Štěpánek / Costumes Jana Preková > Photo Bohdan Holomíček the viewer. The experiment carried out by the group Watch over Parnassus (Střežený Parnass) and Zdeněk Plachý's in The Crucified Woman (Ukřižovaná, premiere in June 2003), could have been a complementary addition to the theatre’s repertoire, 9.7.2008 17:14:24 COMEDY THEATRE – THE LAST REFUGE OF TRUE ART? 005-020_Komedie_4k.indd 11 /11 9.7.2008 17:14:25 12/ COMEDY THEATRE – THE LAST REFUGE OF TRUE ART? but in the particular context it fell flat as yet another sign of fecklessness. At the end of the first season the Comedy Theatre at best seemed like an unfocused theatre spinning off the cuff one premiere after the other. The great variety of activities and projects actually worked against the theatre, which gave off the impression of being an ensemble scattered in various directions without any clearly formulated style. During the first season Pařízek did not direct a single production, which was a risky gambit. The only real success was Tabori’s The Cannibals (Kanibalové, premiere in April 2003) directed by Jan Nebeský, but that play was actually developed as a co-production with the Drama Studio (Činoherní studio) in Ústí nad Labem. Given the troubled reputation that the Comedy Theatre unfortunately acquired, and the corresponding extremely low attendance levels, the play initially escaped the attention of critics, but it eventually did win an Alfréd Radok Award (Production of the Year 2003). The theatre’s inconsistencies lasted into the next season, and the situation only gradually began to change when, after being criticised in the press, Pařízek finally started to devote himself intensively to the theatre that he had so persuasively striven to create. Despite the problems mentioned above, from the start there was something agreeable about this heartfelt effort to consistently present plays that were almost unplayable or at least targeted a limited circle of viewers. There were numerous such works, among which mention can be made of Tobiáš‘s Solingen — Merciful Blow (Solingen, rána z milosti, premiere in March 2004), Schwab’s Anticlimax (premiere in September 2003), or another play by Egon Tobiáš, The Investigation Continues (Vyšetřování pokračuje, premiere in June 2006), a wacky detective story featuring revived corpses and a blind detective. In Anticlimax, the emotions that this decadent and blasphemous spectacle evokes were matched by the dispassionate approach of Pařízek’s direction, which manifested how strongly Schwab longed to spit in the face of his audience and how he revelled in his aversion to society. Despite some ÀWerner Schwab, Antiklimax / Divadlo Komedie, Praha 2003 / Directed by Dušan David Pařízek / Set design and costumes Erlend Hella Matre > Photo Bauer Power 005-020_Komedie_4k.indd 12 9.7.2008 17:14:25 COMEDY THEATRE – THE LAST REFUGE OF TRUE ART? minor repulsive details (the doctor‘s examination of Mariedl seems more like a post mortem, characters smacking their mouths over some disgusting looking pieces of salami, and, at the end, the heroine is coated in lard), a naturalism cuts through the production mainly with the use of unusual language, in unbelievable neologistic combinations of vulgarities and grandly stylised phrases. Schwab is not for everyone. His work has a nauseating effect, and that sense of disgust arises even without the buckets of blood and entrails sitting on stage, as they were in the production of The Presidents in Kammerspiele. The question is whether Anticlimax is a whole dramatic work. Schwab created it in a writing frenzy not long before his death, and even if it is not an incomplete text, it remains insistent testimony to a being who has mentally broken down. This is probably why, despite the sensitive and formally perfect direction, a dead zone set in between the stage and the public. Schwab’s premise that the world is a horrible place to live in is hysterically overexposed in his final play to the point of self- /13 serving disgust. In Tobiáš’s Solingen the unlimited creative freedom and the total ignorance of the viewer had a stunning effect. In conformity with the author’s intentions Jan Nebeský put his own imagination on a pedestal and for him everything else ceased to exist. There is no question that there should be a theatre in Prague that offers this kind of artistic release, but it is important not to overdo things. The last venture of this kind at the Comedy Theatre was undertaken by Katarina Schmitt in Klaus Händl’s A Darkly Alluring World (Dunkel Lockende Welte, premiere in October 2007), which many viewers certainly rightly saw as an indecipherable puzzle. This intimate drama, with three characters and what seems almost to be a criminal plot, presents viewers with an elusive and in places almost dreamlike reality, accompanied by even more bizarre and deliberately obfuscated relationships. The dramatic trio is made up of two women – a mother and a daughter. The third character is the owner of a flat that both women are attached to by some unspoken ÀWerner Schwab, Antiklimax / Divadlo Komedie, Praha 2003 / Directed by Dušan David Pařízek / Set design and costumes Erlend Hella Matre > Photo Bauer Power 005-020_Komedie_4k.indd 13 9.7.2008 17:14:25 14/ COMEDY THEATRE – THE LAST REFUGE OF TRUE ART? bond. The picture of what is going on in the mind of this young playwright is in its own way depressing and any attempt to get through to the essence of what he wants to say seems fruitless. Perhaps the error is on the part of the viewer, who is not from the same generation as the author and does not experience the contradictions of today’s world in the same way as he does. Klaus’s work here is somewhat lacking in the capacity to offer a timeless, generalised perspective. It is a purely subjective expression of feelings, but it may be that these feelings are shared by parts of the population, judging at least from the enthusiasm with which Katarina Schmitt seized on the material. Her production reveals that she has a good notion of how squarely to construct the shape of a work. With regard to the set, she opted for almost the same approach as that employed in the performance at the Munich Kammerspiele: on one side the scene was closed in by sliding panels with a mirror reflecting a portion of the audience. Otherwise, though, she emphasised the intimate tone of the work and placed the actors and the viewers within an integrated performance space. The director let situations unfold in a cultivated manner, maintained a clean and almost minimalistic style, and relied especially on the performances of the two actresses, the young and animalistic Ivana Uhlířová and the experienced and precise Daniela Kolářová. Both carried their own impenetrable secrets, injecting special meanings into their lines, surprising and entertaining the audiences with the diction and facial expressions. Unfortunately, their male counterpart, Marian Roden, was gravely unremarkable. Perhaps the production was about approaching death, about squeezing out anything we prefer not to know about, prefer not to embrace. Or simply someone killed someone else. And so we have no choice but to paraphrase Alice in Wonderland and say: It was nice, though a bit unclear. While Pařízek cultivates a specialised dramaturgical programme he still knows how to increase the Comedy Theatre’s appeal to audiences. In this regard, early on he played the right card of making Karel Roden the star of his several productions, and this move was naturally a success. Their cooperation first actually began during work on Thomas Bernhard’s Old Masters: ÀThomas Bernhard, Old Masters / Divadlo Komedie, 2004 / Directed by Dušan David Pařízek / Set design and costumes Jan Štěpánek > Photo Bauer Power 005-020_Komedie_4k.indd 14 9.7.2008 17:14:25 COMEDY THEATRE – THE LAST REFUGE OF TRUE ART? /15 ¿¾Elfriede Jelinek, Clara S. / Divadlo Komedie, Praha, 2004 Directed by David Jařab / Set design David Jařab Costumes Kamila Polívková > Photo Bauer Power A Comedy (Alte Meister: Komödie, premiere in June 2004), but the production suffered from a particular problem at the Comedy Theatre that plagues Pařízek sometimes even today — the obviously slapdash manner in which it was put together. It is not easy to dramatise this novel of Berhard’s: the author's long litanies and fiendishly sarcastic commentary form a compact mass that offers to reprieve to the reader’s eye, but nonetheless quickly captures the reader’s fascination so that their gaze remains transfixed on the page. It is difficult to create dialogues out of Bernhard’s “monolith” and invest them with dramatic energy, but for much of that it is possible to draw on the creativity of the actors. The adaptors tried to reproduce the text’s firm structure with climactic moments, tension, and a sense of calm approaching resignation, but capturing the book’s divaricating theme and getting it to come across convincingly was equally difficult. They did not always succeed in finding and extracting the most essential aspects in the original text’s many layers, but Karel Roden successfully fulfilled the image of an intolerably garrulous Bernhardian eccentric, spewing fire and brimstone on everything he had ever encountered in life. He seized the 005-020_Komedie_4k.indd 15 9.7.2008 17:14:26 16/ COMEDY THEATRE – THE LAST REFUGE OF TRUE ART? text with a driving energy and threw himself into the role. He ascended smoothly through his character’s outbursts to work his way up to a point where he went completely berserk. Karel’s brother Marián predictably only seconded him in his role, but he had some interesting moments. There was, however, a problem in the performance, resulting from the open emptiness of the stage, which altered the hall’s acoustics, and both actors had trouble dealing with this. Incidentally, this problem was also connected with the above-mentioned sloppiness and the hasty preparation of the production. The partial success of Old Masters was finally followed by a total success with another of Bernhard’s works, The Goal Attained (Am Ziel). While this may not be Bernhard’s best play, it possesses all the attributes typical of this Austrian playwright’s work, and there is even a kind of sinister quality to its bleakness. Arnošt Goldflam tried to 005-020_Komedie_4k.indd 16 9.7.2008 17:14:26 COMEDY THEATRE – THE LAST REFUGE OF TRUE ART? ½Werner Schwab, Overweight, Unimportant: Formless / Divadlo Komedie, Praha 2008 / Directed by Dušan David Pařízek / Set design Dušan David Pařízek / Costumes Kamila Polívková > Photo Kamila Polívková make the text as theatrical as possible, but he only half-succeeded in doing so. But the production was given a substantial boost by Daniela Kolářová’s outstanding performance in the role of the Mother. Her endless monologue, comprised of memories, verbal attacks, and rants, was both fascinating and appalling at the same time, while the Daughter, played by Vanda Hybnerová, sulked defiantly in icy silence and resignation, wearing an insubordinate, jeering expression. The production of The Goal Attained (premiere in October 2004) seemed to mark a starting point for the Comedy Theatre. It was at this point that the theatre seemed definitively to take off and set out along a deliberate path in systematic pursuit of its purported dramaturgical programme. For example, it put on work by the fresh Nobel Laureate Elfriede Jelinek, and, while neither of the two productions it prepared was especially successful, the attempt to work with this difficult material warrants praise. The first piece selected was an older text on a feminist theme, Clara S. (premiere in December 2004) from 1981. This production was not the first time this controversial author was introduced to Czech audiences. That occasion came with slightly earlier staging of Illness or Modern Women. Like a Play (Krankheit oder Moderne Frauen. Wie ein Stück) at the Drama Studio (Činoherní studio) in Ústí nad Labem. Jelinek’s work obviously requires a special directorial approach and often resists being handled in this way. In his effort to make the text more theatrical, a text that to some extent contains characters that evolve at a psychological level, David Jařab ended up creating heavy-handedly assembled images, in which, on the one hand, he tenaciously held onto certain specific characteristics and peripeteia, and on the other hand, produced an arrestingly grotesque and surreal atmosphere. In Jařab’s production, Jelinek’s lamentations, reflections, similes, outbursts, and poetic phrases stood out like isolated quotations. While their effect was entertaining, the chosen stage format deflated their ability to converge as an urgent metaphor on the state of society. This was despite the fact that Jařab had at his disposal an excellent performer in the title role. Vanda Hybnerová as Clara S. alone showed the ability to discriminately interpret the author’s irony and simultaneously express the emotional turbulence of a woman forced to suppress her own abilities. /17 The Comedy Theatre was not very successful even with its next try with a play by Jelinek. A Sport Play (Sportstück, premiere in April 2006) was directed by a trio of directors, Dušan D. Pařízek, Jan Nebeský and David Jařab, which, given the differences in their styles, in itself was enough to make one wonder. The directors tried in places to successfully combine elements of the grotesque and parody to produce a consistent statement, but in the framework of a clumsy patchwork of fragments that effort is challenged. In the end what rang most persuasively was the theme that it is men who are responsible for violence and war, and women who try to prevent them from acting in such ways. Connected with this, too, was that the male section of the cast worked as a unit and involved more of a collective performance, while the women have roles founded on very individual personalised performances. Nevertheless, the production at times came across as shoddy, and in a way even superficial, simplifying the complex layers of meaning in the play. Over the past four years the Comedy Theatre has been home to a number of strong acting performances, both from experienced actors, rediscovering themselves with new tasks that allow them to “blossom”, and from talented young artists that the wider public is often less familiar with. Alongside occasional guest appearances from Daniela Kolářová, other actors who have established themselves include Vanda Hybnerová and Ivana Uhlířová, while more recently Martin Finger and Gabriela Míčová have managed to capture audiences’ attention. In addition to her work in the productions mentioned above, Hybnerová also gave a fantastic performance in Fassbinder’s The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant (Die Bitteren Tränen der Petra von Kant, premiere in September 2005), to which David Jařab applied a cool, non-theatrical approach. Recently Jan Kačer and Milan Stehlík put on exceptionally creative performances in an otherwise stylistically uneven and, in terms of quality, dysfunctional production of Jandl’s Humanists (premiere in January 2007) directed by Jan Nebeský. Kačer’s rendering of the character described as First Male dazzled viewers with his flying gestures and a diction thundering with pathos, self-importance and vainglory. He was drawn into a duel with his adversary, who Milan Stehlík played as a hectic and combatively shortfused character, though also capable of being very circumspect. These two ridiculous heroes got up to all kinds of tricks in their constant clowning: one led the other on a string, they cried on one another’s shoulders, they sang the national anthem. The COMEDY THEATRE – THE LAST REFUGE OF TRUE ART? 005-020_Komedie_4k.indd 17 9.7.2008 17:14:26 18/ COMEDY THEATRE – THE LAST REFUGE OF TRUE ART? two actors mediated the characters’ pompous stupidity and mental vacuity with such exceptional authenticity and their performances divulged a sense of almost elemental pleasure drawn from the idiocy of the characters. These were robust and juicy pieces of acting, consciously and insistently interpreting the theme of Jandl’s short play. Martin Finger and Gabriela Míčová both shone in Bernhard’s The World-Fixer (Der Weltverbesserer, premiere in November 2006), also directed by Dušan D. Pařízek (Finger won the Alfréd Radok Award for his performance in this role), where they enacted the parts of a sick old man and his female companion, an odd couple united by an unusual bond. Pařízek made an interesting innovation: making the couple considerably younger gave them an air of sensuality and added an element of erotic tension. All this was set in contrast with the basic situation they are in: The World-Fixer has gradually returned to a state of nonexistence and despite his haughtiness he is made dependent on those around him. The production demonstrated this using nudity. Finger’s World-Fixer entered on stage naked, cowered defencelessly on the sofa, and the woman washed him, dressed him, and brought him his injections, while he talked and talked, snarled, raged, accused, criticised, issued commands, grumbled over ancient slightings in Trier, and went on and on about his Tractate on fixing the world, the only fruit of his entire academic career. His time so far has been measured out by alarm clocks strangely clustered all around him. In recent years Pařízek has taken a shine to dramatic minimalism – in many ways the prevailing style of the Comedy Theatre on the whole – but unlike Old Masters, here he handled it properly and managed to construct a tightly knit format. One agreeable change was that this time he did not shut out humour and irony. The arrival of the delegation made up of dean, professor, rector and mayor, who have come to award the World-Fixer an honorary doctorate, was an unbelievable farce of awkwardness – a whirling tap-dance of civilities, pretence, forced smiles, and efforts to maintain decorum. With regard to Pařízek’s inclinations towards minimalism, a prime example of such tendencies was the dramatisation of Musil’s novel The Confusions of Young Törless (Die Werwirrungen des Zöglings Törless, premiere in November 2005) in a Czech-German co-production. It was performed at the Salzburg Festival, and in the Czech Republic it received strong praise from critics. It certainly could not be accused of not having tried to penetrate Musil’s complicated style of expression and communicate it using stage devices. The creators were aware of the difficulties involved in their stage adaptation and therefore they opted for a static quality, or more a kind of expressive minimalism and artistic experimentation as their main stylistic element. It is possible that the concept also took a cue from the set designer Olaf Altmann, who was involved, for example, in the purely minimalistic production of Schiller’s Love and Intrigue, performed in Prague at the Festival of German-language Theatre in 2003 (where light effects were also often employed with meaningful intent). But this approach introduced the element of theatricality from without, so ultimately the result was more one of demonstrative effects than actually the creation of an internally structured theatrical form. Its overriding minimalism and formal coolness meant the production too often resembled a peculiar stage reading. The design centred on a white dummy – a pictogram used for the purpose of escape. During the ninety-minute performance the dummy moved almost imperceptibly from the right side of the stage following a cut-out arrow towards the white door left ajar in the smooth green wall. While this is an eloquent symbol of the attempt to escape from a world of adversity and violence, the idea is not entirely original. The light effects and the cruel game with the epidiascope, which changed into an instrument of torture and a prison for the persecuted, proved to be more original. Pařízek tried here to find an adequate method to bring out the hero’s mental trauma, his inner self-reflection and doubts. The performance had aspired to be a kind of dramatic essay, but it was only partly digestible as such, because it was too arty and focused on its form. It was at its most compelling whenever it used simple metaphors to try to express the essence of violence and explored the circumstances surrounding its source. This past season has thus far been an enormous success for the Comedy Theatre. It opened with Pařízek’s staging of Kafka’s The Trial (Proces, premiere in September 2007), which was created for the international Projektion Europa in Hamburg. This dramatisation was completely different from other theatre adaptations of this work and it produced an innovative shift. The theme of absurdity and the mechanism that destroys man was suppressed, and the creators instead delved into the inner world of the hero, which proved to be a very timely emphasis, one moreover not at odds with the author and the intent of his work. The stage design comprised two slanting walls, within which Josef K. was enclosed – that space served as the interrogation room and Josef K.’s room. Quotations from Kafka’s works were COMEDY THEATRE – THE LAST REFUGE OF TRUE ART? 005-020_Komedie_4k.indd 18 9.7.2008 17:14:26 COMEDY THEATRE – THE LAST REFUGE OF TRUE ART? /19 ¿Franz Kafka, The Trial / Divadlo Komedie, Praha 2007 / Directed and set design by Dušan David Pařízek / Costumes Kamila Polívková > Photo Viktor Kronbauer projected onto the walls. Otherwise the production more or less left out any other effects. As Josef K., Martin Finger conceived his description of his arrest, interrogation and trial like a theatrically escalating scene, with the Prosecutor responding to his display with applause. Josef K. dwells in a bizarre inner world, and he even succumbs to paranoia, but above all he is trying to understand himself and then understand the world that surrounds him. Pařízek let the actor wander about against a background of shots filmed on a street-surveillance camera and to the sounds of noisy electronic music, but otherwise he 005-020_Komedie_4k.indd 19 adhered to a style of strict minimalism, which was well matched with the well-considered sequencing of associations attesting to the difficulty of the task of maintaining one’s identity – as though someone were always toying with us and plunging us into a perverse process where, like guinea pigs, we are subjected to all kinds of tests and our reactions are constantly watched. The performance of another piece by the Comedy Theatre’s signature playwright, Werner Schwab, was also a success. With the production of Overweight, Unimportant: Formless (Übergewicht, unwichtig: Unform, premiere in January 2008) 9.7.2008 17:14:26 20/ COMEDY THEATRE – THE LAST REFUGE OF TRUE ART? Pařízek brought the notional trilogy of Schwab’s work to a close. It is of significance to both the play and Pařízek’s interpretation that Schwab died suddenly and in unclear circumstances on the last day of the year 1993 at the age of 35. The action of this oddly titled play also takes place at some New Year’s celebration, almost as though the author anticipated his own end. Pařízek describes the play as a European “Last Supper”, which Schwab set “in a place of refreshments — something between a roadside inn, a stillhouse, and a village pub”. For the purpose of this production the setting was recreated as a wallpapered and soiled-looking room in a tavern, much more like something from the Bohemian countryside than an Alpine landscape. And an infernal red light nicely illuminated the space, where a high-spirited crowd has gathered, ready to let loose at any time. Schwab only rarely ever offers any kind of plot in the real sense of the word, and that applies here, too, but Pařízek managed to create a string of strikingly imaginative scenes that are linked by the theme of emptiness in life and the inability to communicate with others. The production does not evolve along a single line but offers a manifold view of stupidity, primitivism, snobbery, and the pack mentality. Pařízek applied a substantial dose of imagination and originality to dramatising Schwab’s eccentric language. He built new situations out of the playwright’s basic “building material” and added irresistible logic and bizarre humour to the writer’s image of a depraved world. He created new and amusing relationships between the characters, which he moulded into types representing for the most part the different buck-passing attitudes in life. The pub turned into an arena of life, where everyone aired the details of their mental state, looked for, or more accurately, tried to snatch a place for themselves, and to stifle or even calmly get rid of others – whatever works best at the time. Everything is at the same time permeated with a sense of emptiness and inertia. Seven of Schwab’s variously outfitted characters and “one nice couple” come to life in distinctively elaborated characteristics and stylisations. For example, the high-point of the first act is a several-minute yell – the song of one of the characters (Martin Finger). The slightly drunk members of staff were either 005-020_Komedie_4k.indd 20 sleeping behind a table or staring vacuously. The nice couple (Jiří Černý and Stanislav Majer), visibly segregated from the crowd, were raped, hacked to bits, and devoured, which was portrayed very subtly, but accompanied by disgusting olfactory experiences. A year and a half ago marked the end of the theatre’s first four-year grant period, and though it spent at least two years trying to find its own style, in 2006 the management applied for (and received) another four-year grant, by that time having developed into a theatre with a very clear profile presenting plays that comment on the state of contemporary society. While that can often be depressing or even chilling, it is almost always provocative. For that matter, the theatre always reflects what society comes out with. Pařízek makes a spirited effort to seek out authors in German-speaking regions, and a feature shared by works he selects is their harshly open treatment of the themes they address. The Comedy Theatre has many times been the first in the Czech Republic to perform some plays by renowned authors (Jelinek, Schwab). It consistently insists on working with hard-to-palate texts and original projects. These experiments are a firm component of the theatre’s dramaturgical programme, which is aimed at getting viewers to think contextually and ask questions. Unfortunately, today this kind of approach is rare and in a way it harks back to the era of clear-cut thematic dramaturgy in Czech theatre that was typical of the second half of the 1980s. After the theatre’s initial difficulties with attendance rates, interest in the Comedy Theatre’s production has become steady and it is a theatre frequented by a young public, often students. In the past three years the Comedy Theatre has also repeatedly found itself nominated among theatre critics’ top picks of the year (Alfréd Radok Award) and a number of awards have made their way to the theatre (for example, best performance awards for Daniela Kolářová and Martin Finger). The theatre currently ranks as one of the most interesting stages in Prague, though it is definitely not for every kind of theatregoer – it has absolutely no qualms about using naturalism on stage and it is willing to do so without any regard for the audience’s sensitivities. 9.7.2008 17:14:27 A NEW TRIAL Jana Patočková ¿Franz Kafka, The Trial / Divadlo Komedie, Praha 2007 / Directed and set design by Dušan David Pařízek / Costumes Kamila Polívková > Photo Viktor Kronbauer 021-026_Proces_5k.indd 21 9.7.2008 17:12:17 22/ O A NEW TRIAL n a bare stage, walled in by wooden panelling, two rightangled panels enclose the performance space. A man, in his thirties, dressed in a black suit and a shirt, stands within this constrictive emptiness as though driven into a corner. He occasionally glances out into the public, but seems more to be looking inside himself, his face troubled by something he cannot communicate. He makes as though to say something, but his mouth remains silent as he voicelessly opens his lips and then closes them again. An enlarged image of his face is projected onto the surface of the panels, where it is overlaid with a rapid sequence of powerful images. Most of the images are traffic signs, symbols of the everyday, of the omnipresence of commands and interdictions, guideposts marking the communication routes of our age, subway escalators and platforms, densely packed with an anonymous crowd. We are pelted with images and sounds, while the quiet man tries in vain to speak. This opening sequence, and the song “Stand by Me”, played repeatedly later on, the most striking of the features 021-026_Proces_5k.indd 22 that the “Prague” story of Josef K. to modern-day Prague. This is not the first generation to stage The Trial in such a way that not only is its lasting vitality made obvious but also and especially the adaptation is clearly indicative of the period in which it has emerged. The novel opens with an “awakening”: on the day of his thirtieth birthday Josef K. awakes to realise that he has been arrested, “imprisoned”, and locked into a process that he does not understand, but which turns his entire existence upside down. How, to what, and to what end does Josef K. awaken in Dušan D. Pařízek’s authorial production of The Trial? Josef K. is at the centre of the trial, but rather than the object he appears to be the only subject and the only “mover” in the trial. Martin Finger gives a deeply composed performance of Josef K. as a highly insecure introvert; his K. is not someone who has, or at least to begin with pretends to have, the justified selfconfidence of his literary prototype – a professionally competent and socially well-stationed bureaucrat. This is a result of the 9.7.2008 17:12:18 A NEW TRIAL /23 ½¿Franz Kafka, The Trial / Divadlo Komedie, Praha 2007 / Directed and set design by Dušan David Pařízek / Costumes Kamila Polívková > Photo Viktor Kronbauer A NEW TRIAL 021-026_Proces_5k.indd 23 9.7.2008 17:12:20 24/ A NEW TRIAL ¿¾Franz Kafka, The Trial / Divadlo Komedie, Praha 2007 / Directed and set design by Dušan David Pařízek / Costumes Kamila Polívková > Photo Viktor Kronbauer A NEW TRIAL 021-026_Proces_5k.indd 24 9.7.2008 17:12:20 A NEW TRIAL perspective of the production, where Josef K. is the narrator: he is trying to tell a story that he does not understand. Finger expresses the tension within his character mainly through his restrained and sensitive facial expression. K. wants to escape the world, and he now and then hides his face from it, but in the end he ventures into a strange contest in which everything is at stake, aware of its fatality, of the impenetrability of what he is up against. Sometimes he succumbs to an aggressive mood, but he immediately repents; other times he slumps into apathy. The other characters in the trial are reduced to a sextet. The Guards, František and Vilém (Stanislav Majer, Ivan Acher), the Examining Judge (Jiří Černý), the Lawyer (Martin Pechlát), Block (Hynek Chmelař) and Leni/Miss Bürstner (Gabriela Míčová) are all peers of Josef K. They are clearly from the same world as K., similar in age and appearance, dressed in sober, modern, dark-grey suits. But K. also gives shape to their feelings of guilt, complexes, suppressed wishes and inclinations. These spectres, with blood-red lips in common, are the embodiments 021-026_Proces_5k.indd 25 /25 of aggressive expressions of fear, an anxious state of guilt, and erotic dreams linked to the fear of relationship fulfilment. The two-in-one female character is played by G. Míčová as a being who is on the surface obliging and assuring but is unpredictable and cunning, and in a flash can turn from a caring mother-lover figure into a vampire. Several key scenes in the novel are read existentially, as an image of a trial that Josef K. is in with the world and primarily himself. K. defends his innocence, but from the start feels, presents himself, and behaves like a guilty man. And he who feels guilty, evidently is; he is displaced, “outside” the world hurtling down on him and around him. The struggle, situated entirely within K.’s inner world, reaches its only possible and necessary end very quickly. (Although, everyone knows that stage adaptations of novels are always significantly reduced versions of the original, this adaptation by Comedy Theatre (Divadlo Komedie) could deservedly be subtitled “a few scenes from the novel”.) 9.7.2008 17:12:21 26/ A NEW TRIAL ¿Franz Kafka, The Trial / Divadlo Komedie, Praha 2007 / Directed and set design by Dušan David Pařízek / Costumes Kamila Polívková > Photo Viktor Kronbauer By the time we reach the climactic scene in the cathedral, Finger’s hero – or anti-hero – is coping alone, “in duality”: K.’s dialogue with the clergyman is a soliloquy, a telling of the parable of the gate to the Law – self-knowledge. The walls that K. knocks down reveal others, just differently arranged. K. dies surrounded by the actors from his story and yet alone, like his own judge and executioner. “Stand by Me” chimes in for the last time, sung as a chorus, played as a rock song: the shriek of loneliness, distress, and derision, and perhaps even an urgent invocation. The production is essentially minimalistic theatre, performed without breaks, in an abstract space, almost without any props or other effects, and it is mainly the focused performance of a well-rounded company that sustains the tension and the viewer’s attention. The Trial by a new generation of thirtysomethings testifies to the continuing relevance of Kafka’s diagnosis of illness - the deepening anxiety of man, who has “awoken” to an awareness of existential isolation, insecurity, and fear in an alienated world - which has survived intact into the new century. It is more the author’s conclusion that K. has no other option but to accept his fate after the futile struggle of his “trial”. Unlike the novel he fills in this conclusion himself, which is the logical extension of the shift to subjectivity in the narrative. This is a very important difference, and it is capped off by an approach that abandons the author’s objective and pragmatic version, contrasting with the absurd and shadowy nature of the world evoked in the novel. The Kafka reader in me will naturally object to this, but that does not matter; the performance has already asserted its relevance: it is this shift and this final song – or shriek – that probably most strongly conveys the feeling of this new age. Franz Kafka: The Trial. Adapted, directed, and set design by Dušan D. Pařízek, costumes Kamila Polívková, lighting Jiří Kufr, music Ivan Acher. Comedy Theatre, Prague, premiere 3 / 9 / 2007. A NEW TRIAL 021-026_Proces_5k.indd 26 9.7.2008 17:12:21 J.A.Pitínský A N D T H E CLASSICS Kamila Černá Božena Němcová, Wild Bara / Slovácké divadlo Uherské Hradiště, 2007 Directed by J. A. Pitínský / Set design Jan Hubínek / Costumes Michaela Hořejší > Photo Milan Zámečník 027-036_Pitinsky_3k.indd 27 9.7.2008 17:12:47 28/ J. A. PITÍNSKÝ AND THE CLASSICS While most of the directors of the generation that successfully dominated the Czech stage in the 1990s (Vladimír Morávek, Michal Dočekal, Hana Burešová, Jan Borna, Jan Nebeský, Jakub Špalek, Jiří Pokorný, Dušan Pařízek) have in recent years become artistic directors at major Czech theatres, one of the most distinctive figures among contemporary Czech directors, J. A. Pitínský, has remained independent and moves between various stages in Bohemia and Moravia. He is one of the few Czech directors of drama not to prefer working with a permanent ensemble in one theatre, and instead he works both with top major theatres and with small and semi-amateur companies. He is nonetheless the director who has won the most awards to date for best production of the year (this Alfréd Radok Award takes its cue from a survey of critics, done since 1992, and Pitínský has won it four times). Productions he has directed in the past three seasons that figured among the critics’ choice of the year’s best productions include Ibsen’s Rosmersholm (National Theatre Brno, Národní divadlo Brno, 2005), Vrchlický and Fibich’s melodrama The Death of Hippodamia (Smrt Hippodamie, Zlín City Theatre, Městské divadlo Zlín, 2006), a dramatisation of one of Božena Němcová’s short stories Wild Bára (Divá Bára, Slovácko Theatre, Slovácké divadlo Uherské Hradiště, 2007) and a dramatisation of Goethe’s novel Elective Affinities (Dejvice Theatre, Dejvické divadlo, 2007). From this list alone it is clear that even in recent years Pitínský has remained faithful to working with Czech and world classics. Like earlier on in his career, he is still inclined to use his own dramatisations of prose or adapted plays, and his directorial fingerprint typically reveals his feeling for the components of music and movement in a production and for precisely stylised and rhythmic stage gestures. P itínský directed Ibsen’s Rosmersholm for the largest drama stage in Brno, the National Theatre Brno, in 2005. A year earlier he had also directed Ibsen’s Nora in Brno, which played to great success on the small semiamateur stage Theatre at 7 and a Half (Divadlo v 7 a půl). The director deliberately set Nora in a smaller space, like a kind of plywood box, with a minimum of decoration, which made the strongly stylised movements and acting and the shift of the action to the present all the more powerful in their effect. Unlike the compact space that Nora was set in, in Rosmersholm Pitínský worked with a large, undefined, and almost empty, dark space, with tall narrow bookcases standing all over the stage. During the performance, the librarian, a symbolic figure, made his way around them on stilts while recounting Nordic legends, and acting as a kind of commentator on an age when old values have been abandoned and new ones cannot yet be relied on. Books pulled from the bookcase were strewn about the stage. The actors would move them around, scattering them or arranging them in piles during their monologues. The main characters, Rosmer (the Slovak actor Martin Huba) and Rebecca (Kateřina Holánová), balanced between psychologically faithful interpretations of their characters and stylised performances. In Pitínský’s interpretation, Rosmer exhibited a surprising inner gentleness and fragility, a humble victim of fate, while Rebecca expressed her hopeless inner struggle through dance, in a furious rhythmic stomping. The other characters in the play added to the surreal atmosphere: the housekeeper (Ivana Valešová), whose performance served as a kind of symbolic warning of an impending threat, or Brendel (Jan Zvoník), the human derelict, who clings tenaciously to his dreams and ideals. In Rosmersholm Pitínský conceived the play’s characters ½Jan Antonín Pitínský > Photo Viktor Kronbauer ¾Henrik Ibsen, Rosmersholm / Národní divadlo v Brně, 2005 Directed by J. A. Pitínský / Set design Tomáš Rusín Costumes Zuzana Štěfunková > Photo Viktor Kronbauer 027-036_Pitinsky_3k.indd 28 9.7.2008 17:12:48 J. A. PITÍNSKÝ AND THE CLASSICS 027-036_Pitinsky_3k.indd 29 /29 9.7.2008 17:12:50 30/ J. A. PITÍNSKÝ AND THE CLASSICS ¿Jaroslav Vrchlický – Zdeněk Fibich, The Death of Hippodamia / Městské divadlo Zlín, 2006 / Directed by J. A. Pitínský / Set design Pavel Borák Costumes Michaela Hořejší > Photo archives as universal symbols of mental conflict and spiritual struggle, not rooted in any particular time. However, despite creating an overall image of a gloomy “twilight of the gods”, the production also offered audiences lighter scenes, presented with wit and humour. Pitínský did not make any substantial modifications to the original text. The individual changes he did make (the librarian recounting Nordic legends or the added timely text by the editor of a left-wing newspaper) did not affect the overall tone of the production too much. In the context of the director’s repertoire, the production of Rosmersholm came across as very balanced, but it was through his light-handed use of devices, the excellent performances of the main characters (Rosmer and Rebecca), and the emphasis on creating a dark atmosphere that Pitínský succeeded in staging an effective and timeless image of a period painfully crumbling away. In 2006 Pitínský, in his native Zlín (which in 1955, when the director was born, was called Gottwaldov after the first Communist President Klement Gottwald), directed the melodrama by Zdeněk Fibich and Jaroslav Vrchlický The Death of Hippodamia and again demonstrated that he is one of the few directors capable of making effective dramatic use of the space of the large stage of Zlín City Theatre. This too was a production of a classic work: Jaroslav Vrchlický was one of the biggest figures of Czech poetry in the 19th century, and his dramatic trilogy in verse, Hippodamia (The Death of Hippodamia is the third of the three plays), put to music by the composer Zdeněk Fibich, as a melodrama, is a trying test for any director, conductor or 027-036_Pitinsky_3k.indd 30 actors who take it on. In the play, the actors perform a dramatic text in combination with music, which significantly contributes to shaping the text’s meaning. Hippodamia rarely appears on the Czech stage, not just because it is so demanding on actors and musically, but also because today few know how to give this specific genre a modern theatrical look. Pitínský took advantage of the setting of this tragic, classically themed drama, which is situated in the ancient Olympic games, and he used film footage from the recent Olympics held in Athens to form the background, which played continuously on the set backdrop. The impressive size of the film screen and the excellent choice of shots enabled the director to create the aura of a true celebration of physical strength, prowess and beauty, in the spirit of the ancient idea of the Olympic games, and at the same time it gave a distinctive frame to the tragedy and a link to the present. In the play, Pelops (Dušan Sitko) and Hippodamia (Helena Čermáková) are taking part in the festivities heralding the start of the games. In the production, this ceremony made use of elements of ancient ritual combined with the contemporary pomp of a sports show. The characters were dressed in costumes in the fashion of the 1950s, the set designs included the spectacular decor of the festivities, but also the use of spare simple contemporary furniture (rows of wooden seats), and artistically clean sets, harmonised in ¾Fráňa Šrámek, The Bells / Národní divadlo, Praha 2006 / Directed by J. A. Pitínský / Set design Jan Hubínek / Costumes Kateřina Štěfková > Photo Viktor Kronbauer 9.7.2008 17:12:50 J. A. PITÍNSKÝ AND THE CLASSICS 027-036_Pitinsky_3k.indd 31 /31 9.7.2008 17:12:51 32/ J. A. PITÍNSKÝ AND THE CLASSICS ¿J. W. Goethe, Elective Affinities / Dejvické divadlo, Praha 2006 / Directed by J. A. Pitínský / Set design Jan Štěpánek / Costumes Jana Preková > Photo Viktor Kronbauer ¿Božena Němcová, Wild Bara / Slovácké divadlo Uherské Hradiště, 2007 / Directed by J. A. Pitínský / Set design Jan Hubínek / Costumes Michaela Hořejší > Photo Milan Zámečník J.A.Pitínský A N D T H E CLASSICS 027-036_Pitinsky_3k.indd 32 9.7.2008 17:12:52 J. A. PITÍNSKÝ AND THE CLASSICS /33 ¿Božena Němcová, Wild Bara / Slovácké divadlo Uherské Hradiště, 2007 / Directed by J. A. Pitínský / Set design Jan Hubínek Costumes Michaela Hořejší > Photo Milan Zámečník prevailingly black or white colours. Pitínský relied strongly on Fibich’s music to help describe situations and the inner world of each of the characters, and he focused primarily on consistently stylising the performances, employing grand, statuesque gestures and even making use of the now much-dreaded onstage pathos. All this surprisingly came together to create a production that was modern in expression but retained its classic dimension of a tragedy. The stylised movements, acting, and performances gave the production exactly the right measure of “operatic” detachment, allowing it to overcome the demanding nature of Vrchlický’s verse and the exaltedly heroising text, without at the same time depriving this story about the struggle between reason and passion of its force, earnestness, and its message. With Hippodamia Pitínský succeeded in putting a fascinating piece of “grand” theatre on the large stage in Zlín, which included the use of the fifty-member orchestra of the Zlín philharmonic, in a production that was an extraordinary success among audiences and critics, but he was far from as successful on the country’s number one stage, the National Theatre (Národní divadlo) in Prague, where in 2006 he staged Fráňa Šrámek’s play The Bells (Zvony). Šrámek was one of the most interesting early 20th-century Czech authors of poetry about love and nature and against war, and he also wrote several plays. The Bells was one of his unsuccessful plays. It has only been staged twice since 1921, and perhaps the greatest merit in Pitínský’s production of this work was his rediscovery of the text of the play and its special raw poetic language. The drama is situated in a Czech country village during the third year of the First World War. With the men at war, the women are living 027-036_Pitinsky_3k.indd 33 alone in the village and performing the men’s work, and they are wanting for love and missing the natural ties of the village community. When soldiers appear in the village to take away the church bells and melt them down, the women are transformed into a wild and uncontrollable crowd, like a classical chorus of harpies or Bacchae. This chorus was the prime mover of events. The women in it were expressively made up; initially wearing coarse men’s clothing, and then gradually changing into traditional costume, their stylised, uniform movements made them look like pagan priestesses. The chorus sang a portion of the text of the play, including the stage notes. Jan Hubínek’s set was also stylised — making profuse use of a brown shade, like the colour of parched land, as though in reference to the emotional aridity of the village, whose inhabitants have been literally trampled underground by the war, and whom he had emerging out of dwellings resembling dugouts. In the second part of the production, when the action moved inside the dwellings, the set was somewhat “humanised” by the presence of furniture and minor rural accessories. Alongside the stylised acting of the chorus, the distinctively elaborated main characters also stood out: the farmer Peterka (Jiří Štěpnička), his ill wife (Taťjana Medvecká), and his servant Rozára. The performances of these characters, which did not follow the extreme grotesque stylisation of the others, were among the strongest moments in the entire production, which on the whole often hovered on the edge between a just bearable pathos and stylisation and an unendurably exaggerated expressivity of speech and style. Alongside the parts that managed to keep to the right level of stylisation and grotesque relief, there were also stilted and 9.7.2008 17:12:53 34/ 027-036_Pitinsky_3k.indd 34 J. A. PITÍNSKÝ AND THE CLASSICS 9.7.2008 17:12:54 J. A. PITÍNSKÝ AND THE CLASSICS ½Božena Němcová, The Grandmother / Národní divadlo, Praha 2007 Directed by J. A. Pitínský / Set design Jan Štěpánek / Costumes Jana Preková > Photo Viktor Kronbauer affected scenes, in places accompanied by an unintelligible text. Nevertheless, there is no denying the production’s moral and emotional force and especially its ability to look at Šrámek’s play through modern eyes, as a portrait of an age that made people worse than they really were. Pitínský’s last production in 2006 was his dramatisation of Johann Wolfgang Goethe’s novel Elective Affinities (Die Wahlverwandtschaften), played on the intimate stage of Dejvice Theatre in Prague. He created a delicate but also deeply meaningful dramatic tale of the fateful attraction between two men and two women: one married couple, Charlotte (Lenka Krobotová) and Eduard (Jaroslav Plesl), invite (foolishly confident of their intellectual and emotional bond) their friend Ota (Václav Neužil) and Charlotte’s niece Ottilie (Martha Issová) to their country home. The hosts are devotees of the natural sciences and theorise about how it is possible to cite parallels between the forces of nature and the origin and demise of relationships between people – and the relationships between the four main characters really do become complicated and head inevitably towards a tragic denouement. The production was also built on strongly stylised movement and visual components. Its artistic and ideological grounding was an attempt to reflect Goethe’s age, not as a historically exact reflection, but rather as a portrait derived from the accumulation of current notions about that time. The dialogue between Eduard and Charlotte at the start of the production seemed almost a parody of the obsession of Goethe’s age with science, progress, and knowledge. Even the evening at home with guests was played in a slightly ironic tone, where the affected French conversation alternates with the overhead projection of drawings on transparencies. The awkwardness the characters feel from the unexpected attractions that emerge in this lovers’ “quadrangle” is expressed by the actors through wooden gestures, puppet-like movements, and affected, faltering speech. This came across as both comical and touching; the deliberate stylisation seemingly prevented the characters from expressing their emotions, but in actuality it served to reveal them entirely. The production moved at an odd, fluctuating pace, bustling scenes alternating with deliberately protracted ones, and the rhythm of the production was accentuated by the musical numbers, in which the characters polyphonically sang period songs to Goethe’s texts. As the story progressed the method of acting also changed – the performances and visual components became less stylised. The set, designed by Jan Štěpánek, was initially a bizarre post-modern design and then it gradually took on the character of a romantic scene. Certain parallels emerged between the traits and feelings about life possessed by Goethe’s heroes and those of the modern generation – on the one hand, they are precocious know-it-alls, and on the other hand, juvenile and immature, and they typically have a fashionable longing to know the “curiosities” of life. The meticulous work with bizarre and lyrical poetics, the fragile boundary between true passion and irony, and the convincing performances, made 027-036_Pitinsky_3k.indd 35 /35 Pitínský’s production of Goethe’s text one of the best Czech drama productions of 2006. At the start of 2007 Pitínský returned to Moravia, this time to Slovácko Theatre in Uherské Hradiště, where in 2004 he had directed a very successful production of The Cunning Little Vixen (Liška Bystrouška), which won several prestigious critic awards. This time he took as his material three stories by Božena Němcová, the most famous Czech woman writer of the 19th century. The selected stories were: The Song about Viktorka (Píseň o Viktorce), Karla and Wild Bára (Divá Bára). All three depict the fortunes of country girls who in one way or another deviate from the standard path of village life and pay for doing so. The Song about Viktorka is a dramatisation of one section taken from Němcová’s best-known piece of work, her novel The Grandmother (Babička). Viktorka, a proud village beauty, falls in love with a soldier who is passing through the village with his unit. The soldier leaves, and Viktorka is left expecting his child; she goes out of her mind with grief, throws the child into the river, and several years later dies tragically herself. Karla is the somewhat strange tale of a boy whose mother dressed him as a girl from a very young age in order to protect him from being taken by the army, and Wild Bára is the story of an unusual, wild and independent-minded young woman, whom the village fears and persecutes. All three stories were surprisingly set in the war year of 1940 and situated in the town of Valašské Meziříčí, which is where the famous Czech director Alfréd Radok fled from Prague after the Czech universities were shut down during the war. He worked there as a clerk and collaborated with the local amateur theatre ensemble. Pitínský created the production to look like a dress rehearsal of Radok’s amateur ensemble performing the three aforementioned stories. This context of a rehearsal made it possible for Pitínský to step into the plot, stop it unexpectedly, and establish an objective distance through the comments of the director and the actors. Even German censors were placed in the rehearsal, and their presence heightened the sense of direct threat to the actors in the performance and the general sense of existential anxiety over the fate of the nation. In the end, the German censors interrupted the rehearsal, and the conclusion resurrected the issue of Czech intolerance towards anyone who in some way strays from the standard norms, the way all three heroines in the individual parts of the production did. This visually impressive production was based on contrasting a black background with colourful costumes, which in The Song about Viktorka were inspired by folk costumes, in Karla by the frightening fantasticality of carnival masks, and in Wild Bářa by the stylised elements of village and contemporary dress. An important part of the production was the musical accompaniment, provided by a band with a dulcimer playing live onstage during the performance. Each of the actors played several roles, and alongside acting their roles they also had to be capable of singing, dancing, and performing choreographed movements and choral recitations. Jitka Josková gave outstanding performances as Viktorka and Bára, as did Tereza Novotná-Miklíková in the role of Viktorka’s sister Mařenka. Despite the complex structure of the production and its intricate layers of meaning, in Uherské Hradiště Pitínský succeeded in creating a production that came 9.7.2008 17:12:55 36/ J. A. PITÍNSKÝ AND THE CLASSICS across as compact, appealed with its colourful theatricality, and at the same time retained a clean style. Božena Němcová is the author of the material for Pitínský’s most recent production at the National Theatre in Prague. The Grandmother is a classic work of Czech literature, required reading at school, and well known by everyone, and it has already been adapted several times for film. The heroine of the work is an elderly woman, the writer's grandmother, who lives her life in harmony with others, with nature and with God, and is the embodiment of wisdom and a harmonious existence. The dramatisation injects some discordant notes into this idyll; the authors of the adaptation (J. A. Pitínský and Lenka Kolihová Havlíková) tried to portray the uneasy lot of the female characters (Babička, her daughters and granddaughters, and even the crazy Viktorka, the character of the Countess, and her foster daughter). In the final scene these fates were supposed to converge thematically with the fate of the writer Němcová and with the fate of the actor in the lead role, Vlasta Chramostová, who as a dissident was persecuted by the Communist regime. The dramatisation also tried not to accentuate the notoriously well-known points in the plot that the film versions centred on (e.g. Viktorka's love story), but these parts are also in places the most dramatic ones in the story, and when they are shifted into the background, the production has nothing to rest on. It is this dramatic charge that Pitínský's production was lacking. It suffered from being overly drawn out and often came across as a poorly executed and rather awkwardly stylised reproduction of the material. Here the director traditionally exhibited his feeling for working with the musical and movement components of a production, but unfortunately he tended to draw on his former productions of 19th-century Czech classics, and he was unable to find a consistent and artistically original style for his production of The Grandmother. Pitínský’s The Grandmother seemed like a strange collage made out of individual scenes, and what is obvious is that the emphasis on the hard lot of women was artificially (and sometimes even ridiculously) implanted in the work. Some of the portraits of rural life were at least artistically impressive, but others were awkward and affected. Here the cohesive and stylistic element of the production was the seemingly relentless and over-sized sounding music of Vladimír Franz, rather than the director’s interpretation. The Grandmother provoked a wave of negative reactions and criticisms among critics, but there were some who supported it. It is characteristic of Pitínský that he is not as sucessful at the National Theatre in Prague as he is on other stages. The success of his productions tends to hinge on the chosen theme, but also on the malleable qualities of the actors and the production team he works with. He has the best results when the ensemble follows the director’s search for the right expression, but his directorial work bears up poorly when confronted with professional routine. Despite some failures, however, Pitínský continues to be one of the most interesting directors in the Czech Republic, with a unique vision and the courage to try out new ideas. Henrik Ibsen: Rosmersholm. Adapted by Vendula Borůvková and J. A. Pitínský, directed by J. A Pitínský, set Tomáš Rusín, costumes Zuzana Štefunková, music Richard Dvořák. National Theatre Brno, premiere 17 / 6 / 2005. Jaroslav Vrchlický – Zdeněk Fibich: The Death of Hippodamia. Directed by J. A. Pitínský, conductor and music interpretation Roman Válek, set Pavel Borák, costumes Michaela Hořejší. Zlín City Theatre, premiere 11 / 2 / 2006. Fráňa Šrámek: The Bells. Directed by J. A. Pitínský, set Jan Hubínek, costumes Kateřina Šefková, music Petr Hromádka. National Theatre, Prague, premiere 15 / 6 / 2006. Johann Wolfgang Goethe: Elective Affinities. Dramatisation (based on a translation by E. A. Saudek) by Karel Tománek, directed by J. A. Pitínský, set Jan Štěpánek, costumes Jana Preková, choreographic collaboration Jan Kodet, music and musical collaboration Richard Dvořák. Dejvice Theatre, premiere 2 / 11 / 2006. Božena Němcová: Wild Bára. Conceived and directed by J. A. Pitínský, dramatisation by Eva Tálská and Matěj T. Růžička, set Jan Hubínek, costumes Michaela Hořejší, choreography Igor Dostálek, music Petr Hromádka. Slovácko Theatre Uherské Hradiště, premiere 20 / 1 / 2007. Božena Němcová: The Grandmother. Dramatisation by J. A. Pitínský and Lenka Kolihová Havlíková, directed by J. A. Pitínský, set Jan Štěpánek, costumes Jana Preková, music Vladimír Franz. National Theatre, Prague, premiere 13 / 12 / 2007. J.A.Pitínský A N D T H E CLASSICS 027-036_Pitinsky_3k.indd 36 9.7.2008 17:12:55 Jana Machalická THE CZECH WEB OF THEATRE CZECH AND MORAVIAN REGIONAL THEATRES 037-052_Oblasti_3k.indd 37 9.7.2008 17:15:00 38/ THE CZECH WEB OF THEATRE – CZECH AND MORAVIAN REGIONAL THEATRES T he network of regional theatres that emerged in the Czechoslovak state is a phenomenon for which it would be hard to find any parallel abroad. Geographically it is a relatively dense and balanced system of permanent repertoire theatres home to at least one company and offering theatrical performances for the public in the given region. A certain counterpart to this system exists in nearby German-speaking countries, owing to similar development in the past and the use of a repertoire-based method of operation. Although since 1990 the regional theatres have begun to stake out their own place and look for ways in which to shake off the image of playing “second fiddle” to the centre stars, they are not in an easy position. The roots of the theatre network in this country can be traced back to the end of the Second World War, when repertoire theatres with their own companies began to emerge in towns in the border regions, largely the Sudetenland (the region on the border of the Czech Republic that was annexed in 1938 by Nazi Germany on the basis of the Munich Agreement), and especially wherever permanent German professional companies had operated in the past, but also in traditionally Czech localities. Although after 1948 some of the hastily established theatres were subsequently shut down (Regional Theatre of J. K. Tyl in Kutná Hora / Oblastní divadlo J. K. Tyla; Regional Opera in Jablonec nad Nisou / Oblastní zpěvohra v Jablonci nad Nisou; Tábor Regional Town Theatre / Městské oblastní divadlo Tábor; Šumava Regional Theatre in Klatovy / Pošumavské oblastní divadlo v Klatovech; or Nový Bor Regional Town Theatre / Městské oblastní divadlo Nový Bor), the first wave of founding new theatres can be said to have taken place between 1945 and 1951 (it was at that time, for example, that what is now Theatre Šumperk of Northern Moravia / Severomoravské divadlo Šumperk, was founded) and the founding or more often the re-founding of theatres continued in connection with the new legislation on theatre arts that was introduced in 1955. From today’s perspective it seems incredible how overextended the theatre network was. It was intended as the implementation and manifestation of the idea of decentralisation developed by the Minister of Culture Zdeněk Nejedlý, which was based on the unrealistic premise that top actors from Prague would be dispersed throughout the regions and fundamentally transform the level of quality of local theatre. A role in this was also played by the “constructivist” mood of the post-war period and a genuine longing, after six years of German military occupation, to be able to freely attend Czech theatre. The system of regional theatres was further shaped in the 1960s, when some theatres were closed or merged with others (for example, in 1963 Beskydy Theatre in Nový Jičín / Beskydské divadlo v Novém Jičíně, or the Western Bohemia Theatre in Klatovy / Západočeské divadlo v Klatovech, were closed, and the town theatres in Benešov and Hořovice were merged and formed the foundation for the emerging theatre in Příbram, where according to the communist regime a permanent theatre was required for the local uranium miners). The last regional ½A. P. Checkov, The Seagull / Slovácké divadlo Uherské Hradiště, 2003 Direction by Oxana Smilková – Meleshkina / Set design and costumes Jevgenij Kulikov > Photo Jiří Kalabis 037-052_Oblasti_3k.indd 38 theatre was founded in 1961, Cheb Regional Theatre (Krajské oblastní divadlo Cheb), soon after renamed the Border Guard Theatre (Divadlo pohraniční stráže). This brief historical excursion was essential if we are to understand the foundations on which Czech regional theatre operates today, what its priorities are, what traditions it draws on and conditions it works with, and, at the same time, what constraints it is under. This system functioned without any serious difficulties up until 1989, but it was marked by an unhealthy and unnatural rigidity. The artists did not often change their engagement. While those at regional theatres could end up working in Prague, the system contained a standardised trajectory for progressing between theatres: an artist progressed from small, remote theatres first to larger and better-known theatres and only then was able to move on to Prague. Moving between theatres was restricted, monitored and sometimes even controlled by the Communist Party and other supervisory bodies, and it was not even unusual for the State Security Service to interfere. After 1970, during the normalisation period (the period when the communist regime re-established its grip following the invasion of Warsaw Pact troops in Czechoslovakia in August 1968), a peculiarity of that time was the movement between theatres in the opposite direction: top artists were forced to move from central to regional theatres. These particular artists were people who for political reasons were no longer allowed to work in the theatres and companies they had been engaged in before normalisation and which they had often led to become European-class venues (such directors included, for example, Jan Grossman, Jan Kačer, Miloš Hynšt and Alois Hajda). The consequences of this political persecution paradoxically benefited the regional theatres – expelled artists, together with the young generation of directors just taking shape, began in the theatres outside the centres to pursue a unique dramatic programme, often based on studio principles and developed in experimental spaces (for example, F. X. Šalda Theatre in Liberec / Divadlo F. X. Šaldy, Liberec; Victorious February Theatre in Hradec Králové / Divadlo Vítězného února, Hradec Králové). Essentially, it was “thanks” to normalisation that even the regional theatres, which had previously been presented more as functional stages servicing one region or another (for example, Cheb Regional Theatre / Západočeské divadlo Cheb), had their own important eras. With just a few exceptions, by 1990 almost every regional theatre in Czechoslovakia could boast having experienced an interesting period in its recent history, even if it was for just a short time, when a particular director and the right dramaturgy came together. In the 1970s it was also in the regions that two important theatres emerged: in 1972 the Drama Studio in Ústí nad Labem (Činoherní studio v Ústí nad Labem), and two years later Prostějov’s Ha-Divadlo, which naturally progressed into a fully professional company and in the mid-1980s moved to Brno. Today there are approximately fifteen theatres in the regional network. Only Prague and Brno are theatre centres. Ostrava, given its distance from the capital, is in a specific position, because, although it is home to a number of theatres, the conditions are not commensurable with the conditions in the 9.7.2008 17:15:01 THE CZECH WEB OF THEATRE – CZECH AND MORAVIAN REGIONAL THEATRES other two cities. Permanent engagements guarantee actors work and let both theatres and audiences benefit from the advantages of a repertoire programme. On the other hand, there is more than one specific difficulty involved in how these theatres and the work they do operate. Local artists, for example, do not have very strong ties to the media (film, television, dubbing work, etc.) and there are few opportunities for additional artistic work, which, given how little theatre actors earn, makes it difficult for artists to support themselves. Nevertheless, drama school graduates heading to the regional theatres are clearly not doing so because they have no other choice. Those who have opted to take this direction do so mainly owing to a desire to pursue their own idea of theatre, where usually there is less commercial pressure and no need to be constantly confronted with unpredictable competition. On the other hand, it is impossible not to notice the lack of directors, in particular, willing to take up long-term engagements as artistic directors at regional theatres. For the past decade, and perhaps even longer, guest directors from various corners of the country have been alternating in most regional theatres – the theatre network has opened up and become integrated, and there is almost no guest engagement or form of cooperation that is impossible. An unfortunate side-effect of this in many ways enriching practice is that there is no one in place to systematically and purposefully develop and mould the companies (in this regard, several theatres have long been in a critical state, for example, Liberec’s F. X. Šalda Theatre). Another cluster of problems relates to the economic side of Cheb /39 running regional theatres. Until November 1989 the theatre network included theatres that had as many as four companies. This expensive model had to be done away with: the opera and operetta companies usually merged; the ballet companies often survived – albeit reduced in size – due in part to the “services” they provided to the productions of other companies. Only J. K. Tyl Theatre in Pilsen (Divadlo J. K. Tyla v Plzni) and the National Moravian-Silesian Theatre in Ostrava (Národní divadlo moravskoslezské, Ostrava) were left intact. The only theatre that has actually been newly transformed into a four-company theatre is the Southern Bohemia Theatre (Jihočeské divadlo) in České Budějovice, with the addition of a puppetry company. While the scope of regional theatres covers the entire country, unfortunately no systemic approach to their existence has yet been developed and the problem of their multi-source financing has remained unaddressed. The fact that regional theatres today essentially belong to the towns they are in and are largely funded out of the municipal budgets leaves them in a position where they are overly dependent on the local town hall, and the most poignant expressions of this are found in inappropriate attempts to influence the dramaturgy and production practices. The past two decades have literally been lined with conflicts between theatre directors and their trustee institutions, which have more than once ended with the dismissal of the theatre’s management – it is the common practice of municipal authorities to try to solve these conflicts by means of personnel changes. A national exception in this regard is the Town Theatre of Mladá Boleslav (Městské divadlo Mladá Boleslav). Until 1994 Praha Ostrava Brno Zlín Uherské Hradiště 037-052_Oblasti_3k.indd 39 9.7.2008 17:15:02 40/ THE CZECH WEB OF THEATRE – CZECH AND MORAVIAN REGIONAL THEATRES it was a branch stage of a theatre complex headquartered in Kladno. Its efforts to become independent received by and large unprecedented support from the town and its local businesses, especially the Škoda Company. However, in exchange for the financial generosity of the theatre’s sponsors, who were longing for a prestigious local theatre, it has been fully dependent on the municipal authorities, and by extension, the taste of the public. It is one of the most conventional theatres in the country. At the same time it is hard not to see that regional theatres cannot ignore the composition of the population around their locations. Regional theatres require a more balanced dramaturgy and even the production practices have to at least somewhat take into account the claims made on them by the subscription system that all the theatres are dependent on. A constant and difficult task for the regional theatres in particular is the effort to find and retain a balance between possible artistic feats or even experiments and the need to direct the piece at the wide spectrum of the local population. These constraints on artistic creativity in regional theatres cannot be altered and such a change would not even be desirable – in the realm of Czech theatre the regional theatres are a specific phenomenon with a specific mission and specific tasks. In recent years some regional theatres have exhibited greater artistic stability, especially in locations where it has been possible to retain an artistic director for a longer period of time. For example, the Southern Bohemia Theatre in České Budějovice has established a strong reputation for its drama repertoire under the direction of Martin Glaser and the Silesian Theatre in Opava for its opera company. Some theatres managed to penetrate public awareness as a result of a strong directorial era or by acquiring a reputation for daringness, such as the Drama Studio in Ústí nad Labem. After 1989, influenced by the tradition its theatre had to offer, young drama school graduates began migrating to this North Bohemian town. The Drama Studio has consistently been able to perform original work, often using provocative texts and directorial methods; in the early 1990s, when it was headed by Jiří Pokorný, it became home to the “in-yer-face” genre of theatre. Klicpera Theatre (Klicperovo divadlo) in Hradec Králové has become one of the most remarkable theatres since 1989. There is no doubt that behind all its activity lies the determined work of the theatre’s manager Ladislav Zeman, who put his full confidence in the director Vladimír Morávek to create a distinctive programme of productions. Zeman must also take credit for organising the annual international Theatre of Regions Festival, which has existed for over a decade. Both this work and the festival attracted and continue to attract the attention of critics. On the other hand, Klicpera Theatre’s success and its recent development offer a pretty good illustration of the mechanisms at work in the regions, because even if a regional stage builds up a good reputation and wins over the interest of professionals and theatre enthusiasts, there is no increase to its sphere of influence and it has no chance of evolving into an internationally respected theatre, because all of Czech theatre has long been plagued with difficulties in doing so. Even if the majority of critics give a positive assessment of Morávek’s work at Klicpera Theatre, it must nonetheless be acknowledged that at least some portion of the theatre’s audiences has had difficulty grasping his exclusive poetics. Clearly, the productions that emerge in the regional theatres of Bohemia and Moravia can be great, average or bad, just as they are of course at the theatres in urban cultural centres. Since November 1989, with the theatres working in the conditions of freedom, it rarely happens that a truly good production is overlooked. Equally, if a talented artist comes out with some original programmes, this does not go unnoticed. However, there is no use trying to disguise the fact that the best have always and will always head to the capital. It is logical and natural that they do. It does not detract from the regions, and efforts to veil or ignore this tendency are pointless. It is not the purpose of the work of the regional theatres to compete with the big metropolitan theatres. The public is very conscious of the importance of “their” local theatres. The story of one of the most significant regional theatres, the Municipal Theatre of Karlovy Vary (Městské divadlo v Karlových Varech) provides evidence of this. A few years ago the theatre found itself in a conflict with its trustee institution as the result of a crisis that had been going on for years. Around ten individuals passed through the position of the theatre’s director within fourteen years and attendance figures had fallen to a deplorable low. Up until the theatre was threatened with being shut down as a permanent town theatre the public took little interest in what was going on and made no effort to run to the theatre’s defence. When that threat became immediate, petition after petition was signed, protests were organised, and so on. The population of this spa town suddenly understood that, were they to lose their permanent theatre, they would be forfeiting something that they may not even have been able to define: the opportunity to live in a place with its own actors and directors, who in a distinctive and relevant way play a part in its cultural image. Although the residents of Karlovy Vary only won half of their “battle” (it was taken over by the private, Prague-based Theatre without Balustrades, Divadlo Bez zábradlí, as its second stage), it is still good to realise that this kind of relationship to theatre culture exists in the regions. And that is something that can be built on. It is a source of strength and meaning. THE CZECH WEB OF THEATRE CZECH AND MORAVIAN REGIONAL THEATRES 037-052_Oblasti_3k.indd 40 9.7.2008 17:15:02 THEATRE IN SOUTHERN MORAVIA (UHERSKÉ HRADIŠTĚ) /41 THEATRE IN SOUTHERN MORAVIA Jan Kerbr (UHERSKÉ HRADIŠTĚ) Praha Brno Uherské Hradiště T he idea of regional theatre as a forum to accommodate the widest possible range of public tastes has in recent years been extinguished. The arena of mass or popular entertainment has shifted into the household living room, facing a flickering television screen, and the structure of the theatregoing public even outside cultural centres has begun to change. It is not about pleasing everyone, but about appealing to the interest of those most likely and inclined to attend the theatre. In this regard the regional city of Ústí nad Labem has been unique for years. It is home to the unconventional Drama Studio theatre company, which has been running since before the revolution in 1989. In the years since it was founded in 1972 the company has seen continuous rounds of changes (often involving entire groups of its members), but, though the city does not have a conventional theatre scene, its “avant-garde” tradition has survived intact to date. In Hradec Králové, Klicpera’s Theatre experienced profound changes in its repertoire and artistic quality during the 1990s. The theatre is closely associated with the creative heyday of the director Vladimír Morávek, and it continues to benefit from his artistic investment today, even though he is no longer there. The quality of the productions has at least remained solid, and there are no kitschy titles or works just pandering to popular taste in the theatre’s repertoire (if comedy, then only works by major authors of world drama). In recent years other theatres have begun to adopt a more sophisticated focus – for example, in České Budějovice, Cheb, and Zlín. Performances in regional theatres are no longer required to appeal to everyone, and the sacrifices to meet expectations of mass attendance are certainly 037-052_Oblasti_3k.indd 41 ¿Slovácko Theatre Uherské Hradiště, build 1927, theatre from 1957 > Photo archives no more pronounced in these theatres than similar compromises made in so-called culture centres. For just under a decade positive talk has surrounded the ascent of Slovácko Theatre (Slovácké divadlo) in Uherské Hradiště (the smallest city in the country to boast its own professional theatre company!). It was founded in 1945, but it only began to draw national attention at the start of this century (and millennium). The company has enriched its ranks with 9.7.2008 17:15:02 42/ THEATRE IN SOUTHERN MORAVIA (UHERSKÉ HRADIŠTĚ) the addition of new graduates from Brno and Zlín. The director Igor Stránský, who is also the head of the company, has begun engaging interesting guests to participate in new productions. The company’s dramaturgy has proven to be bold, and in recent years it has staged the Czech premieres of a number of domestic and foreign plays. Around the time of the 2001-2002 season a fresh wind seemed to blow in. The idiosyncratic Moravian author and gagman Marian Palla saw the premiere of his crazy and very unconventional comedy Sajns fikšn (the Czech phonetic transcription of the word “science fiction”) staged in Uherské Hradiště. In 2002 J. A. Pitínský, a very prominent Czech director, was invited to work with the company (a theatre professional who rotates between numerous engagements in various theatres, Pitínský lives relatively close to Uherské Hradiště), with which he then prepared an ambitious project to stage Dostoyevsky’s Brothers Karamazov (taking a dramatisation he had once participated in from an earlier attempt at the Goose on a String Theatre in Brno). The actors managed this demanding dramatic piece at an amazing tempo, and there were some particularly outstanding performances (for example, Tomáš Šulaj as Mitya, Jitka Josková as Grushenka, Josef Kubáník as Smerdyakov). Even the figures of the Grand Inquisitor and the Devil were integrated into and portrayed in this somewhat unconventional edition of the work. After Pitínský, the company called on the 037-052_Oblasti_3k.indd 42 director Oxana Smilková-Meleshkina, whose reputation is that of a very provocative director. Her background predestines her to come up with distinctive versions of the Russian classics, which she has no fear of handling irreverently. She began with ¿F. M. Dostoyevsky, Brothers Karamazov / Slovácké divadlo Uherské Hradiště, 2002 / Directed by J. A. Pitínský / Set design Ján Zavarský Costumes Kateřina Bláhová > Photo archives 1. William Shakespeare, King Richard III / Slovácké divadlo Uherské Hradiště, 2006 / Directed by Igor Stránský / Set design Jaroslav Malina Costumes Eva Jiříková > Photo Miroslav Potyka 2. Jaroslav Rudiš, Petr Pýcha, Summer in Lapland / Slovácké divadlo Uherské Hradiště, 2006 / Directed by Jiří Honzírek / Set design and costumes Radomír Otýpka > Photo Jan Karásek 3. M. J. Lermontov, Masquerade / Slovácké divadlo Uherské Hradiště, 2005 / Directed by Oxana Smilková – Meleshkina / Set design and costumes Jevgenij Kulikov > Photo Jan Karásek 4. Tom Stoppard, The Real Thing / Slovácké divadlo Uherské Hradiště, 2004 / Directed by Ladislav Pešek / Set design and costumes Eva Jiříkovská > Photo Miroslav Potyka 5. Marián Palla, Again I Washed Myself for Nothing / Slovácké divadlo Uherské Hradiště, 2003 / Directed by Ladislav Pešek / Set design and costumes Marián Palla > Photo Miroslav Potyka 9.7.2008 17:15:03 1 2 THEATRE IN SOUTHERN MORAVIA (UHERSKÉ HRADIŠTĚ) 3 /43 4 5 THEATRE IN SOUTHERN MORAVIA (UHERSKÉ HRADIŠTĚ) 037-052_Oblasti_3k.indd 43 9.7.2008 17:15:03 44/ THEATRE IN SOUTHERN MORAVIA (UHERSKÉ HRADIŠTĚ) Chekhov’s The Seagull, casting Jitka Josková and Tomáš Šulaj in the roles of Nina and Konstantin, which quickly made them the most popular actors in the local drama scene. Pitínský and Smilková-Meleshkina began cultivating the theatre’s audiences (Slovácko Theatre draws its public from nearby and more remote surrounding areas, and relatively often travels out to its audiences). There is a healthy sort of local patriotic support in Uherské Hradiště for its cultural representatives (alongside the theatre the city is also home to one of the most progressive, European-class folklore groups, Hradišťan) and this approach helps ease the reception of more demanding projects. In 2004 the high-point of local drama productions took place in Slovácko Theatre with the staging of Těsnohlídek’s drama The Cunning Little Vixen (Liška Bystrouška, the play that inspired Janáček’s opera), directed by Pitínský. This anthropomorphised parable situated in the animal kingdom was one of the best productions of the year (it was even staged as part of the Theatre Festival in Pilsen). The stylised movements of the wild and domestic animals were the work of the choreographer Igor Dostálek and were inspired by Asian forms of drama. Jitka Josková excelled in the title role of this highly creative production, while notable performances were also given by Zdeněk Trčálek as the dog Lapák, Tomáš Šulaj as Sharp-Ears’s dear Fox Golden-mane, and Vladimír Doskočil in the role of the Forester who kills the lovestruck creatures. Oxana Smilková-Meleshkina produced a daring interpretation of Lermontov’s Masquerade in Uherské Hradiště. Over time, other noteworthy guests have appeared: Martin Porubjak presented Brecht’s The Beggar’s Opera and situated it in a prison for women, where the guard (Tomáš Šulaj) rehearses this well-known story with the prisoners and himself plays Mackheat; Radovan Lipus last year staged a dramatised version of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. Evidence of how fresh the company’s repertoire has remained is offered by the Czech premieres of Vian’s The Generals’ Tea Party, Stoppard’s The Real Thing, and Egressy’s circus romance Blue, Blue, Blue. Uherské Hradiště is also brave enough to work with original texts (the above-mentioned Palla staged another of his plays here: Again I Washed Myself for Nothing (Zase jsem se umýval zbytečně); Slovácko Theatre put on the first production of the play Summer in Lapland (Léto v Laponsko) by the creative duo Rudiš and Pýcha; together with Vladimír Fekar, Jakub Maceček wrote – and then directed – a biographical extravaganza for the company about the forerunner to the French accursed poets, F. Villon – They’ll Hang a Noose on Your Neck (F. Villon - na krk oprátku ti věší). The company has even ventured to take on Havel’s The Memorandum (Vyrozumění) and Shakespeare’s Richard III. Worth mentioning are Josef Kubáník’s performance as Baláš in Havel’s play, and Tomáš Šulaj’s masterful portrayal of Richard. The company worked on both these plays with their director-head Igor Stránský. J. A. Pitínský is an increasingly frequent guest of the theatre, and his third production on the theatre’s stage was the three-part composition Wild Bára (Divá Bára) based on the story by Božena Němcová, another of the peaks in the work of this local company. Nor have the more entertaining parts of Slovácko Theatre’s repertoire been neglected. Foglar’s Rapid Arrows (Rychlé šípy, a dramatisation of the popular children’s scouting “epopee”) enjoys a massive and curious popularity and has been part of the company’s repertoire for an incredible seven years, having a total of 285 performances behind it as of 31 December 2007 (in the summer, for instance, visitors to the nearby castle Buchlov take in performances). All-round musical talent is a staple characteristic of the drama company’s performers, so the company can even venture into the sphere of musicals, and its performances in this genre definitely rank among the best in the country. On such productions the company works with Radek Balaš, who is today probably the best musical director in the country. The musicians of Hradišťan are entrusted with leading the music rehearsals. Tomáš Šulaj won the prestigious Thalia Award in the operetta-musical category for his performance in the title role of the musical The Full Monty (the most frequently performed musical in the Czech Republic at this time). This stable company (which, alongside the above-mentioned performers, includes, for example, Jaroslava Tihelková, Tereza NovotnáMikšíčková, Jiří Hejcman and Martin Vrtáček) ranks among the dramatic ensembles where the prevailing atmosphere is not one of boring routine but, on the contrary, where the productions exude a vibrant sense of joy and energy. THEATRE IN SOUTHERN MORAVIA (UHERSKÉ HRADIŠTĚ) 037-052_Oblasti_3k.indd 44 9.7.2008 17:15:04 THEATRE IN BAŤA’S CITY /45 THEATRE IN BAŤA'S CITY (ZLÍN) Jana Machalická Praha Brno Zlín I t was Tomáš Baťa, who essentially built the city of Zlín around his shoemaking enterprise, who came up with the idea of building a theatre there. However, his plans for doing so were thwarted by the German occupation of Czechoslovakia during the Second World War. A permanent theatre was not opened until 1946 and it operated out of a converted cinema theatre. After the tribulations of the 1950s, when the local theatre’s repertoire was nothing more than a submissive reflection of communist ideology, the early 1960s marked the start of a period in which the theatre’s new, artistically enterprising and non-conformist work propelled it into the ranks of the best regional theatres (Krejča’s Theatre Behind the Gate staged its pre-premieres here), and it held that position throughout the rest of the period under communism. It was one of the regional theatres that were able to provide an arena for the work of interesting artists who, owing to the regime, were unable to work in the bigger cities. Such figures included, in particular, Alois Hajda, who was expelled from the Brno State Theatre at the start of the 1970s. He brought with him to Zlín the dramaturg Miroslav Plešák and the artist Josef Jelínek. It was thanks to the general manager of the Zlín theatre Miloš Slavík (1970–1986) that other artists out of favour with the regime were able to work in Zlín during this period, at least under pseudonyms; artists such as Ludvík Kundera and Josef Topol. During these years Milan Lukeš tried out his first drama translations and Evald Schorm directed productions at the theatre. After Hajda arrived in Zlín, other “disgraced” directors also followed him there: Miroslav Hynšt (1982–1989) and Ivan Balaďa (1983–1985) 037-052_Oblasti_3k.indd 45 ¿Zlín City Theater, 1967 > Photo archives After 1989 the development of Zlín theatre took the same course as that which other regional theatres went or are still going through, with alternating strong and weak periods. Immediately after November 1989 there was a change in management and the theatre was renamed: the Working People’s Theatre in Gottwaldov became Zlín City Theatre (Městské divadlo Zlín; the city also returned to its pre-war name). Today the theatre runs three stages: the thousand-seat large hall, Studio Z (Studio Z) and the Little Club Theatre (Divadélko v Klubu). Both of the studio spaces are used more ad hoc, although the new director, Dodo Gombár, has just worked out a special drama programme 9.7.2008 17:15:05 46/ THEATRE IN BAŤA’S CITY for Studio Z. At first glance it would seem that the massive Zlín hall (the large building Zlín theatre occupies was opened in 1967 and is one of the youngest and largest theatre buildings in the country) must have no difficulty selling out, because not only is Zlín a centre of culture but it is also home to a number of universities and secondary schools. Nevertheless, it is not easy to balance quality dramaturgy capable of maintaining appeal over a longer period of time and simultaneously occasionally trying out new and innovative productions. The region of Southern Moravia, however, is somewhat unusual: just a few kilometres away from Zlín there is another relatively large theatre – Slovácko Theatre in Uherské Hradiště. This means that both theatres have a certain amount of nearby competition. But in recent years this fact seems to have had a positive effect as a kind of stimulus. For example, J. A. Pitínský alternates at both theatres. Zlín theatre hosts two festivals: an autumn review of its own productions and the international Setkání – Stretnutie Theatre Festival. In the period since the revolution in 1989 the Zlín theatre has essentially remained stable and has managed to avoid major conflicts with the body that operates it, though changes to theatre management have not always gone smoothly. In 1998 the general manager Ivan Kalina was replaced with Antonín Sobek, and the year before that the artistic director Josef Morávek left, who had been with the theatre for five years. Towards the end of Morávek's era, from around 1995 until at least the end of the century, when the company was headed by the director Petr Veselý, Zlín theatre entered a bolder era, mainly in connection with productions staged by the director J. A. Pitínský (Eight and a Half / Osm a půl; Jenůfa / Její pastorkyňa; Dialogues of the Carmelites / Dialogy karmelitek; The Trial – O Splendid Zlín / Proces – Ó božský Zlíne; Thirteen Songs / Třináct písní). In 1999, 037-052_Oblasti_3k.indd 46 for example, a production of Júdit directed by Věra Herajtová was staged, in which Helena Čermáková’s incarnation of the title role won her a Thalia Award. After Petr Veselý’s resignation in 2000, the Slovak director Silvester Lavrík was appointed the theatre’s new general manager, and he brought with him the dramaturg Karol Horváth. Under Lavrík the theatre went through what was clearly its artistically weakest period since 1989. His ideas for the theatre lacked any conceptual depth and his production style superficially and pointlessly replicated a model of postmodern poetics. The production that was supposed to be the new management’s calling card was Cyrano de Bergerac. Lavrík ¿Reza de Wet, Three Sisters II / Městské divadlo Zlín, 2002 / Directed by Petr Štindl / Set design and costumes Kamila Polívková > Photo archives 1. Molière, Don Juan / Městské divadlo Zlín, 2002 / Directed by Karol Horváth / Set design and costumes Michaela Hořejší > Photo archives 2. Friedrich Dürrenmatt, Frank V. / Městské divadlo Zlín, 2005 Directed by Pavel Šimák / Set design Jaroslav Milfajt Costumes Hana Kubešová > Photo archives 3. J. W. Goethe, Faust / Městské divadlo Zlín, 2007 / Directed by Dodo Gombár / Set design Pavel Borák / Costumes Kamila Polívková > Photo archives 4. William Shakespeare, King Lear / Městské divadlo Zlín, 2007 Directed by Pavel Šimák / Set design Jaroslav Čermák / Costumes Michaela Hořejší > Photo archives 5. Jaroslav Vrchlický, Zděněk Fibich, The Death of Hippodamia Městské divadlo Zlín, 2006 / Directed by J. A. Pitínský Set design Pavel Borák / Costumes Michaela Hořejší > Photo archives 9.7.2008 17:15:05 1 2 THEATRE IN BAŤA’S CITY 3 /47 4 5 THEATRE IN SOUTHERN MORAVIA (UHERSKÉ HRADIŠTĚ) 037-052_Oblasti_3k.indd 47 9.7.2008 17:15:06 48/ THEATRE IN BAŤA’S CITY turned the main protagonist into a Czech RAF pilot persecuted in the 1950s in Stalinist Czechoslovakia. In this work, the imperative of choosing a translation that agrees with the directorial interpretation was something that the creators of this production dismissed as a kind of wilfulness that would interfere in the free flow of inspiration. As a result, the poetic language of the selected translation, dating from the end of the 19th century, drowns in the midst of the new reality of the 1950s. The creators rearranged the timelines according to their own chronological design, with one war (probably the Second World War) following another, and the 1950s situated in between. Young communists (never mind how stiffly they moved when approaching Cyrano) are indeed a feature of communist times, but here they have been visualised as Cadets de Gascogne. Christian’s death occurs as he is crushed beneath a collapsed transmission tower while working the harvest. And other productions of classic works turned out equally muddled; for example, the production of Don Juan directed by Karol Horváth. But besides Lavrík and Horváth, other directors were also staging work in Zlín, such as Zdeněk Dušek (directing a traditionally staged but powerfully performed production of The Cherry Orchard), Dodo Gombár, Petr Štindl, Pavel Šimák, and an experienced director from the older generation Ivan Balaďa. One project that drew accolades was a double bill of Three Sisters, the original Chekhov play, performed in Studio Z under the direction of Dodo Gombár, and its “continuation”, Three Sisters Two, by the South African playwright Reza de Wet, which was directed by Petr Štindl in the theatre’s large hall. Gombár set the play’s action in an alienating framework, reciting the stage notes aloud, which emphasised the emotion and tragic isolation of the characters. The much-lauded Three Sisters Two by Reza de Wet follows the fates of the Prozorov sisters up to the years of the Bolshevik Revolution. De Wet is not as accomplished a playwright as Chekhov, but there were many interesting points in Štindl’s production; the breakdown of the family, for example, was convincingly conveyed by means of the pointless chattering of the characters. Štindl also staged the English morality play Everyman. He communicated the play’s theme, which touches on the basic questions of life, faith, and death, by using methods of traditional folk theatre combined with elements of musical drama, which made it similar in format to a modern opera (music by Petr Hromádka). This functioned well even in contrast with the play’s archaic and didactic form. Another regular guest director, Pavel Šimák, took on Gogol’s The Gamblers. This text has probably given up the best it has to offer in other directors’ productions (for example, the memorable interpretation by Ladislav Smoček at the Drama Club, Činoherní klub), but its updating in this version wonderfully revived it. Instead of players with sideburns and morning coats the director sent a thoroughly modern, wonderfully well-matched, and tight-knit Mafioso band onto the stage, and they easily lure the childish and boastful swindler Ikharev into a trap. In 2003 the dramaturg Miroslav Plešák was called in to pull the company out of its decline, and he remained the head of the Zlín theatre until 2007. Plešák reintroduced an adequately balanced dramaturgy to the theatre while also emphasising the development of the individual performers. His arrival was soon followed by a major popular success with a solid production of the musical Fiddler on the Roof directed by Dodo Gombár, who inserted a subtle emotional undertone into the mosaic of episodes from the life of a Jewish community. He constructed the “dramatic” scenes with a feeling for detail and hyperbole, while simultaneously meeting the demands of the musical drama genre. Some other successes from this period included Gombár’s staging of The Master and Margarita and The Death of Hippodamia (Smrt Hippodamie) directed by J. A. Pitínský. The impressiveness of the latter lay mainly in the balance between the musical and dramatic components. The direction was thoroughly attentive to stylisation, the stage design made use of the monumental quality of the Zlín stage, and the production managed to rehabilitate modern pathos and thus naturally revive a neglected genre. Also interesting was a revisiting of Čapek’s play R.U.R., directed by Jiří Fréhar, and ultimately even a visually ambitious interpretation of King Lear by Pavel Šimák with Dušan Sitek in the main role. The theatre also put on The War between Rosemary and Marjoram (Válka mezi rozmarýnem a majoránkou) by František Listopad: the author directed the play himself, and the company eventually also performed the play in Almada, Portugal. Plešák’s era at the theatre ended with a monumental project encompassing both parts of Goethe’s Faust, directed by Dodo Gombár, the incoming artistic director. This signalled the start of a new stage in the theatre’s history. The production was subtitled “Temptation and Redemption”, and in Štindl’s version the temptation of Faust occurs in a public space – a café. There were three Mephistopheles and Fausts, but this unique idea only partly worked, and the same was true of the decision to use cabaret poetics and anti-illusive methods in the second part. The director was inconsistent in these areas and awkwardly returned to a realistically descriptive construction of the situation. Nevertheless, the production of Faust is testimony to the bold ambitions of the theatre’s new director and the effort to explore new paths in dramaturgy and direction. THEATRE IN BAŤA'S CITY (UHERSKÉ HRADIŠTĚ) 037-052_Oblasti_3k.indd 48 9.7.2008 17:15:08 A THEATRE WITH A STIGMA (CHEB) /49 A THEATRE WITH A STIGMA Marta Ljubková (CHEB) Cheb Praha Brno T here is perhaps no other theatre in the Czech Lands that had such a turbulent modern history as the theatre in Cheb. That history is closely tied to the Sudeten region, where this, “the westernmost theatre in the Czech lands”, is located. German-language theatre in the Cheb region dates back to the 15th century. According to records in local archives, The Play of Cheb (Hra chebská) was first performed here in 1442. To date, 8312 verses of the play have survived, and on an international scale it is a truly unique work; the play took three days to perform. Other reports date from the last third of the 18th century, when what may have been the first professional actors to appear here took the stage in the Council Hall in Cheb. From that time on, thought was given to establishing a permanent theatre hall in Cheb, which at the time was primarily a Germanspeaking town. The gala opening of the Town Theatre of Cheb took place 3 October 1874. The theatre’s inaugural performances were two parts of Schiller’s Wallenstein trilogy, Wallenstein’s Camp and Wallenstein’s Death (these plays, which are about Albrecht von Wallenstein, who was murdered in Cheb in 1634, have continued to reappear in the theatre’s repertoire up to the present). This stagione was mainly intended for the majority German community in Cheb. The first Czech drama group to perform in Cheb was called “The Czech Club” (Česká beseda, 1881-1897), which aspired to “elevate the general level of education and life of society”. Once Czechoslovakia was founded as an independent republic the size of the Czech-speaking population in Cheb grew substantially (but even in the 1930s it was never more than 10%), and in 1926 Budil, a Czech amateur 037-052_Oblasti_3k.indd 49 ¿West Czech Theatre Cheb, 1874 > Photo archives theatre group, was founded. After the Second World War this stage served as a stagione for the theatre in Karlovy Vary. In 1955, when the population in the region was almost entirely Czech (the German population was transferred out of the Czech borderlands at the end of the Second World War), reconstruction began on the original Neoclassical theatre building, and it reopened five years later, initially as Cheb Regional Theatre, and later renamed the Border Guard Theatre. A permanent professional company was established in Cheb in 1961, and its founding head was the director and actor Karel Novák. While with the company, he created many remarkable productions and characters, but, above all he succeeded in 9.7.2008 17:15:08 50/ A THEATRE WITH A STIGMA (CHEB) existence of a professional dramatic body in the Cheb region was to prove its vitality. In 1992 the town of Cheb became the operator of the West Czech Theatre (Západočeské divadlo). At that time, the theatre’s general manager was the former Cheb actor and director František Hromada. An important chapter at the turn of the millennium was when a puppet company was performing for a period at the theatre. In the 1991–1992 season, several graduates of the puppetry department at the Theatre Faculty of the Academy of Performing Arts (DAMU) in Prague, Marek Bečka, Radek Beran and Vít Brukner, founded a company called Buns and Puppets (Buchty a loutky); in 1994 they moved to Prague. Since then they have performed more than 18 works for children and 16 premieres for adults; they have also created many individual projects in the field of alternative theatre and even in film. This company continues to occupy a unique position among Czech puppetry companies, both for the originality of its poetics, and for the independence of its activities. A company called Threads (Nitě) was briefly engaged at the theatre, followed by a company called Mash and Sausage (Kaše a párek), whose era lasted from the 1998–1999 season until 2001, and who focused on puppetry for children and adults. The company’s founding members were Jana Horčičková, Rostislav Studénka, Claudia Eftimiadisová, and Rostislav Novák, but it also involved directors and actors from the theatre. At the start of the new millennium Miloš Růžička became the theatre’s general manager. During his first years in this function, the director Věra Herajtová (2001–2005) worked with the company as its artistic director, and it was during her era that the theatre began to regain its good reputation among Czech critics. A dancer and choreographer, Herajtová brought to the Cheb theatre a strong artistic and especially movement-related stylisation; her dramaturgy was founded on both an interpretation of the classics and plays with a Christian dimension. In Cheb she strove to create highly artistic productions, but unfortunately they resonated more among professional critics than the local lay public. In 2002 the actress Radmila Urbanová won the Best building a theatre company of high quality. He remained in charge of the company until 1970, when he was dismissed for political reasons. Along with him the director Karel Nováček and the dramaturg Jiří Holeček were also dismissed. It is a several-hour train ride from Prague to get to the theatre in Cheb. It is located in an area that has undergone drastic historical changes, the demographic scars of which can still be seen. During the normalisation period the theatre was truly like “the back of beyond” – a place to which “inconvenient” artists could be shuttled off. In the 1970s the dramaturgs Miloslav Klíma and Zdeněk Hedbávný worked in Cheb, as did the actors Vlasta Chramostová and František Husák, and especially the great directors Miloš Horanský and Jan Grossman. Between 1974 and 1979 the latter directed, for example, his adaptation of Hašek’s Schweik (Švejk), Shakespeare’s King Lear, Chekhov’s The Seagull and The Cherry Orchard, and E. A. Longen’s A Trip on the Steamboat Lanna from Prague to Bratislava in 365 Days (Cesta na parníku Lanna z Prahy do Bratislava za 365 dní). The arrival of a new era, free of ideological constraints, also marked the start of a period in the theatre’s existence when the 037-052_Oblasti_3k.indd 50 ½William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet / Západočeské divadlo Cheb, 2007 / Directed by Zdeněk Bartoš / Set design and costumes Marek Cpin > Photo Michal Mráka 1. John Pielmeier, Agnus dei / Západočeské divadlo Cheb, 2003 / Directed by Věra Herajtová / Set design and costumes Jan Vlas > Photo Jan Dvořák 2. Caryl Churchill, Top Girls / Západočeské divadlo Cheb, 2007 Directed by Marián Amsler / Set design Andrej Ďurik / Costumes Martyna Dworakowska > Photo Michal Mráka 3. William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice / Západočeské divadlo Cheb, 2006 / Directed by Zdeněk Bartoš / Set design and costumes Dragan Stojčevskij > Photo Michal Mráka 4. Václav Havel, The Conspirators / Západočeské divadlo Cheb, 2008 Directed by Filip Nuckolls / Set design and costumes Pavel Kodera > Photo Michal Mráka 5. Martin McDonagh, The Cripple of Inishmaan / Západočeské divadlo Cheb, 2006 / Directed by Zdeněk Bartoš / Set design and costumes Ľubica Melcerová > Photo Michal Mráka 9.7.2008 17:15:09 1 2 A THEATRE WITH A STIGMA (CHEB) 3 /51 4 5 THEATRE IN SOUTHERN MORAVIA (UHERSKÉ HRADIŠTĚ) 037-052_Oblasti_3k.indd 51 9.7.2008 17:15:09 52/ A THEATRE WITH A STIGMA (CHEB) Rostislav Křivánek, Ruth / Západočeské divadlo Cheb, 2000 / Directed by Věra Herajtová / Set design Jan Štěpánek / Costumes Jana Preková > Photo Karel Kubín Actress Award for her role as Ruth in a production of a play of the same name (Rút), written by Rostislav Křivánek and directed by Herajtová. In 2003 the Best Actress Award was won by all three actresses – Jarmila Vlčková, Eva Navrátilová, and Sylvie Krupanská – in the production of J. Pilmeier’s Agnus Dei, also directed by Herajtová, and the production won the Award for Outstanding Artistic Achievement. The theatre embarked on another new era in January 2006. The young director Zdeněk Bartoš was appointed the theatre’s artistic director and from the outset has bet on a combined programme of less well-known titles, Czech premieres, and a reliable classic (The Cripple of Inishmaan, Top Girls, Dream Girl, Shoot the Crow, Conspirators/Spiklenci, Cyanide at Five/ Kyanid o páté, Romeo and Juliet). Bartoš reintroduced a wideranging dramaturgy, but in each production he strives to achieve an innovative or at least novel look, applying a new take to classics, and daring to invite in bold new directors just starting out or from the younger generation (e.g. Filip Nuckolls, Jan Jirků, Marian Amsler). Following the brief decline the theatre went into during its interlude between artistic directors, it has now begun to thrive again: it tours to Prague and abroad, organises a unique showcase of monodrama performances in the Czech Republic (The Biennial of One-Actor Theatre), and stages fairytales for German children and even productions with German subtitles. In addition to managing eight premieres in one season (two to three of which on the restored chamber stage of Studio D), it also, for example, presents stage readings of texts not yet performed (e.g. a new work by Michal Jakl called The Button/Tlačítko) or musical soirées, and it takes an active part generally in the cultural life of the region. The theatre currently engages sixteen actors, mostly from the younger generation, and in 2007 one of them, Vladimíra Vítová, was nominated for a Thalia Award for her performance as Portia in the Merchant of Venice (directed by Zdeněk Bartoš). A THEATRE WITH A STIGMA (CHEB) 037-052_Oblasti_3k.indd 52 9.7.2008 17:15:10 ½Total Eclipse / Národní divadlo v Brně 2005 Choreography and directed by Libor Vaculík / Music Fryderyk Chopin, Arnold Schönberg Set design Jan Dušek / Costumes Roman Šolc > Photo archives A SURVEY OF CZECH BALLET between 2005 and 2007 Roman Vašek 053-064_Balet_3k.indd 53 9.7.2008 17:15:54 54/ A SURVEY OF CZECH BALLET BETWEEN 2005 AND 2007 As indicated by the title, this article focuses on Czech ballet, or more accurately, on matters relating to Czech ballet companies. The very diverse Czech independent dance sector is therefore deliberately left aside here. This is not meant to imply that there is some kind of insurmountable wall separating ballet from independent modern dance; luckily, the remains of any such barriers are constantly being torn away. However, ballet characteristically involves a relatively closed circle of artists, has a different network of companies, a different audience, and the “life cycle” of the ballet season differs significantly from that of independent productions. ¿Coppélia / Divadlo F. X. Šaldy, Liberec 2006 / Choreography and directed by Kateřina Dedková / Music Léo Delibes / Set design and costumes Jiří Jelínek > Photo archives Some statistics to begin with The Czech Republic currently has five dance conservatories (two of which are private), and they produce roughly fifty-five graduates each year. Around forty positions for new dancers in Czech ballet companies open up each year, and usually about ten times as many dancers apply to fill those positions. There are eleven companies that regularly stage ballet productions, including the ballet company that is attached to the opera in Opava, and a Prague company that is a part of the essentially multimedia theatre Laterna Magika. Together these companies have a total of about 350 dancers (which is a significant decrease compared to the figures around twenty or thirty years ago). Today almost all of the dancers possess adequate qualifications (95% are graduates of Czech dance conservatories or similar schools abroad). Approximately one quarter of the dancers come from outside the Czech Republic, mostly from Slovakia, Russia, or Ukraine. As in other countries, there is a trend towards younger and younger dancers in the Czech ballet scene. The average age of dancers is now between 25 and 30, which is approximately five years younger than in the 1970s or 1980s. These are just a sample of figures drawn from a complex study of Czech ballet that was carried out at the end of 2007. At the start of the 21st century several important new changes were made in the top posts in the Czech ballet scene 053-064_Balet_3k.indd 54 (more in “How They Ballet in Bohemia”, Czech Theatre 21). In the past three years (2005-2007) no truly similar shake-up has taken place, and only one change occurred: in the spring of 2007 Zdeněk Prokeš, choreographer and earlier also head of the ballet, was dismissed from the management of the multicompany National Theatre in Brno (Národní divadlo Brno). With the arrival of the new director Daniel Dvořák (who six months earlier had been dismissed from the position of director of the National Theatre in Prague), the management of the Brno ballet company also changed. The choreographer Lenka Dřímalová replaced Karel Littera as artistic director. On average each Czech ballet company prepares two premieres a year. But where is Czech ballet dramaturgy headed? And what is the quality of the productions and, by extension also, the interpretations like? Ballet outside the big cities Several of the smaller regional theatres are in a state of inertia. This is true of both the ballet company in Ústí nad Labem and the company in Olomouc. However, there are exceptions. The independent ballet company in Liberec is increasingly finding itself in a situation that could best be described as bordering on survival. The size of the company has shrunk to fewer than 9.7.2008 17:15:54 A SURVEY OF CZECH BALLET BETWEEN 2005 AND 2007 fifteen members, which makes it almost impossible for it to prepare a workable ballet repertoire. When in recent months this number fell further, owing to illness and the unexpected departure of some members, it was not just repeat performances that had to be cancelled but even one planned premiere. Liberec has for years been wrestling with the problem of its poor-quality productions, but there was one exception in /55 the best group performance in a competition of Czech ballet productions. The company also confirmed its reputation in the production of The Hunchback of Notre Dame (Zvoník u Matky Boží, better known as Esmeralda) by the composer César Pugni (premiere on 26 January 2007). This was evidently Jiří Horák’s best staging. He succeeded in faithfully relating the piece’s intricate plot, interestingly developed its key scenes, ¿¾The Hunchback of Notre Dame / Jihočeské divadlo, České Budějovice 2007 / Choreography and directed by Jiří Horák / Music Cesare Pugni Set design Tomáš Kypta / Costumes Samiha Malehová > Photo archives the period under review – its production of Delibes’ Coppélia (premiere on 19 May 2006). One of the reasons why this was an exceptional production is that it was the first time that the Liberec orchestra had performed in many years, but the main reason it stood out was the contribution to the production by the director and choreographer Kateřina Franková-Dedková, formerly, and for many years, a soloist with the Prague Chamber Ballet. Liberec’s Coppélia represented her debut as choreographer of an entire performance, but it ranked as one of the best performances to emerge in 2006 among the smaller ballet companies. And yet little was required to achieve this. The route Kateřina Franková-Dedková took was certainly not experimental. Instead she set out from a traditional foundation, giving detailed thought to and elaborating individual situations, wittingly underscoring them, and for the main characters she was able to come up with characteristic movements. The ballet company in České Budějovice, the second-smallest in the country, has also had to cope with a shortage of dancers and financial difficulties. However, it has nonetheless had surprisingly good results under the direction of Libuše Králová. The most recent premieres showed that the ballet of the South Bohemian Theatre (Jihočeské divadlo) can bravely hold its own with many of the larger and more prominent companies; three years ago it even proved itself with a pleasant production of Futile Precautions (Marná opatrnost), perfectly adapted to the company’s conditions, for which it also won the prize for 053-064_Balet_3k.indd 55 and invested them with the requisite dramatic energy. Even in the pure dance numbers, especially those with the corps, he adopted an elaborate choreographic structure with numerous original features. The performance of the dancers as a whole played a major role in the success of the performance, as they gave their absolute maximum (it is impossible to overlook the limits of the variously talented dancers, nor though the effort to take them as far as they can possibly go through patient work). The Pilsen-based company headed by Jiří Pokorný attempts to create at least partly original dramaturgy. The company has a special tradition: it was often the first professional engagement for great dancers, who from there went on to dance on the 9.7.2008 17:15:56 56/ A SURVEY OF CZECH BALLET BETWEEN 2005 AND 2007 big stages, including the Prague National Theatre (Národní divadlo). The ensemble has retained its strong interpretative skills. Its current star is Ivona Jeličová, who a year ago took to the stage of the National Theatre in a junior competition and took away the Philip Morris Ballet Flower Award. Twice she has made it among the final nominees for a Thalia Award, and it would be no surprise if she were to be a contender again for her outstanding interpretation of Swanilda in Coppélia. The production quality of the Pilsen performances tends to lag behind their interpretative quality and is somewhat mediocre. One of the more interesting works put on is The Garden (Zahrada), a successful performance of which formed part of the Divadlo 2007 international festival. This new ballet was inspired by the work of Jiří Trnka, an illustrator, and the creator of several famous puppet films. Original music for the production was composed by Zbyněk Matějů, who regularly composes music for the ballet and modern dance scene (for example, Golem for the Prague Chamber Ballet in 2001, or Ibbur, which in 2005 was staged at the National Theatre in Prague). Matějů also takes the child viewer into consideration. His music for The Garden is uncomplicated, artfully weaving together well-arranged leitmotifs. The driving principle in the production was not so much Alena Pešková’s choreography but above all the elected technique of black-light theatre, directed by Jiří Středa, and with a fancy set by Pavel Kalfus. Two very different but equally unproductive directions could be observed in recent years at the National Moravian-Silesian Theatre (Národní divadlo moravskoslezské) in Ostrava. The first was the introduction of modern dance shows that often lacked a clear concept (usually choreographed by Igor Vejsada). The second, conversely, was the staging of traditional works created using the very outdated choreographic idiom of the Slovak Jozef Sabovčík (Masquerade, Anna Karenina, Spartacus, Othello). However, Ostrava’s repertoire has recently been upgraded with the addition of some new and interesting pieces (Purim: The Casting of Fate, Purim aneb Volba osudu, after William Fomin’s choreography), or by means of a novel take on a classic. An attempt at a new approach to a traditional work came with the production of Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet (premiere on 10 March 2007). On this occasion the choreographer Igor Vejsada joined forces with the director Michael Tarant, who previously had worked only in drama and opera productions. Tarant attempted an original interpretation, the sources of which he sought not just in Prokofiev’s work but also in Shakespeare’s play, and he devoted more attention than is customary to the psychology of the main characters, at key moments etching out parallel themes and connections and elaborating them further. The scene of the Capulets’ ball, for example, unfolds on various planes at once: while the traditional scene in which the title characters experience their first charmed encounter takes place in the foreground, the marital quarrel of the Capulets plays out in the background. Simultaneously the direction traces the contours ¿Garden / Divadlo J. K. Tyla, Plzeň 2006 / Choreography Alena Pešková / Directed by Jiří Středa / Music Zbyněk Matějů / Set design and costumes Pavel Kalfus > Photo archives A SURVEY OF CZECH BALLET between 2005 and 2007 053-064_Balet_3k.indd 56 9.7.2008 17:15:57 A SURVEY OF CZECH BALLET BETWEEN 2005 AND 2007 /57 À¾Solo for Three / Národní divadlo, Praha 2007 / Choreography and directed by Petr Zuska / Music Jacques Brel, Vladimir Vysotsky, Karel Kryl Set design Jan Dušek / Costumes Lucie Loosová tři > Photo Pavel Hejný of a “special friendship” between Mrs. Capulet and Tybalt, thus accentuating a theme of something rotten within the esteemed Capulet family. The highlighted character of the Capulet mother plays on even after Tybalt is killed, when Paris becomes the new object of her attentions. Moreover, the relationship between the Capulet spouses exhibits a certain parallel with Juliet’s forced wedding with Paris. Everything suggests that Juliet’s mother was also once forced into marrying an older man. Michael Tarant works with a symbolism that even makes use of the stage. In the moment when the young lovers’ passion explodes, the revolving floor begins to move, as though the characters are losing the ground beneath their feet; during the balcony scene, when Prokofiev’s music begins to soar, the raked stage is even transformed into the impression of a balcony. Despite the director’s unique interpretation, which breathed some fresh air into Czech productions of ballet classics, it is impossible to overlook some surprising errors. The already hectic conclusion of Prokofiev’s work becomes in Tarant’s staging an abridged sequence of barely believable coincidences. Even the introductory portraits, in which it is difficult to identify the main protagonists, dissolve into chaos. Prague thrice over While Prague is a real metropolis when it comes to modern dance (compared to the rest of the country, the vast majority of important premieres take place in Prague), this is by no means true of ballet. This is partly owing to the dense network of ballet companies that has evolved over time (roughly one company per 053-064_Balet_3k.indd 57 one million inhabitants), but is also the result of the established dance traditions that exist in some other towns (Brno, Pilsen, Ostrava). However, in terms of numbers, Prague plays first fiddle – it has three permanent ballet companies: at the National Theatre, the State Opera (Státní opera), and Laterna Magika. During the three years in which the scene was monitored Laterna Magika was the company that underwent the biggest transformation. Once the pride of Czech dance and an exclusive export article this dance company has ever more obviously begun to run out of steam. In recent years it has premiered two new co-productions (The Argonauts, Argonauti, and Rendezvous), but they fell miles short of the company’s former dramatic energy and innovativeness. Laterna Magika has long ceased to be an example of inventiveness in the sphere of dramatic technique and stage design and has instead become more of a modern dance theatre. However, the past two premieres did not even offer anything new in terms of dancing. And this is one more explanation for the decline in attendance and for the company’s difficult financial situation. And it is one of the reasons that there are ongoing discussions about the future of Laterna Magika, which may be placed back under the thumb of the neighbouring National Theatre. However, the dance company of the State Opera has staked out a solid position for itself on the Prague ballet map. Originally, this arrangement was about finding a stable home for the Prague Chamber Ballet and nestling it under the wings of a stable institution. Today it is obvious that this security was gained at the price of the demise of the Prague Chamber Ballet, 9.7.2008 17:15:57 58/ A SURVEY OF CZECH BALLET BETWEEN 2005 AND 2007 ½¿¾Unspoken Silence / Národní divadlo, Praha 2007 / Choreography Tomáš Rychetský / Music Leoš Janáček / Set design Milan Cais / Costumes Roman Šolc / Light design Daniel Tesař > Photo Roman Sejkot formerly a unique phenomenon within the Eastern bloc. This modern company, the existence of which was unusual for the normalisation period, and whose form has been in the hands of Pavel Šmok since 1975, was the only functioning alternative to the ballets housed within the fixed stone walls of the established theatres. The State Opera’s current ballet company builds on a more or less traditional repertoire, typical of a large opera house. Performances of Cinderella, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and Swan Lake alternate regularly and in between them relatively moderate experimental works are performed, such as Time of Pain by the choreographer Bronislav Roznos or a unique production of Smetana’s My Country (Má vlast) by the choreographer Ján Ďurovčík. The Prague State Opera originally wanted Jiří Kylián to stage this iconic piece of Czech national music. When he refused, the offer was accepted by the Slovák Jan Ďurovčík, who is known for his provocative experimental works. He conceived My Homeland as scenes from the history of the Czech nation (premiere on 8 December 2005). The biggest difficulty with putting Smetana’s work on the stage is the diversity of the individual symphonic poems, which range from the abstract and the symbolic through to distinctly epic parts. An idea of the Smetana programme can be drawn from its parts: Vyšehrad, which Ďurovčík interpreted as the birth, pride, and fall of a nation, Vltava, which when rendered in dance is likened to the human circulation system, and perhaps even From the Bohemian Meadows and Forests, which Ďurovčík interpreted as a child’s naive view of the immediate family and landscape. He transported Šárka, Tábor and Blaník into the 20th century. Šárka was framed within motifs of Nazi persecution during the Second World War and the expulsion of the Germans from Czechoslovakia at the end of the war. Tábor alluded to the “normalisation period”, when the political regime 053-064_Balet_3k.indd 58 9.7.2008 17:15:58 A SURVEY OF CZECH BALLET BETWEEN 2005 AND 2007 tightened its grip on the population after the invasion of Warsaw Pact troops in 1968; this part featured a mechanical marching dance, rimmed in the background by the impression of an impersonal pre-fabricated tenement building and illuminated by stark, flickering, fluorescent lights. In Blaník Ďurovčík intensified the features of normalisation-era bleakness, finally moving on towards the catharsis of freedom regained in 1989. Ďurovčík’s bold attempt at creating a great nationally oriented “political canvas” is exceptional in contemporary Czech ballet. Although the result was controversial (owing to the need to deal with the variations in Smetana’s composition, which in places resists being transplanted onto the stage), it was a remarkable production. The ballet of the State Opera has seen an improvement in quality in recent years and is one of the few companies in the country also to have grown in size. The reason is the distinct policy of the company’s artistic director, Pavel Ďumbala, 053-064_Balet_3k.indd 59 /59 wherein only one-third of the dancers are employed on standard work contracts, while the others are employed on other forms of agreement (these dancers are self-employed). The ballet of the National Theatre has been headed since 2002 by the choreographer Petr Zuska. After his arrival the company changed and became more universal, but also slightly smaller. Top foreign works of choreography were added to the repertoire, such as classics by John Cranko, and newer, shorter works by Conny Janssen, Jiří Kylián, and Nach Duat. But the face of the company is the director himself, who prepares roughly one new premiere each season. In the past five years the dancers have absorbed his signature style of movement, and it is in Zuska’s choreography that they come across as most natural and authentic. In 2005-2007 the National Theatre’s repertoire was revitalised by an unusual production called Ballet Mania (Baletománie), a fun and humorous excursion into the history 9.7.2008 17:15:59 60/ A SURVEY OF CZECH BALLET BETWEEN 2005 AND 2007 of world ballet. The repertoire that is aimed at children was expanded with the addition of Goldilocks (Zlatovláska), in which the choreographer Jan Kodet was given (but did not make much of) his biggest opportunity yet at the National Theatre. The best part of Goldilocks, which was based on the traditional Czech version of this fairytale, was the music, by one of the foremost Czech composers, Vladimír Franz. The company even continued to perform foreign works (more recently Onegin by John Cranko, and Romeo and Juliet by the choreographer Youri Vámos). Petr Zuska’s success fluctuated more. The dance rendition of Requiem to the music of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Richard Rentsch was not very good and even Ibbur, or a Prague Mystery, based on the motifs of Meyrink’s Golem, was somewhat awkward. On the other hand, Zuska’s premiere of Solo for Three (Sólo pro tři, premiere on 19 May 2007) was very positively received. In just under a respectable three hours Zuska brought together songs by three authors, Jacques Brel, Vladimir Vysotsky, and Karel Kryl — united by the theme of the figure of the anguished guitar-playing poet–songster. Incidentally, this was an exceptional opportunity for the two alternating performers. While the Russian dancer Alexandr Katsapov’s successful immersion in the psychologically complex role was expected, Michal Štípa, known mainly for his roles as danseur noble, made an unexpected artistic leap forward in this role. Solo for Three has no clear dramatic curve, its mood alters to enclose the protagonist within himself, and in that way it is more typical of Zuska. The lack of any clear dramaturgical curve is compensated by the very sensitive choreographic approach to each individual dance piece. Zuska managed to balance on the edge between an overly literal illustration of the songs and an incomprehensibly abstract interpretation. So if the production as a whole proves incapable of greater longevity, many of its final pieces would be welcome additions to a mixed programme. The ballet of the National Theatre made an auspicious start to the 2007-2008 season. Its first premiere consisted of a mixed programme performed under the collective title Czech Ballet Symphony (Česká baletní symfonie, premiere on 20 September 2007). Its individual pieces were works by four Czech choreographers: Jiří Kylián (a revival of Simfonietta), the first repertory work by the young choreographer Zuzana Šimáková (6 Halves of a Human), a work by Petr Zuska (D. M. J. 1953–1977) and a piece by Tomáš Rychetský (Unspoken Silence). (For more on Zuska’s D. M. J. 1953–1977, which had its world premiere in Brno three years ago, see Czech Theatre 21. By way of note, this was one of Zuska’s best works, which may have been even more powerful a performance in the slightly modified version prepared for the National Theatre in Prague. In a national competition the Brno premiere of this work in 2005 was declared without rival the best ballet production of the past three years. Tomáš Rychetský established himself early on, when he was a choreographer in the Prague ballet scene. In a mixed ¿Total Eclipse / Národní divadlo v Brně, 2005 / Choreography and directed by Libor Vaculík / Music Fryderyk Chopin, Arnold Schönberg Set design Jan Dušek / Costumes Roman Šolc > Photo archives with the tone of each individual song, but in the end an unhappy and almost gloomy atmosphere prevails. The production is divided into two parts, each defined with a distinct scenographic concept. The first part is physically dominated by a massive table, from where the main protagonist addresses the crowds. In the second part the table has shrunk to normal dimensions, and a chair and a screen have been added. The actual space seems 053-064_Balet_3k.indd 60 programme, his Unspoken Silence (Nevyřčené ticho) spoke in the most modern of tongues and featured a distinct and creative stylisation that this time shifted the dance (more minimalistic in its impression) into the background. It is only possible to obtain an intimation of the content of this abstract work, which evidently centres on the death of a loved one and a journey beyond life in search of that person. The set, by 9.7.2008 17:15:59 A SURVEY OF CZECH BALLET BETWEEN 2005 AND 2007 /61 A SURVEY OF CZECH BALLET between 2005 and 2007 ballet premieres recently have born his fingerprints), cuts clear white spaces out of the black set, in which the figures came across like formless shadows. As soon as the woman has made up her mind, the bed and the wall behind it turn blood red. Rychetský’s work, like the work of Petr Zuska, has increasingly been making use of a scenographic segmentation of space. The stage, and especially the inventive light designs, have not just become an integral part of any dance production but are often one of the main sources of inspiration for the choreography. The happy Brno years ¿Rite of Spring / Národní divadlo v Brně, 2006 / Choreography and directed by Libor Vaculík / Music Igor Stravinsky / Set design Vladimír Soukenka / Costumes Roman Šolc > Photo archives Milan Cais, staked out two separate spaces in a square layout. A geometrically precise girls’ duet is danced in the background beside a kind of wave and after the rotation of a swing, while in the foreground, around a well-lit bed, a woman gradually tries to gather her resolve to commit suicide. The light, by the artist Daniel Tesař (incidentally, a number of progressive dance and 053-064_Balet_3k.indd 61 This survey of Bohemian and Moravian ballet companies deliberately winds up in Brno this time, because during the period under review that is where the most important ballet premieres took place. Even within Brno’s multi-company National Theatre (Národní divadlo v Brně) the ballet’s activities overshadowed those of the theatre’s drama and opera components. It may be no accident that the Brno National Theatre was the only theatre in the country whose director was formerly a dancer and choreographer, namely, Zdeněk Prokeš. In recent years it seemed that Libor Vaculík had given himself over fully to making lucrative but artistically questionable musical productions, but then he worked on two pieces for the Brno theatre and both were a great success: Total Eclipse (Úplné zatmění) and Rite of Spring. 9.7.2008 17:16:02 62/ A SURVEY OF CZECH BALLET BETWEEN 2005 AND 2007 ¿Ballads / Národní divadlo v Brně, 2006 / Choreography Hana Litterová Music Zuzana Lapčíková / Set design and costumes Pavel Knolle > Photo archives 053-064_Balet_3k.indd 62 The material for Total Eclipse (premiere on 11 November 2005) was the twenty-year-old play by Christopher Hampton about the complicated relationship between the cursed poets Arthur Rimbaud and Paul Verlaine. Vaculík, like in some of his previous productions, experimented with combining genres. While before, his work his balanced on the edge of musical and dance theatre (Edith – Suburban Sparrow / Edith – vrabčák z předměstí; Lucrezia Borgia), this time he combined the devices of dance and stage drama. Again he duplicated the main characters so that each role is performed by a dancer and an actor. Not only did this result in rapid and surprising cuts in the action and graceful transfigurations that could be used to advantage on the stage, but it also gave support to the narrative at points where he did not find the dance to be communicative enough. The use of speech also allowed him to introduce quotations from Rimbaud’s poetry. Vaculík forcefully narrates the story through dance, and he is not even afraid of acting out the more naturalistic, intimate (the love scenes between Rimbaud and Verlaine) or violent (Verlaine beating his wife) scenes. He skilfully prods the viewer’s fantasy with suggestiveness, and then in a sharp cut moves rapidly into the next scene. Perhaps the only pity is that the purely un-epic dance pieces are unfortunately overshadowed by the demands of narrative. The backbones of the performance are the duets of the two men, where the story takes a fateful turn. Verlaine, played by Alexandr Katsapov (guest performer with the National Theatre in Prague), is a respected and enterprising poet, while the slightly younger Jan Fousek as Rimbaud is a carefree tempter and a devil with an angelic face. The production benefits greatly from the counterpoint use of Frédéric Chopin’s sweet nocturnes and the far less gentle music of Arnold Schönberg, and it thrives in the just reconstructed intimate space of the Reduta stage, which has become a platform for new works and experimental productions by the Brno National Theatre. The second of Vaculík’s noteworthy productions was Rite of Spring (premiere on 13 April 2006), which won the Theatre News Prize (Cena Divadelních novin) for the best dance or ballet performance in the 2005-2006 season. Vaculík, in cooperation with Zdeněk Prokeš, reworked the libretto and transported the story into the period of the holocaust. They turned Stravinsky’s pagan ritual into a relationship between two young Jews sent to a concentration camp, where they try to ignite a flicker of happiness or hope. At the camp, which is headed by a figure personifying Death, the male protagonist is in the end sent to the gas chamber. The good choreography bears Vaculík’s obvious fingerprints and is accompanied by a very individual concept, but it is no longer surprising. However, the strength of it lies in Vaculík’s dramaturgical and directorial adaptation. Following a somewhat puzzling introduction the production swells towards its first strong climax in the scene where the Jews are being deported: out of the floor trap there emerges a massive transport wagon and the frightened Jews are squeezed into it. Their faces are pressed up against several small windows, while on the roof of the wagon the personification of Death obscenely dances his first victorious solo, excellently interpreted by the very young Jan Fousek (he won the prestigious Thalia Award for his performance in this 9.7.2008 17:16:03 A SURVEY OF CZECH BALLET BETWEEN 2005 AND 2007 /63 ¿Ballads / Národní divadlo v Brně, 2006 / Choreography Hana Litterová / Music Zuzana Lapčíková / Set design and costumes Pavel Knolle > Photo archives role). Some of the scenes from the camp are also impossible to forget: for example, when the two young lovers meet secretly, dodging the prowling eyes of the search lights. Equally powerful is the extermination scene, portrayed by means of a gassy-green light cast across naked bodies that then fade like shadows. However, Vaculík hastens to a catharsis: a child survives, symbolising hope, and the figure of Death is overcome after a somewhat prolonged agony. Vaculík’s production offers an interpretation that ranks with other important takes on Rite of Spring. It shows, among other things, how well major shifts in interpretation are accommodated by Stravinsky. The year 2006 was an exceptionally successful one for the Brno ballet. Further confirmation of this came with the premiere of a production of Ballads (Balady, 10 November 2006), which for the second time won the Brno ballet the Theatre News Prize in the dance and ballet category, this time for the 2006-2007 season. Ballads was created by Hana Litterová, an artist at the start of her career as a choreographer, and the well-known Moravian singer and dulcimer-player Zuzana Lapčíková. It is based on a series of songs – personal renditions of Moravian folksongs. This simple, tragic story of love and betrayal grows in intensity over the course of the performance as the choreographer lets go of superfluous balletic stylisation and 053-064_Balet_3k.indd 63 moves into a natural and in places almost expressive dance form. Hana Litterová creates inventive dance compositions, but she also works with directorial shortcuts and has a feeling for tempo (employing pauses or barely discernible movements). The characters, dominated by the mother figure Juliana, are very clearly defined. The role of Juliana – who quietly absorbs the tragic fates of her close ones until she resolves to commit murder, an act that by unfortunate coincidence has tragic consequences for her own daughter – is turned into a concert of dance and dramatic performance by Eva Šeneklová. For her performance as Juliana this expressive dancer was named one of the final nominees for a Thalia Award and won the Philip Morris Ballet Flower Award for 2006. New hopefuls and the mainstays of choreography Czech ballet has had to struggle with the disparity between the annual number of premieres it puts on and the number of quality artists it has. The shortage of good choreographers is 9.7.2008 17:16:03 64/ A SURVEY OF CZECH BALLET BETWEEN 2005 AND 2007 often solved by “sewing together new pieces with a sharp needle and cheap thread”, by moving successful productions from theatre to theatre, or even rotating solid choreographers of the classics using simple standard dance arrangements. This makes the newcomers all the more delightful. Jiří Horák has emerged as a promising repertory choreographer. He is slightly reminiscent of his generation-older, fellow Moravian Jiří Kyselák. Both tour the country and their productions possess a quality that should allow them to survive over time. However, Horák works with a youthful and more inventive dance language. One of the more noteworthy newcomers is Kateřina Franková-Dedková, who is able to cash in on years of experience working in the Prague Chamber Ballet under the direction of Pavel Šmok. In the future this could find expression in the creation of honest and meticulously conceived productions that will stand out for their natural dance compositions and their humour. And finally, more and more is being heard about the Brno choreographer Hana Litterová. Her choreographic repertory debut four years ago with Symphonic Fantasies (Symfonické fantazie) was reminiscent of Jiří Kylián in his neo-classical phase. With Ballads both her professional success and her artistic quality have advanced a notch higher. First fiddle in the Czech ballet scene is still occupied by Libor Vaculík and Petr Zuska. Although in recent years Vaculík has been devoting more attention to musicals, whenever he has ¾Total Eclipse / Národní divadlo v Brně, 2005 Choreography and directed by Libor Vaculík / Music Fryderyk Chopin, Arnold Schönberg Set design Jan Dušek / Costumes Roman Šolc > Photo archives 053-064_Balet_3k.indd 64 returned to the ballet stage he has usually brought with him not just high choreographic standards but also often an attempt to bite into an unusual theme. He is one of the few choreographers who not only have the ambition to say or shout out their opinion but are also very often successful at doing so. His mature dance idiom has evolved into a solid form and he does not usually take it any further than where it is. His domain now is direction and well-thought-out dramaturgy, and his specialty is storytelling. Petr Zuska is in this sense probably Vaculík’s opposite. While Vaculík works well on vast epic productions, Zuska thrives when working on more intimate and tightly conceived works that evolve from of a single dominant idea. His dance language is much more abstract and more remote from the classic language of ballet. In his works the dance has an essential partner in the stage, props, and lighting. Zuska once followed Vaculík’s footsteps, and now it looks like Tomáš Rychetský may be the artist who will follow in Zuska’s. Rychetský’s dance language is even more modern to the eye than Zuska’s, and it is even harder to separate the artistic from the dance components of his productions. For the time being, however, he has only been able to make a name for himself with shorter works. Like Zuska, both Rychetský and even Jan Kodet have one foot in the established “stone” theatres and the other in the independent scene. It is on the border between these two spheres that Czech ballet may find its choreographic hope of the future. A SURVEY OF CZECH BALLET between 2005 and 2007 9.7.2008 17:16:04 Looking Back at the Prague QUADRENNIAL Marie Zdeňková 065-074_PQ_4k.indd 65 in 2007 9.7.2008 17:16:40 66/ LOOKING BACK AT THE PRAGUE QUADRENNIAL IN 2007 A labyrinth, a vast marketplace, or a teeming Babylon – more than ever before, this is how the Prague Quadrennial in 2007 could have best been described. The live theatrical and artistic events, workshops, lectures, and symposia were no longer just accompanying events and instead moved to the fore as parts of the exhibition in their own right. The programme events spilled out into the streets and the squares of Prague, signalling that something in the manner of spectacle and art was going on in Holešovice. There was absolutely no way to take in everything that the PQ had to offer; you had to pick and choose. Despite the buzz of the fair, the international (and intercontinental) jury remained focused and for the most part managed to do their job with cool and clear heads. In an effort to encourage the curators and artists of each country to adopt distinctive approaches to the content and form of their exhibits, this year the organisers announced a competition of themes, wherein each country was left to decide on the theme of its exhibit. Viktor Beryozkin, the author of the winning exhibit from Russia (Golden Triga), inscribed his exhibit with the words “Our Chekhov, Twenty Years On”, in reference to the exhibit the Soviet Union prepared two decades ago that won the gold medal in a thematic section dedicated to the works of A. P. Chekhov. That exhibit was called “Our Chekhov”, and it was conceived as the “Chekhovian” veranda of a Russian country manor, with dry branches subtly woven throughout the design. The entire exhibit was white, with just a very slight veneer of weathering. This setting was great for the painting-designs and the models. Like the exhibit’s decorative trim, the designs expressed a kind of effortless continuity and a sense of deep understanding and communion with the playwright, and, again like the decorative trim, many of the designs suggested an interior-exterior link – a link between human life and nature (a similar Czech example of this exists in a design created by the “Chekhovian” set designer Otakar Schindler). This year’s Chekhov, twenty years on, was not conceived in contrast to the original, but nor was it the same. Most of the set designers involved in the exhibit were from the older generation of designers, some of whom took part in the PQ in 1987 or even earlier (David Borovski, Sergei Barkhin, Mart Kitaev). The artistic and architectural design of this year’s exhibit was created by Dmitri Krymov, who in the exhibition catalogue describes the atmosphere of the exhibit thus: “In Russia, it’s always cold and raining or even snowing. Or the roof is leaky and there’s something dripping on you – or falling; some kind of dust, for instance. But it’s more likely to be bits of plaster. What you want more than anything is to put on something waterproof, pull on a pair of wellingtons, and grab an umbrella….” For visitors to this exhibit, rubber boots and black umbrellas were available, and the exhibit itself was a waterlogged “room”, with more water dripping from the ceiling, leaving water-stains on it and the three surrounding walls. Hanging from the ceiling were lamps, fitted in old pots instead of lamp holders, illuminating the set models from overhead, while the models themselves were set on socles made out of various “found objects”: old books, dishes, and damaged, upturned chairs (reminiscent of the three-dimensional collages by Libor Fára, another Czech artist ÀWilliam Shakespeare, The Taming of the Shrew / Studio – School at Moscow Art Theatre named after A. P. Chekhov / Design Anna Fedorova > Photo Viktor Kronbauer 065-074_PQ_4k.indd 66 9.7.2008 17:16:41 LOOKING BACK AT THE PRAGUE QUADRENNIAL IN 2007 1 /67 2 3 1. Poland, national exhibition / Curator Pawel Wodziński > Photo Martina Novozámská 2. Hong Kong s. a. r. – China, national exhibition / Curator Rosie Lam Tung Pui - man > Photo Martina Novozámská 3. Patrik Marber, After Miss Julie / Donmar Warehouse, London 2003 Design Bunny Christie > Photo Viktor Kronbauer 4. Howard Brenton, Romans in Britannia / Scheffield Crucible, 2006 Design Ralph Koltai > Photo Viktor Kronbauer “touched” by Chekhov). The entire exhibit came across like a Chekhov set, but also like a work of art. The impression was one of decline: picturesque but not fallacious, a work of artistry but not affectation. Since 1987 that decline has progressed, but not to the point of becoming raw and devoid of feeling. The winning Russian exhibit was not among those that endeavoured to in some way capture the mania of the modern world (which, for example, the exhibits from Hong Kong, Hungary, and Poland did). But that does not mean that it was museumish or dourly standoffish in character; it was fresh and relaxed. The set designs that these older-generation artists (exceptions to the prevailing age being the three young artists Vera Martinova, Maria Tregubova, and Alexei Kondratiev) created for modern new productions convey a harder and more austere image of 065-074_PQ_4k.indd 67 4 9.7.2008 17:16:41 68/ LOOKING BACK AT THE PRAGUE QUADRENNIAL IN 2007 Chekhov’s world than that presented twenty years ago, but it is still infused with a softening flush of nostalgia. This “old” exhibit came across as surprisingly unconstrained, like a wise old man who makes no attempt to keep to pace, in stumbling and laborious steps, with the superficial style of the modern age, but who nonetheless does live in the modern world and is more than just getting by, as he remains interesting and appealing in his own way. This year the organisers of the PQ encouraged participants to focus on a theme rather than present a textbook review of “the best of the past four years”. Decipherable in the subtext of this wish was a licence even to exhibit something only peripherally related to theatre. It has to be said, though, that the countries that fared best were those that preferred a “classic” form of exhibit. Having experienced a brief period of disdain, set models – those cute little “doll houses” – were rehabilitated at the PQ 03 by the winning exhibit from the UK. The condensed portrait the set model offers may be more picturesque and more comprehensive than the actual set design of the production as it unfolds, but on a playful level it has the capacity to ignite the viewer’s imagination in the same way that an eye-catching, delightfully done-up toy lights up the imagination of a curious child. What is interesting about the comeback of the set model is that some of the ones that were most captivating (in addition to the Russian ones) were models devoted to Chekhov. In the Spanish exhibit, Jon Berrondo’s Uncle Vanya was an attention-grabber. Set models by Jorgos Gavalas of Greece (Platonov, Three Sisters) revealed an affinity with a “classical” approach to the set, but still came across as fresh and interesting. The student section also included some well-designed Chekhovian set models that emphasise selective objectivity (Romania, Israel, Ireland). The “queen of modellers”, Great Britain, intensified the impact of its exhibit by including a massive, abstract spatial composition of geometric shapes and an accentuated surface texture in a design symbolically titled “All the World’s a Stage… and There Hangs a Tale”, the author of which is the doyen of British scenography, Ralph Koltai. The exhibit’s series of models, arranged in the surrounding space, offered a diversity of styles, ranging from the abstract (by Koltai as set designer and the playwright Howard Breton: The Romans in Britain) to the concrete, and rounded out by the model of a hyper-realistic kitchen with all the attributes of a prison, created by the set designer Bunny Christie for Patrick Marber’s play After Miss Julie. Israel was another country whose set models had the capacity to evoke at least a basic idea of the conception behind the production, while simultaneously offering viewers an aesthetic experience. Theatre in Israel has a tendency to boldly take on classical themes (Sophocles’ Antigone, by the set designer Roni Toren; Strauss’ Elektra, by the set designer David Sharir, and so on). There was an element of ineluctable fate present even in the set designs created for other, modern, and more “ordinary” repertoires. In the exhibit from the United States, the spatially commanding set models by the Russian-born sculptor and set designer George Tsypin (A. Laurents, S. Sondheim, L. Bernstein: West Side Story) and Paul Steinberg (Giuseppe Verdi’s The Troubadour) were particularly noteworthy, both of which depicted monumental technocratic stage architecture on the shores of an Austrian lake (Bregenz Festival). If anyone truly presented a thing of beauty at this year’s PQ, then it was the young set designer Boris Kudlička, who has worked on stages around the world, and especially in opera (and winner of the gold medal for use of stage technology), which was the focus of the entire Slovak exhibit. His massive set models, fitted like multidimensional glass pictures into the walls of the exhibit, were enjoyed by visitors as they listened through headphones to music from the operas in the exhibit. These simple but decoratively artistic realms came across as both cool and emotional. In the set design for Tchaikovsky’s The Queen of Spades the wings of seagulls are seen flapping monotonously on a rear projection screen, synchronised to the strains of romantically climactic music, which not only formed a striking background to the vision of a tiny silhouetted figure of a woman in modern attire, but also harmonised the emotions of the production. In the Lithuanian exhibit there were painting-designs, which stood out as a rarity at this PQ. The naivistic world of the set designer Galius Klicius (Juozas Erlickas: A History of Lithuania), a kind of folk Surrealist, emitted a pleasant artistic quality, and amidst an exhibition of modern set design it came across as old-fashioned, which paradoxically only heightened its appeal. The contemporary flat designs looked more like paintings than directions for a set design. It is as though the artist was aware that he was creating something “extra”, so to speak, more for display than use. The designs by Dimitri Mochov (Jacques Offenbach: The Fair Helen) from Belarus were paraphrases on old graphic prints, and the painting-design by Olga Gricayeva (William Shakespeare: Romeo and Juliet), also from Belarus, ½Circo Apolo Theater, the Theatre that Never Was / Architect Joaquim Roy, Spain > Photo Viktor Kronbauer 065-074_PQ_4k.indd 68 9.7.2008 17:16:43 LOOKING BACK AT THE PRAGUE QUADRENNIAL IN 2007 /69 ¿Richard Strauss, Elektra / The New Izraeli Opera, Tel Aviv 2000 / Design David Sharir > Photo Viktor Kronbauer was a Surrealistic vision. From the example of these and designs from other states of the former Eastern bloc it became evident that a freely elected and perhaps genuinely experienced traditionalism can – within the scenographic labyrinth of an exhibition of stage design – serve as a distinguishing feature. The same was evident in the student section of the Belarus exhibit, which, like the national exhibit, was fittingly titled “The Land beneath the White Wings”, and which centred on a rustic wooden sculpture, created to accompany work by the national poet Janka Kupala. More than a few of the exhibits turned to film screenings as not a supplementary but the main medium to present their set ÀLeonard Bernstein, West Side Story / Bregenz Festival, 2002 ÀGiuseppe Verdi, Il Trovatore / Bregenz festival, 2005 Design George Tsypin > Photo Viktor Kronbauer Design Paul Steinberg > Photo Viktor Kronbauer 065-074_PQ_4k.indd 69 9.7.2008 17:16:43 70/ LOOKING BACK AT THE PRAGUE QUADRENNIAL IN 2007 ½Gicomo Puccini, Madame Butterfly / Mariinski Theater, St.-Peterbourg 2005 / Design Boris Kudlička > Photo Viktor Kronbauer set design, descriptively titled “Architecture on the Stage”, also adhered to a minimalistic approach and was awarded the gold medal for scenic design by the jury. The photographs were not presented as independent works of art, and they did not relay the atmosphere or any strong dramatic moments of the production. They served as documentation: a report on how the scenographic materials are arranged on stage, and on the possibilities for the mise-en-scene of the performance in this setting. The thorough neutrality of the set designs produced a somewhat uniform impression, which raises the question of whether some members of the jury made their judgment in the exhibit’s favour on the basis of an experience external to the exhibition itself, though, as far as I know, there is nothing in the rules against that. It is likely that background experience was also the source of the decision to award the gold medal for staging of a production ¿Petr Ilyich Tchaikovski, The Queen of Spades / Warsaw National Opera, 2004 / Design Boris Kudlička > Photo Martina Novozámská ¾Janka Kupala, The Destroyed Nest / The Belarusian State Academy of Arts, Minsk / Design Ihar Anisenka > Photo Viktor Kronbauer designs (Estonia, Norway, Poland). There were even cases where photography (including digital) was the only medium used to present the country’s stage designs (Germany, Latvia, South Korea). This expositive minimalism proved itself as a potential presentation medium, but it was somewhat monotonous and visually not very catchy (an exception being one presentation by the young Latvian Monika Pormale). In the Portuguese exhibit both media were combined in the work of a single set designer, Joao Mendes Ribeiro. One part of the exhibit was reserved for photographs, and another part was for film screenings. Ribeiro’s 065-074_PQ_4k.indd 70 9.7.2008 17:16:45 LOOKING BACK AT THE PRAGUE QUADRENNIAL IN 2007 /71 ¿Oscar van Woensel, medEia / Spier Arts Summer Season, 2005 Design Brett Bailey > Photo Viktor Kronbauer ¿¾Juozas Erlickas, Historia of Lithuania / Siauliai Drama Theater, 2004 / Design Galius Kličius > Photo Viktor Kronbauer ¾Portugal, national exhibition / Curator Joao Mendes Ribeiro > Photo Viktor Kronbauer to the German production of Shakespeare’s Macbeth (by the artist Johannes Schütz and the director Jürgen Gosch), which was also performed as a part of the Prague German Language Theatre Festival (Prager Theaterfestival Deutscher Sprache). The photographs in the German exhibit were small and not very remarkable, and may have been overshadowed by the large-screen and much more evocative shots of the productions by the same artists: like a modern last supper stripped of its pathos (Roland Schimmelpfenig: Ambrosia; A. P. Chekhov: Three Sisters). The second gold medal awarded for the staging of a production went to the South African staging of medEia (by the set designer and director Brett Bailey for the play written by Oscar van Woensel). What enthralled at first glance in the delightful smorgasbord of this rummage-like miniature exhibit was the photograph of a black woman, embellished with a thick layer of ritual white make-up on her face and body. The parallel between the rites of Classical drama and African ritual, between the heroine’s proud bearing and her wildness, was immediately clear and made compelling by the raw and beautiful authenticity of the image, further underscored by a rhythmically powerful musical performance recorded on DVD. In their selection of themes Asian countries tended to focus on confrontation between national tradition and a hypertechnologised modernity influenced by “western” globalisation (Hong Kong, Japan). In the exhibit from Taiwan, titled “In Motion”, the confrontation of old and new brought them the gold medal for the use of technology (however, I’m not quite 065-074_PQ_4k.indd 71 sure whether this applied to the technology in the exhibit or the production). The main attraction the exhibit had to offer was a spiral basket made out of extraordinarily twisted bamboo, which formed the frame of the installation, where visitors could view DVD recordings of extracts from the productions and see more typical set models and folklore-inspired colourful costumes and masks. When one recalls the opulently and diversely costumed dramatic figures paraded before visitors at PQ 03, by comparison the costume category at PQ 07 looked like Cinderella before the ball (except for the “theatrical” fashion shows – but these were not a part of the costume competition). This year costume appeared mainly in the role of an accessory, as something to add flavour to the exhibit’s range of content. Imaginativeness and originality were in short supply. The jury awarded the gold 9.7.2008 17:16:47 72/ LOOKING BACK AT THE PRAGUE QUADRENNIAL IN 2007 ¿Taiwan, national exhibition / Curator Š´- Sing Wang ¿Oscar Ruvalcaba, Carlota, the One from the Garden of Belgium > Photo Viktor Kronbauer Sala Miguel Covarrubias, Mexico City 2003 / Design Eloise Kazan > Photo Viktor Kronbauer medal to the Mexican exhibit’s costumes, which were bright and gay, especially the folkloric and even carnivalesque costumes by Tolita and María Figueroa (Don Juan Tenorio, A Few Small Dagger Wounds). On closer look, the costumes designed by the set designer Elois Kazan were also admirable, including a Secessionist gown with peacock feathers (Oscar Ruvalcaba: Carlota, the One from the Garden of Belgium) and especially an unusual, cob-webby and diaphanous khaki uniform (Alicia Sanchez: Out of Rhythm). The costumes created for Gogol’s The Cloak stood out in this group for their sober tone. They were designed by Monica Raya in the sense of three phases in the life of a garment (incompletion, maturity, and age). In distinctiveness, though certainly not in terms of the variety of colour, only the Danish costumes created by Marie í Dali and Steffen Aarfing for the staging of Wagner’s Ring of the Nibelung at the Royal Danish Theatre were capable of competing with the costumes from Mexico. The expressively sketched-in photographs of lifesize figures dressed in costumes inspired by the “demimonde” 065-074_PQ_4k.indd 72 9.7.2008 17:16:48 LOOKING BACK AT THE PRAGUE QUADRENNIAL IN 2007 /73 ¿Jose Zorrilla, Don Juan Tenorio / Teatro Julio Castillo, Mexico City 2003 / Design Tolita and María Figueroa > Photo Martina Novozámská ¿¾Popular Theatre of „Caminho Niemeyer“, Rio de Janeiro 2002 / Architect Oscar Niemeyer > Photo Martina Novozámská ¾Michail Bulgakov, Master and Margarita / Latvian Academy of Art, Riga / Design Epp Kubu > Photo Viktor Kronbauer ½Czech republic, national exhibition / Curator Matěj Forman > Photo Martina Novozámská of the first half of the 20th century reproduced some of the suggestiveness and stylistic uniformity of the production, wherein the shift in era has an obviously meaningful function and is not merely the product of ambitious wilfulness. Creating the Czech exhibit was entrusted to the Forman brothers – artists, puppeteers and directors – and their relatively stable team of collaborators. This exhibit was probably the one that strayed furthest from the principle of documenting set designs and became an autonomous event in the exhibition space (though it probably would have looked better outside on a field somewhere). The exhibit consisted of a stand in the 065-074_PQ_4k.indd 73 9.7.2008 17:16:49 74/ LOOKING BACK AT THE PRAGUE QUADRENNIAL IN 2007 shape and style of an old carousel, which emitted a sense of mystery that especially appealed to children. Young visitors had their faces made up theatrically by a mysterious set of hands that reached out through a hole in the stand. They could also be carted off in a horror-house car through seaweed made out of rags, or could start up and animate an orchestra of mechanical bears, or could watch a little puppet dancer. The originality of the Forman brothers’ somewhat naivistic style was enchanting, but this type of old-fashioned fairground attraction, seemingly enclosed in its own time-and-space zone, led one inevitably to ask – where are the set designs? The Forman brothers also exhibited a miniaturised and fairground-coloured replica of their legendary boat “Tajemství” [Mystery] in the architecture section. That entire section had to make do with a more modestly located space in the centre hall’s balcony gallery. No gold medal was awarded in this category, but an honorary mention was awarded to Spain for its documentation of the burnt-down Circo Apolo theatre and the restoration project for it that was never carried out, exhibited under the title “Theatres at Risk”. The latest theatre projects created by the doyen of Brazilian and international modern architecture Oscar Niemeyer were also exhibited here. The student section occupied its own space in the glass Křižík Pavilion. As usual, there were two general approaches to be found: exhibits conceived as a kind of toy-spectacle, almost resigning on the theatrical aspect (Austria, Finland, Poland, etc.); or exhibits aimed at the deeper pursuit of an idea and artistic craft through design, conceived in the form of a model. In 2007 it was surprisingly the second variant that prevailed (at least in terms of impressiveness). This time the jury awarded a prize for talent and a prize for the best exhibit in this section. Not only did the students from Latvia take away the prize for the best exhibit, for their exhibit titled “Come Let’s Play Bulgakov!”, but Reinis Suhanovos, also from Latvia, won the gold prize for his model and backdrop conceived in the style of a work by Kazimir Malevich. Some student designs seemed almost to exude a conservative tone. Surprisingly, though, the effect of this tone was one of slightly amused optimism rather than a sense of sadness. Perhaps this was owing to the rediscovery of a respect for craftsmanship. For example, the meticulously detailed set models by students from Russia could easily have been models of Shakespearean Renaissance architecture created sometime in the 19th century (when craftsmanship was still valued). There is a post-modern aspect to the way these exhibits were conceived – various fragments are selected out of the history of exhibitions and present-day versions and then placed in entirely new contexts. An element of conservatism in this case comes across like an expression of free will. The stage designs themselves, as captured at the exhibition, in the more emphatic cases, are turning away from the post-modernist buffet (if that can be taken away from an exhibition piece). While it is true that nothing obviously new has yet emerged and there has been a return to familiar styles, they are not being combined in a single production (of course, this does not mean that there is no stylisation or interpretative perspective). It seems that stage designers, at least within the parameters of a particular production, are turning towards adopting a unified style. Tsypina’s decorative constructivism; Ribeiro’s minimalism; the pragmatic symbolism of the Russians; the ritualistic roots of the South Africans; and the folk poetism of the Belarusian students: all this is giving rise to various streams that are flowing against the current of time. Can we expect all this to give rise to a surprise? Prague Quadrennial, 11th International Exhibition of Scenography and Theatre Architecture, Industrial Palace at the Prague Exhibition Grounds, Prague, 14 –24 June 2007. Looking Back at the Prague QUADRENNIAL in 2007 065-074_PQ_4k.indd 74 9.7.2008 17:16:51 M U S W E UM E N A Lenka Šaldová OF CZECH PUPPETS ¿Kašpárek and Dragon / twenties of 20. century / Carved by Vojtěch Sucharda / The Czech Puppetry and Circus Museum, Prachatice > Photo Lenka Šaldová 075-078_Loutky_5k.indd 75 9.7.2008 17:17:21 76/ THE NEW MUSEUM OF CZECH PUPPETS through St. Nicholas markets, view the puppets of folk puppeteers and important Czech artists from the first half of the 20th century (e.g. Vojtěch Sucharda, Ladislav Šaloun, Vít Skála, Jiří Trnka), arranged in theatrical scenes. The Czech Puppetry and Circus Museum immediately became a natural magnet for anyone interested in the circus or magic. The permanent exhibition in Prachatice is the first real tribute to people who devoted themselves to this field of entertainment art. The curator, Hanuš Jordan, set up an exhibition that covers the entire history of the Czech circus, from its first performances in Prague in 1803 (shown in a replica of impressive graphic art), to the emergence of the first Czech circuses, right up to the high point of this field, represented by the era of the Kludský (the tails and stovepipe hat of Karel Kludský, Jr., is on exhibit), Berousek and Wetheim family circuses, and on into the post-war period, with the nationalisation of the circus and the creation of the “official” state circus Humberto. In a hall evocative of a circus ring, visitors can look at various objects connected with different circus disciplines: I n May 2006 the National Museum opened a new permanent exhibition: The Czech Puppetry and Circus Museum. It is located in the inspirational interior of what was originally a Renaissance home in the centre of the Southern Bohemian town of Prachatice. The exhibition relates the history of two phenomena that initially were closely related, only later to go their separate ways. The National Museum had previously shown its large collection of puppets and puppetry decorations only at occasional exhibitions. Only in Prachatice did the curators Jindřiška Patková and Lenka Šaldová first obtain the opportunity to comprehensively map three important chapters in Czech puppetry: the arduous lifestyle of folk puppeteers wandering between towns and villages, the spread of family puppet theatres, to an extent unparalleled in Europe, and the rise of artistically ambitious amateur puppet theatres in the first half of the 20th century. The exhibition is designed to appeal to both experts (some unique objects are on exhibit here: the puppets of Arnošta Kopecká, the granddaughter of the legendary Matěj Kopecký, the flat puppets of Mikoláš Aleš, the family puppet theatre of Eduard Vojan, etc.) and the general public: visitors can see a little child’s room, a little puppet theatre, walk ¿Family puppet theatres / Turn of 19th and 20th century The Czech Puppetry and Circus Museum, Prachatice > Photo Lenka Šaldová ¾Erik Kolár and Jindřiška Patková / The fifties of 20th century > Photo archieves 075-078_Loutky_5k.indd 76 9.7.2008 17:17:23 THE NEW MUSEUM OF CZECH PUPPETS /77 ¿Devil's head / The twenties of 20th century / Carved by Alois Sroif / The Czech Puppetry and Circus Museum, Prahatice > Photo Lenka Šaldová 075-078_Loutky_5k.indd 77 9.7.2008 17:17:24 78/ THE NEW MUSEUM OF CZECH PUPPETS clown paraphernalia, juggling, acrobatics, animal taming (also on exhibit is the motorbike ridden by the bears of the Berousek family circus), horse training, etc. Rare exhibit pieces include a model of the two-ring circus Alfa (1959) on a scale of 1:43, executed in such detail that it is even possible to see the benches for the audience, the stand for the orchestra, or the stools for the animals. There is also a historical waxworks, created in 1890 in Hamburg, with wax figures of Biblical and historical figures (and curiosities such as a mermaid with a movable chest), which the Stejskals of Karlovy Vary were still showing in Czechoslovakia around the year 1950. The puppetry and circus exhibition also includes a magician’s closet, its aura of mystery heightened by the presence of a skeleton, which used to dance in the magic show of the Kellner family. The historical magician’s accessories on exhibit (a levitating ball, smoking goblets, etc.) are brought to life in the hands of top Czech magicians in a film called “The Old School of Magic”, made explicitly for the Prachatice exhibition. Each year the National Museum in Prachatice opens two or three short exhibitions. Last year Lenka Šaldová adapted an exhibition for Prachatice titled “Erik Kolár and His World of Puppets”, which had originally been opened by Kolár’s students, Jindřiška Patková and Jiří Středa, in the spring of 2006 in the Lobkowitz Palace at Prague Castle, to commemorate the centenary of the birth and thirty years since the death of one of the most important Czech puppeteers of the 20th century and one of the founders of the first post-secondary school of puppetry in the world. The Prague exhibition encompassed not just the vast and multifaceted work of Erik Kolár, but also, with a collection of almost two hundred puppets (borrowed from institutes around the Czech Republic), covered the work of the most important graduates of the puppetry school. And this was accompanied by puppetry workshops, performances, and above all an opportunity to meet Kolár’s students, who recounted how inspirational a figure their teacher was. The exhibition in the Czech Puppetry and Circus Museum in Prachatice concentrates mainly on the work and life of Erik Kolár, a man who had the ability to lead, bring others together and inspire them, a man who was a consummate artist, a beloved and adoring teacher, a tireless organiser, and a loyal friend. The remarkable documents on exhibit, which tell much about Kolár and the times he lived in (and with particular eloquence about the war and post-war years), are accompanied by photographs of Kolár the actor, Kolár the director, Kolár the teacher, and photographs from Kolár’s productions. The exhibition also includes a collection of puppets from the Puppet Theatre of Art Culture (Loutkové divadlo Umělecké výchovy) in Prague, where Kolár worked for almost twenty years and where his productions contributed substantially to transforming the style of Czech puppet theatre. The Theatre Department of the National Museum is also organising exhibitions on the theme of puppets, the circus and magic: in 2008 the exhibition “Belachini XIII and His Magic Apparatus”, and in 2009 the “Bygone Times of Caravan Life”. A NEW MUSEUM OF CZECH PUPPETS 075-078_Loutky_5k.indd 78 9.7.2008 17:17:24 ½Rat-Catcher, Daimon Alter Ego Designed by František Vítek / Václav Renč, Rat-Catcher´s Whistle / Drak, Hradec Králové 1970 / Moravian Museum, Brno > Photo archives TXONGILORA LEIH O X T R A I OA TXEK VENTANA AL TÍTERE CHECO Jaroslav Blecha A WI Y R T NDOW ONTO E P CZECH PUP 079-084_Loutky2_4k.indd 79 9.7.2008 17:07:25 80/ TXEKIAR TXOTXONGILORA LEIHOA – VENTANA AL TÍTERE CHECO – A WINDOW ONTO CZECH PUPPETRY “A Window onto Czech Puppetry” is the title of what was one of the most extraordinary showcases of Czech puppet theatre to date. It took place at the end of 2007 in Tolosa, Spain, as part of the international puppet festival “Titirijai 07”. The event was a grand undertaking, initiated by the general secretary of UNIMA, the world puppetry organisation, and the director of the festival Mr. Miguel Arreche. It comprised an exhibition, presentations by six Czech theatre companies, and a thematic debate evening. Czech participation took place under the auspices of the Embassy of the Czech Republic and the Czech Centre in Madrid. On the Czech side, the project was organised by the Association of Professional Puppeteers, the Czech UNIMA Centre, and the Moravian Museum, and namely by Nina Malíková, Stanislav Doubrava and Jaroslav Blecha. This financially costly event also received financial support from the Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic. The picturesque, ancient and poetic town of Tolosa lies in northwest Spain near the Bay of Biscay in the province of Guipúzcoa, enclosed by mountains within the valley of the Oria River. The town has a population of 18 000. In addition to the six-day Carnival and an international choir competition, the international puppet festival is one of the most important annual cultural events organised in the town. The festival has a long 079-084_Loutky2_4k.indd 80 history (2007 marked its twenty-fifth anniversary), drawing participation from theatres and artists from around the world. It receives substantial financial support from the Spanish Ministry of Culture, the Basque Ministry of Culture, the government of Guipúzcoa province, and the municipal authorities in Tolosa. The project “A Window onto Czech Puppetry” included an exceptionally comprehensive exhibition of the same name, which was accompanied by a publication. The Spanish hosts set aside a suitable and dignified location for it, in the large exhibition spaces of Palace Aranbur (ten halls with a total area of five hundred square metres). The exhibition and accompanying publication were conceived and written by Jaroslav Blecha, the director and curator of the Theatre History Department at the Moravian Museum in Brno, which took on most of the production work and eventually the actual execution of the exhibition. The design was created by the Brno artist, woodcarver and set designer Antonín Maloň. The exhibition’s creators used authentic and supplementary documentation in an effort to provide visitors with an idea of the unique tradition of Czech puppetry from the late 18th and early 19th centuries up to the present, and to do so not just from an expert perspective, but also in a manner appealing to visitors. They presented the main, characteristic developmental trends 9.7.2008 17:07:26 TXEKIAR TXOTXONGILORA LEIHOA – VENTANA AL TÍTERE CHECO – A WINDOW ONTO CZECH PUPPETRY /81 in Czech puppet theatre, while also highlighting those elements that are unique in an international context: the marionette theatre of itinerant puppeteers, so-called family puppet theatres, amateur puppetry groups, featuring the original artistic style of the Czech modernists, and the work of institutional puppet theatres. The layout of the exhibition followed this thematic structure. The first part of the exhibition provided visitors with an idea of what the marionette theatre of itinerant Czech puppeteers was like, describing its history over the past two centuries, its visual appearance, and the technology most commonly used in its time in puppetry, scenery and sets, and the social standing, ties and functions of this kind of theatre. The exhibition presented selected unique works by traditional woodcarving workshops and by woodcarvers from the 19th and early 20th centuries, and it introduced the public to the typology of characters and the signature woodcarving style of the best-known artists, who created puppets for well-known puppetry families. Among the most valuable carvings on show were puppets from the workshop of Mikoláš Sychrovský (1802-1881) from Mirotice in Southern Bohemia, the two generations of woodcarvers of the Sucharda family (Antonín, Sr., 1812-1886, and Antonín, Jr., 1843-1911) from Nová Paka, and the Italian woodcarver, who settled permanently in Prague, Josef Alessi (circa 1820-1895). Arranged scenes taken from specific plays and short lines of dialogue were presented to evoke an idea of the characteristic repertoire of marionette theatre. Another part of the exhibition introduced the public both to the phenomenon of so-called family puppet theatre, which was one part of the Czech amateur puppet scene in the first half of the 20th century and constituted a massive movement among the public, and also to the existence and extreme popularity of tabletop puppet theatres and puppets, which were fabricated by professionals and amateurs and were widely popular and frequently used by the public at home. This part of the exhibition showcased the remarkable work of several Czech puppetry firms that produced puppets and decorations for family puppet theatre and for puppet theatre groups. Selected exhibits highlighted the specific contribution of a number of exceptional Czech artists who created such works. A series of carved puppets, including several of their original models, were shown, from the rare first Czech puppets of this kind created in 1912, called “alšovky” and inspired by the paintings of Mikoláš Aleš, to puppets produced by the firm Münzberg, ÀPuppets of the Münzberg Company / Produced in series from 1924 ÀDevils / Designed by Jan Malík for serial production, 1937 / Moravian Moravian Museum, Brno > Photo archives Museum, Brno > Photo archives ½Stomper / Half of the 19th century / Carved propably by Jan Flasch Moravian Museum, Brno > Photo archives 079-084_Loutky2_4k.indd 81 9.7.2008 17:07:28 82/ 079-084_Loutky2_4k.indd 82 TXEKIAR TXOTXONGILORA LEIHOA – VENTANA AL TÍTERE CHECO – A WINDOW ONTO CZECH PUPPETRY 1 2 3 4 9.7.2008 17:07:29 TXEKIAR TXOTXONGILORA LEIHOA – VENTANA AL TÍTERE CHECO – A WINDOW ONTO CZECH PUPPETRY /83 Modrý & Žanda, for whom important artists and sculptors created the original models, through to some rare and original puppets fabricated by artists for individual family theatres. Also on display were some rare lithographs of the first Czech copy of “Scenery by Czech Artists” (Dekorace českých umělců), published from 1913, including the first, excellent proscenium created by František Kysela. The documentation accompanying the exhibition described the standard practices of companies, the atmosphere of the period, fomented by the educational activities of the puppetry historian Jindřich Veselý and the Czech Union of Friends of Puppet Theatre, the repertoire of performances, and the significance of the phenomenon of family puppet theatre. The exhibition presented the puppetry work of the classic Czech modernists, drawing on examples of work by several important puppetry theatre groups active at that time (The Puppet Theatre of the Ferial Colonies in Pilsen / Loutkové divadlo Feriálních osad; the Artistic Puppet Scene / Umělecká loutková scéna; The Puppet Theatre of Artistic Culture / Loutkové divadlo Umělecké výchovy; and the Art Scene of the Puppet Kingdom in Prague / Umělecká scéna Říše loutek). The exhibits provided a sense of the transformation of the formal characteristics of puppets in the first half of the 20th century, under the influence of new artistic trends (Art Nouveau, Cubism, Cubo-expressionism, Functionalism, Expressionism) and the efforts of artists inspired by Czech avantgarde theatre towards creating new types of puppets and sets stressing a “fresh” stylistic approach (unorthodox techniques, especially Asian, the use of various materials, etc.). The accompanying materials also recalled the reformist repertoire and its better quality and more varied themes, along with the work of several prominent figures in this area of puppetry (Skupa, Malík, Sucharda, etc.). The section of the exhibition on modern puppet theatre created an idea of how Czech puppet theatre has changed in connection with its professionalisation and institutionalisation, signifying its artistic recognition, and also introduced visitors to the current work of professional Czech puppet theatres. The exhibits comprised puppets and some sets by professional puppetry set designers created for specific productions put on by puppet theatres. Several exhibits also presented current artwork inspired by puppets and puppet theatre. The accompanying materials 1. Moonprince / Designed by Václav Havlík / Marie Kannová, Enchanted Drake / Ústřední loutkové divadlo, Praha 1959 / The Museum of Puppet Culture, Chrudim > Photo archives 2. Page / Designed by Václav Havlík / František Pavlíček, Bajaja / Ústřední loutkové divadlo, Praha 1963 / The Museum of Puppet Culture, Chrudim > Photo archives 3. Jester / Designed by Ivan Nesveda / William Shakespeare, King Llyr Alfa, Plzeň 1989 / The Museum of Puppet Culture, Chrudim > Photo archives 4. Musketeers / Designed by Petr Matásek / Alexander Dumas, Jan Středa, Servant and tree Musketeers / Divadlo Archa, Plzeň 1970 The Museum of Puppet Culture, Chrudim > Photo archives ¾Thieves / Designed by Ivan Nesveda / Iva Peřinová, Alibaba and the Forty Thieves / Naivní divadlo Liberec, 1994 / Naive Theatre Liberec > Photo archives 079-084_Loutky2_4k.indd 83 9.7.2008 17:07:31 84/ TXEKIAR TXOTXONGILORA LEIHOA – VENTANA AL TÍTERE CHECO – A WINDOW ONTO CZECH PUPPETRY included information on some of the main puppetry festivals in the Czech Republic. The exhibition offered over five hundred exhibits, which were presented in a manner designed best to evoke the original appearance of the given historical form of puppet theatre, the function of puppets, the productions, the repertoires, and so on. The objects on display, all of them unique pieces, came from several Czech public collections and from the stock of some puppet theatres. Most of the loans were from three large Czech museums with substantial puppetry collections: the Moravian Museum, the Museum of Puppetry Culture, and the National Museum. Loans also came from professional puppet theatres: Spejbl and Hurvínek Theatre (Divadlo Spejbla a Hurvínka), Minor Theatre (Divadlo Minor), Art Scene of the Puppet Kingdom (Umělecká scéna Říše loutek), Radost Puppet Theatre (Loutkové divadlo Radost), DRAK Theatre (Divadlo DRAK), Ostrava Puppet Theatre (Divadlo loutek Ostrava), Liberec Naivist Theatre (Naivní divadlo Liberec), Alfa Theatre (Divadlo Alfa), Lampion Theatre (Divadlo Lampion), The Little Theatre (Malé divadlo) and Theatre of Diversity (Divadlo Rozmanitostí). Particular objects of interest on exhibit, some of which are not often on display, included, for example, the oldest preserved marionettes by the woodcarvers M. Sychrovský, J. Alessi, A. Sucharda (Sr. and Jr.), original prints of “Scenery by Czech Artists”, sketches of sets and puppets by A. SuchardováBrichová, F. Vojáček, L. Šaloun, puppets by V. Sucharda, K. Štapfer, K. Svolinský, Š. Zálešák, J. Vavřík-Rýz, and puppets by many contemporary artists, such as F. Vítek, P. Kalfus, P. Matásek, I. Nesveda, and others. The exhibition was enthusiastically received in Spain. Over the festival’s nine days it was viewed by almost fifteen thousand visitors. Until 22 March 2008 the Moravian Museum was offering a variation on the exhibition in Brno for the Czech public. The above-mentioned accompanying publication (84 pages, with around 60 colour and 40 black-and-white photographs) contains extensive information on the history of Czech puppet theatre. It reflects the diverse forms and the transformation of puppetry, and important theatres and figures in its history, from the earliest period up to the present. In Spain the publication was issued in a Basque-Spanish and a Spanish-English version; in the Czech Republic a Czech-English version is available. IAR TXOTXONGILORA LEIHOA TXEK VENTANA AL TÍTERE CHECO A WI TRY NDOW ONTO CZECH PUPPE 079-084_Loutky2_4k.indd 84 9.7.2008 17:07:31 KALEIDOSCOPE 085-094_Kaleidoscope_3k.indd 85 9.7.2008 17:07:55 86/ KALEIDOSCOPE Jan Kerbr It’s Gonna Be Scary A rnošt Goldflam staged his Fairytales for the Naughty two years ago at Klicpera Theatre (Klicperovo divadlo) in Hradec Králové, but this suggestive production, situated in the midst of something like a party of homeless people, gathered around the campfire telling good tales, was not successful and played only several times. Some unhappy teachers may have had a finger in this, having had to sit through these somewhat coarse morality tales with their students, including one tale “about a twat”. While it is true that in the new rendition, directed by Petr Vodička and titled Bloody Knee (Krvavé koleno) at the Alfa in Pilsen, this “children not allowed” fairytale was played at the end as a bonus for just an adult audience, the fairytale was nonetheless harsh and magical, centring on events that take place around a rural bus stop, where a crowd gathers, some of whom appear to be a few cards short of a full deck. They all the more easily then succumb to the magic of the stories presented by the village peers-come-amateur performers, and they even join in themselves or are mixed up with the performers (eleven actors play all the various roles in the production). Each of the tales performed possesses its own poetics, and the morbid themes of the stories, even with the emphatic humour, still leave enough room for reflections on life and death, the relationship of man to his ancestors and descendants, and fateful personal relationships. The very first fairytale, “A Fly’s Home” (Muší domeček), where more and more animals squeeze into a small cup, until in the end a bear cracks it, is conceived as though passengers are being “poured” into a bus stop shelter, which structurally cannot sustain the arrival of the last of them, a corpulent character played by Petr Borovský. Radio announcements inviting citizens to attend a performance of “Cry for a Drowned Mouse” create an atmosphere of constant theatrical chatter. However, before this wildly comic production comes on, we meditate with the actors on the frightening tales. For instance, the headless old man snaps off a solicitous hand stretched out through a window and begs for help, and then as punishment he loses his head, and the moral of the story is summed up as: Sometimes it’s silly to do things too quickly. The finishing touches on this gloomy tale are added by the intimate “dead” set by Renáta Pavlíčková, the occasional otherworldly lighting, and the very subtle use of puppets to explain some of the dramatic turns in the tales. The high point of the production is definitely “Cry for a Drowned Mouse”, a story based on the principle of the continuous repetition of a tale that grows increasingly longer and more in depth each time. A sausage, a door, manure, a fence, and so on, are gradually added to the mourners of the deceased, each of which expresses its grief in a different way. Heart-rending emotions are displayed alternately by Petr Borovský and another monster in the ensemble, Martin S. 085-094_Kaleidoscope_3k.indd 86 Bartůšek. The humour derives from both of them completely expresing the grief of the mourners with each one that is added to the group (this requires considerable physical effort from Bartůšek, because alongside other arduous tasks he has to depict, with a not very careful crash, a forest that cut itself down with grief, hurling himself to the ground again and again with unabated vigour). At the end of these morbid pranks the landowner, not wanting to ?behind, drills a large whole in his throat and falls down dead. The epilogue is “Bloody Knee”, a knee that comes to destroy a child who misbehaves, and for adults the above-mentioned “Twat”, cautioning against impulsive sexual infatuation. The character of the production is like a jovial rural gathering, but permeated by serious existential themes, handled in the best traditions of dark humour. This is an extremely lively and juicy production, and Pilsen’s Alfa, after last year’s success with The Three Musketeers, has without worry another successful piece to stage. Arnošt Goldflam: Bloody Knee. Directed by Petr Vodička, set Renáta Pavlíčková, music Jan Matásek. Alfa Theatre, Pilsen, premiere 5/3/2006. > Photo archives 9.7.2008 17:07:57 KALEIDOSCOPE /87 Lubomír Mareček The Very Blue (and Very Sad) Bird A t the Goose on a String Theatre (Divadlo Husa na provázku) in Brno the director Vladimír Morávek staged the Symbolist play The Blue Bird (L’Oiseau bleu), a work he had allegedly been longing to direct since his youth. The new work brought together prominent figures in the Czech theatre scene: Milan Uhde wrote the song lyrics and the musician Michal Pavlíček created the music for the songs and the scenic music. Brno had moreover last seen The Blue Bird performed by the Mahen Theatre in the very early 1990s, when it was put on by Goose on a String’s Peter Scherhaufer – Morávek was thus also acknowledging his great predecessor. Nevertheless, the production of The Very Blue Bird (Velice modrý pták), with its enhanced title, will not be the great event of this season. The Flemish playwright, poet, and essayist, Maurice Maeterlinck, writing in French, composed a dreamlike story of two children, who wander off one night after a blue bird. When the Swedish Academy awarded Maeterlinck the Nobel Prize, it explained its decision as on part owing to the fact that the author’s dramatic works, “through their abundance of fantasy and poetic idealism, and sometimes veiled in fairytale form, display deep inspiration and mysteriously appeal to human feeling and imagination”. Anyone staging The Blue Bird would be working with a sublimely enchanting story, intended to arouse people’s fantasy and reach into the goodness of their hearts. That kind of material is tricky to work with and it is a task of enormous difficulty! Vladimír Morávek applied a level-headed approach to the production, which he pulled on stage literally through a wardrobe. Martin Chocholoušek’s set is essentially made up of walls with the silhouettes of branches and tree trunks. He enclosed the stage on three sides with bare, intertwining trees. Even though the specifications in the play call for grandly alternating fairytale sets, the classic show that emerges offers no dramatic set changes in its three hours. Elaborate visual effects would probably squash the delicate, dreamy fabric of the piece, but the static set simply made it flat. Morávek pulled the entire tale into this space from out of a wardrobe, from where the opening march of animals, live emotions, and inanimate things parades onto the stage. Maeterlinck brought their souls to life in the form of dramatic figures. Most of these unusual characters are introduced in an opening song describing them, which in places gives the impression of looking at a pop-up picture book. Milan Uhde, an old hand at this work, fills the song stanzas with gentle recommendations like “we believe in fairytales” or “rely on a miracle”, which struck me as rather feeble. The director Vladimír Morávek has generally won the favour of the public and unremitting admiration of a large number of critics owing to his remarkable scenic images, ingenious cuts, comical details, and skilfully constructed atmospheres on the stage. But it is as though these very qualities have now forsaken him. The production dragged out an already sparse plot with musical numbers, and so The Very Blue Bird, which was aspiring to offer the public 085-094_Kaleidoscope_3k.indd 87 an innovative musical at the venue of Goose on a String Theatre, resembles more of a sluggish cabaret piece from around one-third of the way through onwards. Occasionally things snapped up, but then immediately sank back into the monotonous slowness with which the performance is served up, which lacks any substantial directorial kick. Moreover, Morávek’s stock mood-shaping heroes and alienating frolics only served to further stunt things. This arsenal of directorial tactics added logjams to an already slowmoving plot and quashed whatever moments of dramatic tension may have arisen. (The production, for example, is studded with subtle references to passages from songs by the pop band Chinaski.) Morávek even allows the theme song from the TV series Friends from Green Valley to unfurl into a scene of its own. It is as though he were of afraid of taking the play too seriously. It is likely the entire atmosphere of the staging that stifles its overall result. The Very Blue Bird was to be a conterpart to Morávek’s prior four-year period, which he spent putting together a remarkable tetralogy of Dostoyevsky’s works (see M. Reslová: A Century Fascinated With The Devil, Czech Theatre 22). Now he would like to climb out of the labyrinths of fateful passion, death, sin and a world in which God is dead. However, he has paradoxically turned the fanciful poetry of Maeterlinck’s original work into an eerie, funereal ceremony. The children’s journey by night regrettably at times reminds one of a horror show and other times of a grotesque spectacle. A more mercifully gentle and genuinely fairytale tone is lacking, achieved only in scenes of dramatic tension, like the children’s encounter with their dreamed-of mother or the closing finale. Maurice Maeterlinck: The Very Blue Bird. Translation Alena Morávková and Šárka Belisová, directed by Vladimír Morávek, set Martin Chocholoušek, costumes Eva Morávková, song lyrics Milan Uhde, music Michal Pavlíček. Goose on a String Theatre, Brno, premiere 17 and 19/2/2007. > Photo Viktor Kronbauer 9.7.2008 17:07:58 88/ KALEIDOSCOPE Saša Hrbotický This Black Hole Plays with Time and the Audience D ejvice Theatre (Dejvické divadlo) tends not to set out along tried and tested paths or cling to the goals it has already achieved, but searches instead for ever new impulses, which includes contacting and inviting directors with their own distinctive poetics and an unmistakably individual style. Black Hole (Černá díra) is a play penned by a fictitious author named Doyle Doubt. The director Jiří Havelka, who made a name for himself as a leading figure at the Prague Studio Ypsilon, initiated the production of this work at Dejvice Theatre, and with it he embarked on an interesting experiment. The actors were not presented with a final script. The director allowed them to improvise freely, and over the course of rehearsals they together came up with the final form of the performance, which relied on perfect interplay between the actors and the exact timing of each situation. Even despite the peculiar man dressed in overalls, making his way across the stage with the slow motions of an astronaut, the production initially seems like some kind of farcical comedy situated in the interior of a gas station snack bar somewhere along an American highway. The disinterested waitress (Simona Babčáková) behind the counter only becomes animated when she talks with the local policeman (David Novotný), but otherwise she utters nothing but barely monosyllabic responses to her customers’ requests and offers them nothing more than the obligatory coffee, the opportunity to use the phone, the toilet, or the good old singles-playing juke-box. A stream of curious characters gradually parade before her impassive gaze: a shy monster with a briefcase containing the inanely devised questionnaires of a polling agency (Pavel Šimčík), a couple of giddy lovers (Václav Neužil and Martha Issová) travelling across the United States in a rented Buick, and finally, the mysterious duo of a television performer with a cocaine addition accompanied by his manager (Jaroslav Plesl and Ivan Trojan). The structure of the performance quickly takes on a more refined shape, as the opening situation begins to unfold again and again, but differently each time, corresponding to the different timing of the characters’ entries and interactions. In a pre-premiere interview the director acknowledged that while working on Black Hole he was influenced by “string theory”, according to which the gravitational forces between particles are made up of tiny fibres or “strings”, and threedimensional space as we see it actually conceals six other dimensions. 085-094_Kaleidoscope_3k.indd 88 The application of physics to the theatre space gives rise to the idea of playing with time and intertwining and creating variations of short human stories. It is enough for one visitor to enter the snack bar a moment earlier and the subsequent events unfurl along a completely different line than before. The characters also undergo changes, or rather in different contexts other thus far hidden aspects of their persona are laid bare. The young lovers first appear like a pair of simpletons, the next time around it comes out that the girl looks down on her simple partner, and in yet another round the impression is that they could actually be a pair of gangsters specialising in gas-station robberies. These kinds of theatrical experiments often lead audiences into a dead end of confusion. At Dejvice Theatre, thanks to the comedic stylisation and traditionally perfect acting performances, the production succeeds in maintaining a connection with the audience, entertaining them and rousing their attention. Doyle Doubt: Black Hole. Directed by Jiří Havelka, set Dáda Němeček. Dejvice Theatre, Prague, premiere 12/4/2007. > Photo Hynek Glos 9.7.2008 17:07:58 KALEIDOSCOPE /89 Zdeněk A. Tichý A Performance Worthwhile F ifteen minutes of enthusiastic applause from the audience welcomed the director Miloš Forman onto the stage of the National Theatre (Národní divadlo) following a Sunday premiere. Forman and his two sons, Petr and Matěj, staged a production of A Walk Worthwhile (Dobře placená procházka), a jazz opera written in 1965 by Jiří Suchý and Jiří Šlitr for Semafor Theatre, a TV version of which was filmed a year later by Forman. This production retained the story of a divorcing couple, Uli and Vanilka, whose child (not yet conceived) is to inherit a million from their rich Aunt in Liverpool, but this version of the story differs considerably from the original. The Semafor and the television versions were intimate performances, while the National Theatre’s version of A Walk Worthwhile adhered to a 1960s artistic stylisation but was transformed into an epic music show, though without leaving the modest space of Uli and Vanilka’s flat. Matěj Forman, who designed the set, put a cramped bathroom on one side of the stage, and on the other located the bedroom, and the centre space was reserved for the living room, the empty space of which served as the site of the triumphant arrival of the rich aunt, accompanied by a large entourage of servants. The set also underwent dynamic changes using black-and white curtains decorated with a 1960s-type motif of the nucleus of an atom, and some scenes took place behind a window that functioned as a view-hole into the world of fantasy, where a jazz band, a choir of angels, postmen, and giant carrier pigeons all appeared. Also beckoning the audience’s attention was a choir of women singing directly at the level of the audience for most of the performance. The premiere confirmed that Miloš Forman, working in tandem with his other son Petr, was not there just so that his famous name could be added to the posters for the production. The kind of humour portrayed in some scenes was reminiscent of Forman’s early films – especially the love scene between Uli and Vanilka in the bath, which instead of erotic games becomes the site of an embarrassing situation. The production also managed to pull off some effective music and dance numbers, which throughout helped maintain a little bit of Czech distance from Hollywood sentimentality. The production offers two to three casts, but the premiere itself gave a clear signal that the alternations would be balanced. Forman attuned the performances of both stars and unknowns into a uniform style. Jana Malá as Vanilka has the requisite sex appeal and charisma of a calculating bitch, while Petr Stach as Uli, a Latin teacher, is subserviently timid and withdrawn, though no less eager for wealth. A real discovery is Petr Píša, who plays his role as the conniving Lawyer with the kind of carnal energy worthy of the old masters of silent-screen comedy. And as soon as the worldly Aunt from Liverpool, played by Zuzana Stivínová, steps onto the stage, the entire theatre is at her feet – she looks as though she stepped right out of an American epic film, but spiced up with a pinch of irony. And then there is the mysterious Postman played by Jiří Suchý, delivering telegrams with a disarming smile. Even Šlitr’s melodies have withstood the test of time. Interpreted by the conductor Libor Pešek, the songs evoke a sense of music-hall grandeur and Czech playfulness. The entire production shines with these kinds of inspirational tie-ins. The Forman triumvirate prepared a show that combines the largesse of film, the inventiveness of itinerant players, a feeling for the grotesque, and hints of a Surrealist dream. Jiří Suchý, Jiří Šlitr: A Walk Worthwhile. Directed by Miloš and Petr Forman, musical interpretation Libor Pešek, set Matěj Forman, costumes Jan Pištěk, choreography Veronika Švábová. National Theatre, Prague, premiere 23/4/2007. > Photo Irena Vodáková KALEIDOSCOPE 085-094_Kaleidoscope_3k.indd 89 9.7.2008 17:07:59 90/ KALEIDOSCOPE Radmila Hrdinová The Premiere of Monteverdi’s “Orpheus” at the Estates Theatre > Photo Hana Smejkalová T he Legend of Orpheus (L’Orfeo), the third ever work created as part of the new art of opera, and the oldest work by Claudio Monteverdi to survive in its entirety, was staged by the National Theatre (Národní divadlo) in Prague. In reality this was a project of a company that has thus far concentrated more on contemporary music, and it was performed under the wings of the country’s top theatre, the only common denominator of the event being the director and new manager of the National Theatre’s opera, Jiří Heřman. The creative team and artists behind the production were engaged, not from the National Theatre’s company, but from a circle of artists specialising in the interpretation of Baroque opera, a group headed by the Italian director Roberto Gini, who in February of this year in Mantua directed a gala performance for the four hundredth anniversary of the premiere there of Orpheus. Monteverdi’s Orpheus was originally not yet referred to as an opera but as a “legend to music” (favola in musica), with a prologue and five acts, and it told the story of the mythical singer Orpheus’s love for the beautiful Eurydice, whom he follows into the realm of the dead. In the music, soloists alternate with madrigal choirs and instrumental passages in the form of dances and orchestral symphonies. Paradoxically, Orpheus has both much and little in common with the typical notion of operatic theatre. It cannot be judged by the criteria of Romantic opera, and instead must be seen in terms of its complex approach to combining song, movement, and the visual components of a work. As such it is more in tune with our understanding of modern musical theatre today. This is how the director Jiří Heřman interpreted Orpheus, creating a visual variation on the concept of the existence of human beings in space. He filled the stage of the Estates Theatre (Stavovské divadlo) with stylised figures in motion and objects flowing freely through the air, with globes spinning in glass windows, an orange disc for the sun, a looming red heart, a bird stuck in flight, and an open gate to the underworld revealing a tree with golden apples or a vanished, bound figure dropped from a gridiron. The chorus does not just serve as a choral ensemble but also as dancers, as the performers of the roles of shepherds, of the dark shadows of the underworld, and of the pallid figures of the “unburied” dead that Orpheus sings about. Heřman’s spatial fantasy, rigorously stylised and slowed in pace, was remarkable in its details, but as a whole it came across as too ornamental and in places mechanically predictable and distantly cool. Combined with the music, which Gini maintained at a subdued, contemplative level, without any sharp dramatic changes, the performance lulls the viewer’s attention to the point of deadening it. In their vocal performances the singers showed that they had learned their roles, their steady voices intertwining in the decorative style of the time, but with only some exceptions (the Nymph and Proserpina by Petra Noskaiová), on the whole their voices were unable to adequately fill the space of the Estates Theatre. It is expected of Orpheus that he charm not just the shadows of the underworld but also the public in the theatre, but in the role Vincenzo di Donato more or less played it safe. The chorus, headed by Roberto Hugo, succeeded in its performance of the more demanding parts, even Monteverdi’s madrigals, but its sound was too intimate for the Estates Theatre. The orchestra captivated the audience with the unusual sound of period instruments, but there were difficulties harmonising them, so it is hard to say what has to be chalked up to the fact that this was a period interpretation, and what not. For the audience Orpheus is an unusual but interesting piece of work. This encounter with Monteverdi’s opera is certainly praiseworthy. Too bad only five performances were planned. Claudio Monteverdi: Orpheus. Libretto by Alessandro Striggio Jr., music interpreted and directed by Roberto Gini, directed by Jiří Heřman, set Pavel Svoboda, costumes Lenka Polášková, lighting design Daniel Tesař. National Theatre, Prague, premiere 3/5/2007 at the Estates Theatre. Zdeněk Hořínek The Two Sides of a Dictator’s Mentality I n 1907 the Russian novelist and essayist Dmitry Merezhkovsky wrote a historical drama about the death of Tsar Paul I (1754–1801). In this country it was performed for the first time in 1919 in Pilsen and one year later at the National Theatre 085-094_Kaleidoscope_3k.indd 90 (Národní divadlo) in Prague. The play The Death of Paul I was rediscovered for audiences today by the dramaturg Štěpán Otčenášek, and the director Hana Burešová staged it at Brno City Theatre (Městské divadlo Brno). 9.7.2008 17:07:59 KALEIDOSCOPE The drama and the production systematically adhered to a concept of playing on opposites and contrasts. The scenes alternated between public and private settings and switched back and forth between seriousness and grotesque comedy and between tense drama and calm intimacy. This concept of opposites was suggested in the artistic design itself: bright historical costumes, in white, black, grey and red tones, contrast with the geometrical design of the set, mainly characterised by the scant furniture (tables, chairs, and sofas), the use of translucent oblong panels, and the movable platforms fitted with stairs. There were certainly meanings to be read into the differentiation between costumes by colour, but they were not conventional associations; for instance, here, the colour white was associated with intimacy and defencelessness rather than innocence, but also with hopelessness, passivity, and lethargy. The set, when combined with the lighting and the background projection screens, evoked the cool atmosphere of a snowy landscape. The panels, variously arranged and distributed across the stage, implied the outlines of an obstructed, maze-like terrain of halls and chambers. The changing settings were seen to, in a bewilderingly productive swarm of activity, by the numerous footmen on stage, whose bayonets and uniforms created an impression of general threat and surveillance. The setting and the atmosphere were heightened by the omnipresent music of Vladimír Franz, which, in addition to its illustrative and metaphorical functions (drumming, bugling, marching, the ominous cawing of crows), had a powerfully dramatic force that prevented the excitement and tension from subsiding during the set changes while it also subtly underscored the intimate scenes and sentimental outpourings. However, the essential opposition and contrast lay in the autocratic, inconsistent character of Paul and his shocking behaviour, creating an unbearable tension between power and society, the latter represented not by the people but by politicians and military functionaries. Erik Pardus was clearly given the opportunity of a lifetime to play this lead, and he handled it in a fascinating manner, with sudden, illogical, unexpected, and yet variously motivated mood changes, moving from thoughtless aggression to a self-stirring emotionalism, and alternating between a grimace and a frozen expression, and using cranky movements and gestures that only calmed down and became gentle in the arms of a lover. All this evoked an uncertain sense that this character was at once a cruel and dangerous madman and a deeply vulnerable and sensitive person. Paul’s unpredictability was vividly reflected in the court protocol, demonstrated in the very first scene of the military parade. The precision and strictness of a military parade was inter-cut with random incidents. In a furious whim the Tsar sentenced an honourable sergeant to four hundred cane strokes for committing a minor error. The parade of forces became at the same time an exorbitantly graphic display of the political system. All that bothered me in this was that the loud music at times drowned out the Tsar’s commands and imperious comments. The initiator and head of the anti-Tsar resistance, Count Pahlen, played by Igor Ondříček, was, in appearance, temperament, and in his quiet authority, the very opposite of the Tsar – tall, with a military grace, and an unfathomable expression on his face, which we suspect conceals the hidden designs and 085-094_Kaleidoscope_3k.indd 91 /91 > Photo Jef Kratochvíl melancholy scepticism of a man who knows enough to be able to doubt the idea of change for the better. This was eloquently demonstrated in the depiction of a meeting of conspirators, where political debates alternated with talk about whores and booze, and where high-minded proclamations were interrupted by drunken cries and revelry. Viktor Skála’s Tatarinov, a boorish lout, and Jan Mazák’s lewd clown Skaryatin, though backward, but all the more roisterous for that, were clearly front and centre here. In the end, this boisterous conspiratorial anarchy seemed just as absurd as the chillingly inhuman established order. The outcome of the conspiracy activities and the dramatic climax of the evening was the depiction of the Tsar’s murder, the chaotic course of which reflected the mental state of the conspirators, captured in the throes of mania and fear, hidden behind the anonymity of the inflicted wounds. The figure of the heir to the throne, Paul’s son Alexander, wavers between the two camps. Petr Štěpán conveyed his sense of indecision – contrasting with his strapping masculinity – by means of lazy postures and “lounging” (typically reclining on a white ottoman), combined with hysterical outbursts of insecurity and powerless resistance. His brother Constantin (Oldřich Smysl) figured in the background of events, but his ironic comments would have benefited from a bit more force to them. Although the play was mainly about power, at that time mostly the business of men, Merezhkovsky managed to portray three positions and fates that are typically female. A woman subjugated and spurned, a victim of male caprice, the Tsarina Marie Fyodorovna (Irena Konvalinová) faintly fluttered about in a frail effort to attract attention, wearing a naive expression, surprised at everything and understanding nothing, and only in the tragic conclusion did she gain some dignity through her genuine suffering. The woman as comforter – Paul’s lover Anna Gagarin (Evelína Jirková), in whose warmly sensual embrace the Tsar finds a moment of peace and serenity. And finally, the active woman – Alexander’s wife Elizabeth (Pavla Ptáčková), who with masculine decisiveness vainly attempted to goad her partner into resolving to take action. The director Hana Burešová and the dramaturg together created (by eliminating a number of characters and shortening the second half of the play) the optimum version of the script, mastering the complexity of collective events, 9.7.2008 17:08:00 92/ KALEIDOSCOPE maintaining a gripping and well-planned gradation of tension in the noisily public and quietly intimate scenes, contrasting the aspects of different genres, and guiding the lead actors towards provocatively ambivalent interpretations of their characters. The internal inconsistency of the character of Paul I vividly displays the two sides of the dictator’s mentality, in which bestial cruelty can surprisingly co-exist with (what seems like) the humanity of Utopian pursuits. There are even aspects of that legendary Russian messianism here, a man attempting by his own might to solve all the world’s problems and thus become the saviour of the universe. Paul’s manner of rule called to mind not just the bizarre behavioural quirks of various tyrants today but also the political and diplomatic practices of totalitarian regimes. This old play, in which we can find parallels with both Shakespeare and Dürrenmatt, came across in this modern interpretation as very timely. Dmitri Merezhkovsky: The Death of Paul I. Translation by Danuše Kšicová, directed by Hana Burešová, set Tomáš Rusín, costumes Zuzana Štefunková, music Vladimír Franz. Brno City Theatre, premiere 8/9/2007. Terezie Pokorná A Brave Fellow is the Pride of the World T he Playboy of the Western World, by John Millington Synge, is one of the most astonishing plays ever written. Its premiere at the Abbey Theatre in January 1907 provoked one of the most famous riots in the history of European theatre. The play’s renown spread across the world, and just a couple of months after the Dublin production, it was staged at the National Theatre (Národní divadlo) in Prague, its translation into Czech the work of Karel Mušek. Since then theatre artists have been irresistibly drawn to this text, but it is not easy to stage. In the Czech Republic currently the Drama Club (Činoherní klub) is taking on this task, under the direction of Ondřej Sokol. Synge drew inspiration from his travels along the western Irish coast, the closed and mysterious world that exists there, its nature and traditions, and its distinct and often mythologised way of life. The basic plot of the play seems obvious: when “on the wild coast of County Mayo” a wretched stranger-desperado enters an abandoned pub, and he lets spill that he killed his father with a spade, the locals do not turn him in, or judge him, but begin to admire him. Subsequent events follow the plot line of a lively farce, written with brilliant dramatic instinct. The play is remarkable and unique primarily owing to the sense of ambivalence and paradox that surfaces continuously at the level of language, meaning, and style. The comic merges with the tragic, the high with the low, the (anti)heroes speak both vulgarly and poetically, and disturbing questions soon emerge out of the farce. This signalises a turn, which today, in the age of the most extreme trivialisation of violence and the manipulation of reality, raises a particularly relevant theme: those around Christy look up to him only as long as they are able to admire his patricide as a narrative, as there is a “great chasm between words and actions”. The Playboy of the Western World is usually regarded as an “untranslatable” work. And it is also referred to as “impossible to stage”, because, as noted by one of its interprets, Nicholas Greene, it is difficult not to emphasise one aspect at the expense of others and rather to preserve the multivalent nature of the work. Ondřej Sokol, who has acquired a reputation as an interpreter of Synge’s modern successor, Martin McDonagh, 085-094_Kaleidoscope_3k.indd 92 > Photo Pavel Nesvadba initially, and surprisingly, decided to go with the poetic outlook. He may have been led towards this by Martin Hilský’s highly stylised translation, which particularly follows the playwright’s meticulous work with the melody and rhythm of speech. Sokol’s depiction of this Irish micro-world of long ago at first seems too picturesque and neat. The impression that we are looking at just picture-perfect idyllic scenes from the slightly eccentric but nonetheless “good old” times derives partly from the constant presence of a live “Irish” band on stage. However, it gradually becomes apparent that the director knows the nature of the play he has before him: he ever increasingly allows (self)irony to permeate the characters’ poetic lines, and both dark humour and even altogether serious tones end up by means of sharp cuts as comical situations. The actors hold the majority of the responsibility for the successful outcome of the production, and their performances could form the subject of a separate paper. The actor in the main role, Jaroslav Plesl, has the necessary charisma of his character and brilliantly handles the instantaneous transformation from an outsider into 9.7.2008 17:08:01 KALEIDOSCOPE a grandstander, from a twaddler into a poet, and from a goggle-eyed young man into a mature adult. A strong coplayer for him is the sovereign Michal Pavlata, who plays his father, and even Ivana Wojtylová, whose portrayal of the widow Quinn subtly adds a strong and independent story into the evening. Kateřina Lojdová gives a persuasive performance as the temperamental and sharp Pegeen, and so too does Matej Dadák as her sadly awkward and cowardly suitor Shawn. Vladimír Kratina marvellously plays an alcoholic without ever resorting to easy tricks. /93 The production climaxes in a meticulously performed phantasmagorical kerfuffle full of emotions, alcohol and blood, which we have to laugh at, but which is followed by a sobering and a strange kind of sadness. John Millington Synge: The Playboy of the Western World. Directed by Ondřej Sokol, set Adam Pitra, costumes Katarína Hollá, with the musical group Shannon. Drama Club Prague, premiere 10/9/2007. Lukáš Jiřička SKUTR at a Crossroads M artin Kukučka and Lukáš Trpišovský (both 1979), the duo behind the hard to forget label SKUTR (see Jana Machalická: Scootering through the Labyrinth of the World, Czech Theatre 23), have not yet reached their respective thirtieth birthdays, but they have nonetheless managed to win the hearts of a loyal public for their productions at Archa Theatre (Divadlo Archa) and were even nominated for an Alfréd Radok Award. All this is quite a feat. Following a rocket start, with their productions Massacre (Masakr) and Nickname, SKUTR succeeded in finding a new direction for itself and a very smooth style, the renown of which is spreading far. Their most recent original project, The Weepers (Plačky), inspired by Slavic folk traditions, has raised the question of whether Kukučka and Trpišovský have perhaps reached a crossroads in their work. It is as though previously they had been coasting along a path that was too smooth and too easy. They succeeded, faster than their peers in the same young generation of directors, in creating a clear and unique style of direction, and that style is now proving to be a gift and a curse at the same time. Within the Czech theatre scene SKUTR came up with an authentic and confident mixture of different theatre genres – the theatre of movement, drama, puppetry, with elements of pantomime and circus performance. It is borne along mainly by its strong musical feeling for a production’s rhythmic structure, and it strongly emphasises the artistic conception of a production. SKUTR varies its use of motifs, which are united by a single dominant theme approached from different perspectives. The duo’s masterful stage portrait of the inability of characters to establish real contact with each other long seemed an appealing feature of their work, but in time this feature acquired schematic dimensions. From a theatrical perspective, even The Weepers fails to offer much that is new. While SKUTR has reconfirmed its skill at creating spectacular and physically (almost acrobatically) impressive micro-situations out of the improvisations of the performers, their distinctive style is becoming an end in itself rather than a communicative medium, and it is beginning to give the impression of acting as a kind of straitjacket. At a performance of The Weepers, the programme tells us that SKUTR was trying to create a live reference to Slavic 085-094_Kaleidoscope_3k.indd 93 > Photo Tomáš Vodňanský traditions clashing with the alienation of the modern world. At the start of the performance we watch the death of a feeble old man, played by Matij Solc, and the six young actors gathered around him immediately begin to dance in whirls about the stage. As is the custom with SKUTR, the group is made up of a random mixture of lonely characters – a bride, a tramp, an economist, a pregnant woman, and a young dandy. They meet up in situations designed with one intention: to show that they may actually have something in common. But given the theme of the great clash between the traditional and the modern worlds, this is hardly enough. Even the Weepers do not really seem like women in mourning but simply like characters that are on stage just to impress the audience with their musical and physical talent in a few showy performance pieces. This does not mean that The Weepers is a failed production. The work is too well performed and too well prepared for that. It just lacks any element of surprise, and despite the assembly of micro-performances, songs, and acrobatic tricks it falls short in expressing its theme. Skutr: The Weepers. Directed by Skutr, set design Matěj Němeček, costumes Daniela Klimešová, music Petr Kaláb. Archa Theatre, Prague, premiere 20/9/2007. 9.7.2008 17:08:01 94/ KALEIDOSCOPE Kateřina Kolářová Vladimír Morávek Revisits Chekhov and Dagmar Havlová Resumes Playing Classic Roles B oth cases alluded to in the title were a success. success The director Morávek and the actress Havlová came together in a performance at Vinohrady Theatre (Divadlo na Vinohradech) of Chekhov’s masterpiece – The Cherry Orchard. The production opens with the entry of governess Charlotte, dressed up like a cabaret dancer, wearing a feather boa and a stovepipe hat. An enchantress, and an ageless woman, Charlotte also introduces The Cherry Orchard as though it were a cabaret show: “Meine Damen und Herren, my name is Charlotte, but don’t read anything into that!” During the play she provides onstage commentary, observes the characters with ironic detachment, and arrives on the scene in the end, cigarette in hand, like an elegant reaper. It is like making a little excursion in a time machine, going back just a few years: that is how the cycle “Chekhov for Czechs” began, with Morávek bringing together productions of Three Sisters, The Seagull, and Uncle Vanya. The cabaret environment is an obvious allusion to the preceding opus, and perhaps its symbolic conclusion. The principle of the cabaret (even more decadent than before) is still appealing, and Jiřina Jirásková shines with grace in the role of Charlotte. Nevertheless, in Morávek’s previous Chekhovian triptych Charlotte served a function, as the glue holding together the mosaic of characters and situations, but here she is nothing more than a colourful little gem. When the curtain rises in Vinohrady Theatre, the room in the Ranevskaya household, excellently designed by Martin Chocholoušek, is depicted in dark blue and in a strange perspective: it is as though not just the cherry orchard was beeing chopped down, but the entire house. From the start, the director denies both the characters and the audience any sense of hope. The inhabitants and visitors to the estate are like corpses brought to life through their individual tics: the servant Dunyasha and her hiccups (Lucie Juřičková), the jerky motions of the unlucky Epikhodov (Svatopluk Skopal), or the shuffling walk of old Firs (Ilja Racek). Our sympathy is awoken by the touchingly garrulous Gayev, played by Viktor Preiss, who like a child closes himself away in an old cabinet. However, the biggest surprise in this gallery of characters is Lopakhin, brilliantly portrayed by Martin Stropnický, who transformed the role beyond recognition. His Lopakhin looks like a cripple, with a sunken chest, his head inclined permanently to one side and on top of that rammed between his shoulders, and with contorted hands, a shuffling walk, and a squeaky voice. Here he was not — as he is usually played — the symbol of a new predatory world, in which the incapacitated are squashed, but is instead the same human wreck as all the others. When in the end Lopakhin triumphs by purchasing the indebted estate, it is the triumph of a pathetic wretch. Lopakhin is in love with Madame Ranevskaya, played by Dagmar Havlová-Veškrnová. And he’s not the only one. In this production Madame Ranevskaya is a kind of goddess or cult figure, something 085-094_Kaleidoscope_3k.indd 94 > Photo Viktor Kronbauer made obvious by all the busts of her image that the characters carry around the stage instead of suitcases. Erect, majestic, always exquisite in a stunning dress, almost to the point of being cold. It was as though a canopy of ice lay across the entire first half of the premiere performance. The emotions of the characters, especially their more expressive attitudes, seemed somewhat mechanical and almost artificial. However, after the intermission, these figurative ices broke. If in the first half we were watching lifeless figures, the second part portrays them in total agony. The lighting is even more cadaverous, the costumes even more icy blue in tone, like Madame Ranevskaya’s blue wig. The oppressive atmosphere that accompanies the wait for the outcome of the auction is almost sickening in effect. Havlová is excellent in these scenes: under the obvious pressure she flirts with the stiff Trofimov, played by Jiří Dvořák, and she may even be a little drunk. She is consumed by inner anxiety, and when the final verdict comes down she clutches her throat, as though strangling herself. She appears reconciled when she leaves, but then suddenly breaks out in final, desperate hysterics. Morávek’s interpretation of The Cherry Orchard bears all the attributes of the director’s fingerprints, including the changing bursts of sound. However, the director’s approach is not just in the service of style but also shapes its interpretation, which unlike the earlier Chekhovian trilogy is less grotesque and less saturated with colour. Vinohrady Theatre did the right thing by taking a risk with this director’s more expressive theatrical vision. Vinohrady needs such forceful works. On top of that, the cast, backed by Morávek’s own ensemble players, Pavla Tomicová and Ivana Uhlířová, as guest performers, roused itself to an outstanding performance. A. P. Chekhov: The Cherry Orchard. Translated by Leoš Suchařípa, directed by Vladimír Morávek, set Martin Chocholoušek, costumes Sylva Hanáková, music Michal Pavlíček. Vinohrady Theatre, Prague, premiere 5/2/2008. 9.7.2008 17:08:01 Notebook Theatre Awards 2007 ● The Alfréd Radok Awards The Alfréd Radok Awards, which are handed out annually by the Alfréd Radok Foundation based on the results of a survey carried out by the magazine World & Theatre (Svět a divadlo), were awarded for 2007 in the following categories: Best Music Vladimír Franz – music for the production of Dmitry Merezhkovsky’s play The Death of Paul I, Brno City Theatre (Městské divadlo Brno) Talent of the Year Production of the Year Franz Kafka – The Trial (Proces), Prague Chamber Theatre – Comedy Theatre (Pražské komorní divadlo – Divadlo Komedie), Prague, directed by Dušan D. Pařízek Dmitry Merezhkovsky – The Death of Paul I, Brno City Theatre (Městské divadlo Brno), directed by Hana Burešová John Millington Synge – The Playboy of the Western World, Drama Club (Činoherní klub), Prague, directed by Ondřej Sokol Jiří Havelka, director ÀHana Burešová Best Actor Martin Finger – Josef K. in the production of Franz Kafka’s The Trial (Proces), Prague Chamber Theatre – Comedy Theatre (Pražské komorní divadlo - Divadlo Komedie), Prague Erik Pardus – Paul I in the production of Dmitry Merezhkovsky’s play The Death of Paul I, Brno City Theatre (Městské divadlo Brno) Jaroslav Plesl – Christy Mahon in the production of John Millington Synge’s The Playboy of the Western World, Drama Club (Činoherní klub), Prague ¿Milan Uhde Best Actress Helena Dvořáková – title role in the production of Seneca’s Phaedra, Theatre on Dlouhá Street (Divadlo v Dlouhé), Prague ÀJiří Havelka Theatre of the Year Prague Chamber Theatre – Comedy Theatre (Pražské komorní divadlo – Divadlo Komedie), Prague Best Czech Play Milan Uhde – Miracle in the Black House (Zázrak v černém domě) Best Stage Design Matěj Forman – stage design for the musical by Jiří Suchý and Jiří Šlitr A Walk Worthwhile (Dobře placená procházka), National Theatre (Národní divadlo), Prague Kristýna Täubelová – stage design for the production of Rudyard Kipling’s Jungle Book, Minor Theatre (Divadlo Minor), Prague ¿Helena Dvořáková 095-104_Notebook_4k.indd 95 9.7.2008 17:11:53 96/ NOTEBOOK Theatre Awards 2007 ● Thalia Awards 2007 Each year the Actors Association hands out Thalia Awards in recognition of exceptional performances in the arts. The following artists received awards for 2007: ÀVlasta Chramostová Drama Simona Stašová – Evy Meara in the production of Neil Simon’s The Gingerbread Lady, Antonín Dvořák Theatre (Divadlo Antonína Dvořáka), Příbram Erik Pardus – Paul I in the production of Dmitry Merezhkovsky’s play The Death of Paul I, Theatre on Dlouhá Street (Divadlo v Dlouhé), Prague Opera Anda-Louise Bogza – Minnie in the production of Puccini’s opera La fanciulla del West (The Girl of the Golden West), National Theatre (Národní divadlo), Prague Gianluca Zampieri – Cyrano in the production of Franco Alfano’s opera Cyrano de Bergerac, Moravian-Silesian National Theatre (Národní divadlo moravskoslezské), Ostrava ¿Simona Stašová Operetta, Musical, or Other Musical Drama Pavla Břínková – Anhilta in the production of Emmerich Kalmán’s The Csardas Princess (Die Csárdásfürstin), Karlín Music Theatre (Hudební divadlo Karlín), Prague Petr Štěpán – Darryl in the production of John Dempsey and Dan Rowe’s The Witches of Eastwick, Municipal Theatre Brno (Městské divadlo Brno) ÀNikola Márová and Michal Štípa Ballet, Pantomime and Other Dramatic Dance Genres Nikola Márová - Odette/Odile in the production of Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake, State Opera Prague (Státní opera Praha) Michal Štípa – lead role in the production of the opus by Jacques Brel, Vladimir Vysockij, and Karel Kryl Solo for Three (Sólo pro tři), National Theatre (Národní divadlo), Prague Lifetime Achievement Awards Ilja Racek (drama) Václav Zítek (opera) Jaroslav Čejka (ballet) Special Award from the Thalia Award Committee Vlasta Chramostová (actress) Award for Young Artists under the Age of 33 in the Field of Drama ¿Jaroslav Čejka Michal Čapka 095-104_Notebook_4k.indd 96 9.7.2008 17:11:54 NOTEBOOK /97 New Books from the Theatre Institute ● František Černý: Theatre within the Barriers of Normalisation (Divadlo v bariérách normalizace) A collection of previously unpublished texts by this historian and teacher (*1926). The book’s contents present readers with familiar and less well-known information about the theatre scene in the normalisation period. The author at times goes beyond the limits of this period to provide more complex insight into the phenomenon under observation. The book ties in with two previous publications of the author’s memoirs (For a Theatre Old and New, Karolinum 2005, In the Town by Three Rivers, Oftis, Ústí n. Orl. 2005). Published by the Theatre Institute in Prague, ISBN 978-80-7008-215-7, 202 pp. ● Jindřich Černý: The Fate of Czech Theatre after the Second World War: Czech Theatre and Society in 1945-1955 (Osudy českého divadla po druhé světové válce: České divadlo a společnost v letech 1945-1955) The book follows the history of Czech theatre in the first decade after the Second World War, particularly in connection with the country’s political and social transformation into initially a pseudo-democratic state and from 1948 into a totalitarian state. The author draws on his own experiences in the theatre scene at that time and provides a systematic and detailed description of each year. He describes the goals set forth in communist propaganda and how individual theatres responded to them, traces the reactions to productions in the contemporary media, and tries hard to highlight the work of artists who, in the very difficult conditions of a totalitarian state, strove to preserve freedom of artistic expression. The book is published by Academia in cooperation with the Theatre Institute in Prague. Published by Academia, ISBN 978-80-200-1502-0, 526 pp. ● Vlasta Koubská, Jiří Hilmera, Magda Wagenknechtová, Martin Tröster: Poet of the Stage Space (Básník scénického prostoru) The monograph focuses on the artistic work of scenographer František Tröster (1904–1968), one of the leading figures in 095-104_Notebook_4k.indd 97 9.7.2008 17:11:54 98/ NOTEBOOK New Books from the Theatre Institute Czech avant-garde theatre. Drawing on the authors’ own studies the book grasps the artistic principles behind the creation of Tröster’s exceptional works, which fundamentally changed the nature of modern Czech and world scenography. The authors describe Tröster’s set designs and collaboration with prominent directors, and even his costume, architectural, and illustrative work, his creative artwork, and finally also his work as a teacher, whereby he helped train a number of excellent scenographers that today rank among the best in their field. The publication contains a voluminous appendix of illustrations (approx. 150 ill.), a list of Tröster’s works, and a list of exhibitions and bibliographies on Tröster. The book is published in cooperation with the Municipal House, where in 2007 an exhibition of Tröster’s works was organised under the same title. interview with the Forman brothers and the French director Igor of Cabaret Theatre Dromesco. The second is more archival and documentary in focus, tracing the early stages of work on the boat and the performance. The third chapter is comprised entirely of photographs by Irena Vodáková, who systematically recorded the performances and the life around them from the time of first nights. Published by Torst in cooperation with the Theatre Institute and the Forman Brothers’ Theatre, ISBN 978-80-7008-213-3, 289 pp. Published by the Municipal House in Prague in cooperation with the Theatre Institute and the National Museum, ISBN 978-80-86339-38-2, 189 pp. ● Purple Sails on the Mystery Boat (Nachové plachty na lodi Tajemství) This book, rich in artistic content, aimed at professionals and the general public, follows the origin and the appearance of the performance of Purple Sails (Nachové plachty) by the Forman Brothers’ Theatre (Divadlo bratří Formanů) and the related reconstruction of a pusher boat into the “Mystery” Boat theatre. The book is divided into three chapters. The first contains a long Czech Theatres in Numbers In 2007 a total of 180 theatres and permanent groups of artists regularly and consistently participated in theatre life in the Czech Republic. There are 50 repertoire theatres, each with its own company/companies of various genres (13 of them have more than one company, the usual model being based on three companies: opera, drama and ballet). These theatres receive regular grants from local and regional budgets (44 theatres) and from the national budget (3 theatres and 3 theatre schools). There are other 35 permanent stages without their own company, financed from public funds (local budgets). More than 2,7 milliard Czech crowns was provided from public funds for the support of theatrical activity. All the Czech theatres presented a total of 1 600 titles and 2 076 productions. 582 premieres were presented. A total of 25 785 performances took place in the Czech Republic which were seen by more than 5,4 million theatre goers (average attendance 80 %). The Czech companies gave 845 performances abroad. NOTEBOOK 095-104_Notebook_4k.indd 98 9.7.2008 17:11:55 NOTEBOOK /99 New Czech Plays in Repertory ● Magdalena Frydrychová Dorothy (Dorotka) Cast: 3 men, 2 women Adela and Dorothy are orphans. Adela is thirty years old, and she regularly goes to confession. Kryštof sings at church during mass. Adela has no partner. The priest goes to the pub because the people do not go to church. Kryštof would like to sing for someone. Adela found a figurine of the Virgin Mary under the bed. And Marek would like to be an astronomer. Everyone wants to exist for someone. Everyone looks into the heavens at times. But it is just so hard to believe in anything. One day Dorothy witnesses a miracle. Something finally has to change. A play set in a dead-end town on the road between the local church and the pub. ● Kateřina Rudčenková A Time of Cherry Smoke – a play partly in dream (Čas třešňového dýmu – hra v polosnu) Cast: 3 women The play focuses on the theme of intergenerational relationships between women in one family, their relationships to men, the relationship between daughters and mothers, and our relationship to our forbears, and on the theme of how a predisposition to commit the same mistakes in marriage is passed on from generation to generation within a family. The play, written in poetic language, employs a tragicomic form in an effort to describe the pressure that is put on women in our society to be “real women”, to marry and have children, and so on. The play unfolds on two levels. One is the level of reality, where a daughter meets with her mother, and also with her grandmother, who has returned from the afterlife to help the mother and daughter achieve mutual reconciliation and acceptance. The second is a dream level, and in a kind of parallel to Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, three women are waiting to be married. The three women are the “heroines” of fairytales and children’s images of “real women”: Cinderella, Snow White, and Sleeping Beauty. They are waiting in vain to marry, no grooms or wedding guests are coming, and instead the characters undergo a symbolic transformation into mysterious androgynous creatures. The play was created during the author’s residency at the Royal Court Theatre in London, and it was a finalist in the drama category of the Alfréd Radok Awards for 2007. ● David Drábek Mašín Brothers Square (Náměstí bratří Mašínů) Cast: 19 men, 10 women (but it can be staged with a smaller cast) 095-104_Notebook_4k.indd 99 The play’s subtitle, “A Play of Inertia”, is an apt description of the latest play by David Drábek. The heroes are stuck in the stagnant waters of their own worthless and absurd existences, from which they cannot be saved even by death, however seductive it may be. Vendelín, a disabled old man, is a failure as a lover, husband, father and grandfather, and a failure as an inspector for the Prague public transit system, and even the very reason for his disability is humiliating. Rita, a Jehovah’s Witness, is lonely, and not entirely normal, just like Jeroným, a homeless man who sells copies of The Big Issue on the street; the singer Zapík, with his pseudo-English and open-necked shirt, is a mangy relic from the normalisation years, and even the other characters are not doing very well, nor are their lives particularly dignified. In the first part, called “Czech Grief”, excerpts drawn from the lives of these characters become intertwined at a masquerade ball that the characters attend strangely disguised as animals and plants, where comically awkward scenes are punctuated by fantastical encounters with a Swan woman, death, into whose arms Vendelín tries in vain to fall. The second part of the play, called “Czech Sea”, initially seems like a realistic situation in a hijacked streetcar, where an unidentified terrorist is holding the passengers. It gradually comes out that almost all of them are connected with Vendelín the Terrorist, who is demanding to be taken to Mašín Brothers Square. No hero’s death in an exploding streetcar or kiss from the Swan woman awaits Vendelín; instead, what lies before him is regaining consciousness in an intensive care unit, his wife Petra, stagnant waters, and inertia. The play came in second in the drama category of the Alfréd Radok Awards for 2007. These texts are available in electronic format from the agency Dilia. ● Helmut Kuhl (alias René Levínský) Harila Cast: 5 men, 1 woman, 1 gorilla (1 man or 1 woman) Comedy – grotesque A trio of male punkers, Karl-Heinz, Giovanne and Rudi, one female punker Elsa, and their German shepherd dog Šaryk, all of them living on the fringe of society, penniless and unemployed, but in a state of inebriation they decide to do a good deed – to free Kisoro the gorilla from the zoo and allow her to experience her first menstruation in freedom, because they feel it is degrading for her to be during her period enclosed in a cage while being gazed at by a bunch of bourgeois and their well-behaved children. The act is a success, and the gorilla, drunk to the gills, sits in the car heading who knows where with the four stoned punkers. Morning comes, alone with hangovers and a surprise – they’ve travelled as far as Bodam Lake, and what’s more, after a night of foreplay in the car, Kisoro and Rudi unleash their full sexual passion for each other. Giovanne leaves them to drive 9.7.2008 17:11:56 100/ NOTEBOOK New Czech Plays in Repertory into town to find something to eat and returns with a laptop and a video camera that he stole from someone’s car. Karl-Heinz examines the contents of the laptop, and the pornographic materials they find in it lead the protagonists to come up with an original idea to make some money – Kisoro and Rudi will get it on in front of the camera, and online customers will be able to watch this spectacle for a fee at www.fuckthegorilla.com. A mysterious businessman by the name of Tichý offers a considerable sum of money for the entire show and for Kisoro. The punkers are faced with a moral dilemma – on the one hand, they freed Kisoro, but on the other hand, they could get some money for her. They opt for the profit, and for that they are punished in a fashion that almost seems borrowed from an ancient tragedy – the deal is to be closed in the middle of Bodam Lake on a raft, but everything is resolved with the arrival of a shark as a kind of deus ex machina. A symbolic epilogue follows: in the light of the rising sun, Kisoro and Šaryk run to each other across the beach and then happily begin to copulate… The dialogue of the punkers is extremely vulgar in mock exaggeration and alongside the main plot it is a source of the play’s absurd and dark humour. The play can be, but does not have to be, interpreted as a grotesque parody about four punkers who decide to do good but morally disappoint. In 2007 the play won a Theatre News (Divadelní noviny) award for alternative theatre. A Russian translation of the play as Garila (there also exists a German translation, Harrila) won an honourable mention in February 2008 in Belarus as part of the third international Free Theatre competition. The play was first staged by the company Good Little Bears (Nejhodnější medvídci) and the Brno Theatre At 7 and a Half (V sedm a půl). newspaper Yuck, drop by to prepare a long, stock-taking type of interview with Rieger. A young novelist named Bea comes to see Rieger, whom she admires, to get him to sign his most recent book of speeches for her. Hanuš, Rieger’s former secretary, conscientiously sorts through the villa’s inventory to protect Rieger from potential accusations of having kept something that is state property, while Hanuš’s former secretary Viktor gradually and inconspicuously becomes Rieger’s link to the emerging government establishment. The new government is represented by Vlastík Klein, by all appearances a hard-nosed businessman, who is very concerned about the fate of the villa. However, Rieger obtains the most up-to-date information from the gardener, Knobloch (“The boys in the pub were talking about the move...”). The devastating news is soon confirmed: Rieger’s family must move out of the villa. This piece of news sets off the visible disintegration of Rieger’s “court”, which however has secretly been going on already for some time. In Leaving – like in the play Redevelopment (Asanace), completed twenty years ago – Havel constructs an artificial (and melancholily entertaining) theatrical world. It is an ironic reckoning with the departing first post-communist political establishment and a scathing look at the rise of the subsequent real-capitalist generation, and at the same time it is punctuated with playful references to Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard and Shakespeare’s King Lear. The theatricality of the text is underscored by the constant presence of the author’s Voice, giving directorial instructions and adding self-ironic comments on dramatic technique and its limits. ● Václav Havel Leaving (Odcházení) Cast: 6 men, 7 women, 1 boy, extras Directly commissioned by The National Helena Modrzejewska Old Theatre in Krakow, Petr Zelenka, now the most popular playwright in all of Poland, wrote his latest play Exoneration. The play’s world premiere took place on 27 October 2007, directed by the author, translated by Krystyna Krauz, and staged at the small stage beneath Wawel Royal Castle. The Old Theatre has exclusive world rights to the play for eighteen months. The Czech premiere (or premieres elsewhere) will be able to take place no earlier than 27 May 2009. The play follows two storylines. The main one is the story of a writer named Jacek, whose conscience is burdened by a crime he committed – “in a sudden abandonment of his faculties” he sedated and raped the eleven-year-old son of his friends. The second is the story of the gradual demise of a television talk show called “Exoneration”, in which well-known and respected people openly confess their sins. Jacek’s publisher, in whom he confided about his guilt, wants Jack to go on the show. Any kind of media attention could help sell Jack’s latest book. After an inner struggle Jack applies to appear on the programme and everyone A Play in Five Acts Cast: 11 men, 6 women, a voice The first play written by Václav Havel after a twenty-year hiatus, the drama takes us into the household of Dr. Vilém Rieger, who is on his way out of politics. His electoral term is evidently up, and a question mark hangs over his continued residence in the government villa surrounded by a cherry orchard. It is also clear that neither Rieger nor those around him, firmly under the control of his long-time girlfriend Irena, have given much thought to an alternative life. The day-to-day life of the wider family only rarely departs from its standard routine. Alongside Irena, there is her retiring friend Monika, household assistant Osvald, and Rieger’s younger daughter Zuzana, constantly preoccupied by electronic communication in the world of her generation. Other characters also pass through the home. The journalists Jack and Bob, employees of the ubiquitous daily 095-104_Notebook_4k.indd 100 ● Petr Zelenka Exoneration (Očištění) 9.7.2008 17:11:56 NOTEBOOK /101 New Czech Plays in Repertory that figured in his deed receive advance warning before the broadcast. During the regular course of the show he again goes through that fateful evening in his imagination. He leaves the television studio prepared to bear the consequences of his act. To his surprise he finds that nothing happens, the programme he appeared in was recorded and that evening another episode was broadcast. Events – outwardly auspicious – begin to push the protagonist into a destructive void of cynicism. In the end the programme is never aired (the editor-in-chief divorces the show’s moderator). The show is shopped and Jacek becomes embroiled in legal struggles after the show fails to air, finds himself comfortably at home in television and becomes the author of a new and much more cynical, hard-core talk show called Wet Sponge. At a party to celebrate its success he is finally struck by a more reckoning, but it is clearly to late to stop him: when he tells his story as the fictional idea for a new book, his intention succumbs to the harsh judgement of moral authority – any story in which the hero is not interested in exoneration is not worth writing. In today’s world of hollow media any kind of scandal can become an item in the advertising market and its advertising value overshadows the moral dimension altogether. Jacek’s crime thus remains unpunished. NOTEBOOK Advertisiment Exhibition on the Stage: Reflections on the 2007 Prague Quadrennial edited by Arnold Aronson The PQ 07, International Exhibition of Scenography and Theatre Architecture, as viewed and analyzed by several renowned international theatre experts. Both critics and artists discuss various aspects and trends of contemporary theatre design and space. Edited by American scenography expert Arnold Aronson, PQ 07 General Commissioner and with contribution by Thea Brejzek, Dorita Hannah, Ian Herbert, Thomas Irmer and Marie Zdeňková. The publication is released exactly one year after the event and includes almost two hundred coloured photographs documenting the PQ 07. ISBN 978-80-7008-219-5 DVD: Prague Quadrennial 2007 Contains hundreds of photos and hours of video material documenting the highlights and live atmosphere of the 11th Prague Quadrennial. Introductory documentary film; national expositions of 51 countries including texts from the PQ catalogue; the complete live program; and the international collaborative student project, Scenofest. 095-104_Notebook_4k.indd 101 9.7.2008 17:11:56