contents - Theatre.cz
Transkript
contents - Theatre.cz
contents Kamila Černá EDITORIAL..................................................................................................... 2 Jana Patočková Václav Havel Leaving and Returning............................................... 3 The Last Days of Prague Chamber Theatre at Comedy Theatre......9 Zuzana AugustováThe Last Days of Mankind: A Decadent Show and the Aesthetics of Embarrassment.........................................11 Jana Soprová Garbage, the City, and Death............................................................ 13 Kamila Černá 15 Years of Theatre in Dlouhá Street........................................... 15 Jana Patočková the break of noon................................................................................. 21 Luboš Mareček – Jitka Nováková The Phenomenon of Reduta Theatre in Brno.............................. 23 Richard Erml Europeana – Laughter from Hell.................................................... 29 Jan Kerbr Ostrava – an Oasis of Theatre That Refuses to Pander...........31 Jan Jiřík Theatre with a Passion for New Plays.......................................... 37 Lenka Šaldová Les enfants terribles........................................................................... 43 KALEIDOSCOPE........................................................................................... 47 NOTEBOOK................................................................................................... 55 CZECH THEATRE 28 Issued by Arts and Theatre Institute Celetná 17, 110 00 Prague, Czech Republic Editor-in-chief / Kamila Černá Editors / Zbyněk Černík, Petra Ježková, Jan Jiřík Translations / Robin Cassling, Julek Neumann Cover and layout / Egon L. Tobiáš Printed by / Tiskárna TOBOLA e-mail: [email protected] © 2012 Institut umění – Divadelní ústav ISSN 0862-9390 ×Peter Handke: The Hour We Knew Nothing Of Each Other / Prague Chamber Theatre – Comedy Theatre, 2012 / Direction and set design Dušan D. Pařízek / Costumes Kamila Polívková > Photo Jan Dvořák 2/ editorial editorial T he year 2011 will be remembered in the history of Czech theatre above all as the year it lost its best and internationally most renowned playwright, Václav Havel. In 2009, following a pause in which he devoted himself to politics, Havel made a successful return to the Czech and the world stage with his play Leaving, and in 2011 he directed its film version. The premiere screening of Leaving in March sparked much discussion, as it was enthusiastically embraced by some and angrily scorned by others, mostly owing to the extreme grotesqueness of and almost theatrical stylisation of this art film. Like in the play, in the film the author included references to his own experiences in politics and alluded to the dark side of the modern-day political machine. Leaving is so far the only example of a world-class politician using the stage to grapple with his or her departure from high politics, but in Havel’s case it was unfortunately also his bid farewell as an artist. In the article Václav Havel Leaving and Returning, Jana Patočková writes about Havel’s artistic revisiting of meaningful themes, his drama, and his fate. Havel’s departure exacerbated the sense of insecurity that has come to pervade Czech theatre in recent years. Here I’m not just talking about financial insecurity – Czech theatre lacks more than money, it lacks a developed system of public funding for theatres. Intellectual and artistic uncertainty is growing deeper, playwrights search in vain for serious themes, and artists often have no clear idea of how, what, and even why to perform. There are of course also exceptions, theatres that are able to maintain high standards and a sharply defined artistic profile and programme. In recent decades, Prague Chamber Theatre, working from the premises of Comedy Theatre, is one such company. Its strong, solid dramaturgy, outstanding ensemble of distinctive performers, and its trademark directorial style managed to garner the company favour among audiences and critics, but did not secure it enough money to survive. In July 2012 this long under-funded company will unfortunately disband. Its final season and two recent on-stage successes are the subject of the article The Last Days of Prague Chamber Theatre at Comedy Theatre. Theatre in Dlouhá Street represents a creative ‘sure thing’ in the Czech scene in terms of the quality of its repertoire and its professionalism, and proof of this is the fact that in 2011 three of its productions were ranked among the most critically acclaimed productions of the year and its production of Paul Claudel’s The Break of Noon, directed by Hana Burešová, won the Alfréd Radok Award and came in first in the Theatre News poll as ‘production of the year 2011’. Kamila Černá assesses this company in 15 Years of the Theatre in Dlouhá Street, and Jana Patočková reviews the production of The Break of Noon. Brno’s Reduta Theatre has in recent years emerged as one of the most progressive Czech stages. Credit for this is due to Jan Mikulášek’s successful productions, but above all to the company’s efforts to become the centre of unorthodox stage work in Brno. In The Phenomenon of Reduta Theatre in Brno Jitka Nováková writes about history and reconstruction of the building and Luboš Mareček profiles the company. Richard Erml writes about Mikulášek’s production Europeana, which attempts to penetrate the soul of Europe and its 20th-century history. Ostrava – an Oasis of Theatre That Refuses to Pander by Jan Kerbr acquaints readers with the special features of Ostrava’s theatre scene. Jan Jiřík writes about Flying Theatre and its work connected with contemporary Czech and world drama in Theatre with a Passion for New Plays. Lenka Šaldová reviews the major event of the most recent opera season: the site-specific production of Les enfants terribles by the opera company at the National Theatre in Prague on the premises of Bohnice psychiatric hospital. Kaleidoscope contains reviews of several recent noteworthy Czech productions. The Notebook section observes two anniversaries – twenty years of the Kylián videotheque in Prague and the centenary of the founding of the oldest Czech theatre periodical Puppeteer. Even though this volume of Czech Theatre begins with a leaving and a farewell to a playwright who was one of the most important figures in the Czech arts and Czech history and with a look at a theatre that did much to contribute to all the best that has emerged in Prague’s theatre scene over the past ten years, in these times of uncertainty this issue has first of all tried to draw attention to the ‘sure things’ in Czech theatre with a selection of major events and productions that have recently appeared on the Czech stage and helped to preserve the good name of Czech theatre. Kamila Černá Václav Havel Leaving and Returning Jana Patočková Václav Havel > Photo Viktor Kronbauer ÙVáclav Havel, The Memorandum / Theatre on the Ballustrade, Prague 1965 / Directed by Jan Grossman / Set design Boris Soukup Costumes Mirka Kovářová > Photo Jaroslav Krejčí ÚVáclav Havel, Temptation / Theatre on the Ballustrade, Prague 1991 / Directed by Jan Grossman / Set design Ivo Žídek / Costumes Irena Greifová > Photo Viktor Kronbauer Václav Havel Leaving and Returning T he crowds spontaneously accompanying Václav Havel on his last journey were a telling testimony and reminder about how many of us – at that moment maybe the majority of the Czech public – honoured him and saw him as a true statesman. As somebody understanding the position of the country’s President as a public interest oriented task, transcending both domestic threshold and the constraints of electoral periods rather than an opportunity to mere selfpromotion or to assert personal interests. Now, as the time of critical reflexion of the body of his work, both political and artistic, begins, it is good to start by thinking first of his last play – Leaving (Odcházení) with which he returned to stage after a long absence. Its first production at the Archa Theatre in Prague (2008) was directed by David Radok and was very successful; soon afterwards, other Czech productions demonstrated that there were also other possible interpretations of the text. When the author himself later directed a film version of his play, there were two types of reactions. With some honourable exceptions, film critics assessed the movie with reserve or outright rejection. After the author died, there were efforts to remedy the lack of critical acclaim by numerous nominations for the Czech “Film Academy” Award – The Golden Lion. (In the end, the film was awarded two prizes, one for the author of the play and scriptwriter in one person, the other one for editing.) Public reception, although the audiences were not as big as expected, was much more favourable. Maybe the audience understood better the fact that in his film version of Leaving Havel kept for us his own peculiar perspective, both irreverent and serious, of the sorry state of being a ruler in this world. At the close of his “active” life, he was trying, through his film, to come to terms with the reverse, excruciating features of his own /5 experience and with the paltriness of today’s world of politics in which he had spent so many years and to which he had sacrificed so much. He was able to do this with humour and to include his favourite peculiar little jokes; yet what is hidden underneath these jokes is not much fun – not even in this drastically funny movie. What else could he finally offer, he who had to watch the progressing decline of (not only Czech) political stage that he ÙVáclav Havel, The Garden Party / Theatre on the Ballustrade, Prague 1963 Directed by Otomar Krejča / Set design Josef Svoboda Costumes Jan Kropáček > Photo Jaroslav Krejčí ÚVáclav Havel and Pavel Landovský as actors in production of Havel’s Audience / LP cover helped to restore and that he took – despite all the theatricality he was lending to his political mission – seriously to the very end, but a sad comedy, or even a sad farce? Characteristically for Havel, Leaving is a play – and a movie – about failure: about the very last failure consisting in the so-called rational, pragmatic solution to the main hero’s situation. The parody of “rational” argumentation means the reason’s suicide. It is the end much worse than that of Shakespeare’s King Lear, the tragedy Havel chose as one of the “contexts” or mirrors in his own play: for Lear, as we know, dies when in his madness he manages to see through his own folly and, indeed, regains his mind. In the similar way that references to Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard in Havel’s play show, in a parody mirror, the disintegration of the onetime “non lucrative” human values, so King Lear, too, becomes the background that reflects wretchedness of pragmatic reason of our times in a grotesque shape. The reaction both to Havel’s last work for theatre and to his first film experiment that fulfilled his life-long wish to shoot a movie was, as it were, in harmony with his poetics of absurd and grotesque. At the beginning of that poetics was a theme that was not new to Czechs – from mid 1950s on it was indeed one high on the agenda of (not only) Czech dramaturgy: life opportunism of “small Czech people” whose main principle is 6/ Václav Havel Leaving and Returning ÙVáclav Havel, Largo Desolato / Theatre on the Ballustrade, Prague 1990 Directed by Jan Grossman / Set design Ivo Žídek / Costumes Irena Greifová > Photo Josef Ptáček ÙVáclav Havel, Temptation / Theatre on the Ballustrade, Prague 1991 Directed by Jan Grossman / Set design Ivo Žídek / Costumes Irena Greifová > Photo Jaroslav Krejčí to survive at any price. Ever since it was first expressed in the period before the Second – and even First – World War in works by Jaroslav Hašek or Karel Čapek, it remains the “submersible theme” of Czech literature and drama. Its metamorphoses contain a large chunk of history, especially the shifts in a small nation’s self-reflexion, a nation that kept learning for a long time how to survive and how to get cosy in its pettiness. In the drama of late 1950s, this theme appeared in different shapes. Surprisingly, it first entered the most official of the domestic stages – the Drama Department of the National Theatre – and that meant the “large” format (plays by František Hrubín and Josef Topol, one play by Milan Kundera). And almost in parallel, in a completely different form related to the direction of the French Avant-Garde at the turn of 1940s/1950s (Ionesco, Beckett), the same theme also entered the newly created small Theatre on the Ballustrade (Divadlo Na zábradlí) with Ivan Vyskočil and soon afterwards also with Václav Havel. Havel started at the Theatre on the Ballustrade as a stage hand and lighting operator. A little bit later he entered its stage for the first time as a co-author, with Ivan Vyskočil, of Václav Havel Leaving and Returning the production of Hitchhiking (Autostop, 1961). It was a loose succession of several small-scale sketches linked by the theme of hitchhiking, a cherished social phenomenon of the time that was also a metaphor for freedom. At the same time, the sketches already demonstrated the terminal illness of the language fossilized in clichés. The automation of the language reflected the decay of human inner feeling, mechanization of a person devoured by absurdity. Theatre on the Ballustrade became the first home of the Czech version of the theatre of the absurd and went on to develop it throughout 1960s. Thanks to its leading personalities, its director Jan Grossman and its “in-house playwright” Havel it won a reputation that transcended Czechoslovakia’s borders. At the same time, Havel had to thank the theatre for being and remaining for a long time his first stage that both helped forming his work and critically tested it. Ironically, it remained his theatre anchor even at the time when his plays were banned from production both there and in all other theatres in Czechoslovakia – it was as though he continued to write his texts /7 characterized his main discovery and contribution to the socalled theatre of the absurd, and not only to the Czech one: a central image of the world as a bureaucratic machinery and of a small man as a bureaucrat whose main ambition is to be a cog in an anonymous bureaucratic system. At the beginning, Havel’s theatre was that of total distance. The perspective on the system and its parts, on characters that through ØVáclav Havel, Leaving / Movie adaptation, 2011 / Directed by Václav Havel > Photo Bontonfilm ÚVáclav Havel, Leaving / Archa Theatre, Prague 2008 / Directed by David Radok / Set design Jaromír Vlček and David Radok / Costumes Zuzana Ježková > Photo Viktor Kronbauer to size both for the space and for the audiences of this theatre. Although his plays could not be produced, he kept creating in his dramatic texts his own imaginary stage, following the peripeties, the ruptures and the continuity of the development of both Czech society and his own fate. Havel’s first plays – that some consider to be the substance of his contribution to the theatre in general – were “about bureaucrats, mainly”. That’s how the author through the mouth of his “alter ego”, the writer Vaněk in Audience, aptly their totally spineless conformity maintain and propagate the system of opaque mesh of connections only to gradually dissolve in them; this perspective is seen through the eyes of an uninvolved observer, it is the “view from the outside”. And the characters in an automated world become automatons themselves. – The hero of The Garden Party (Zahradní slavnost) who enters the play is already a machine, and a computing machine at that; at the end of the play he gets completely lost and leaves wanting to try to find himself. He was “faceless” from the very beginning, only one 8/ Václav Havel Leaving and Returning of the pieces in a game of chess. Nevertheless, his facelessness serves to a consistent demonstration of the absurd relationships both within a family, the smallest social unit, and in the wider world represented by the Office. The process of bureaucratization of the modern world that, as became evident, was by a long shot not limited to our totalitarian society and did not end with it, got even fuller expression in The Memorandum (Vyrozumění). – About that time, Havel’s theatre world started to change gradually. It still remained permanently distant, but opened ever so slightly to the examination of the attitudes of an individual “hero” who – starting with The Increased Difficulty of Concentration (Ztížená možnost soustředění) – step by step takes off the mask of a “type” and takes on individual, partially autobiographical, features. In the character of Vaněk in The Audience (Audience), the main protagonist is not only given Havel’s own name (Vaněk is both a common Czech surname and a diminutive old Czech variant of the first name Václav), he also enters (or rather is pulled into) the confrontation with the “system”; this journey from an “observer” to confrontation becomes a running theme of the large part of the plays by Havel that followed. The hero keeps his specificity by his absence of heroism, his struggle is the fight for the survival of his own image in which one can alternately be defeated or stand the test. A small man can prove to be a great man because he defends, more or less alone and maybe in vain, his image of free human existence against an anonymous apparatus. He defends it without making much noise, by standing his ground, like Vaněk whose eloquent silence is a commentary on the lies around him. But why are Havel’s play written while he was a dissident, at least the most interesting ones, Largo Desolato and Temptation (Pokoušení), the plays about failure? ÚVáclav Havel, Leaving / Archa Theatre, Prague 2008 / Directed by David Radok / Set design Jaromír Vlček and David Radok / Costumes Zuzana Ježková > Photo Viktor Kronbauer Their central character sometimes, as is the case with Foustka (= the little Faust), succumbs to the pride of reason, betrays himself, everybody and everything; and the change is probably irreversible. At other times, as with Leopold Kopřiva, he is a dissident, somehow against his will, and we last see him at the moment just after he’d been close to breaking down but stood the test. All of Havel’s central male characters also share a weakness for women, who are an element that is ubiquitous, distracting, both fortifying and weakening. Some people had repeatedly written that Havel is a “one play author”, that all of his characters are similar to each other, that his theatre is “all the time the same”: they forget that this feature of his that might appear as a weakness is in fact his strong point. It is clear nowadays that his is a continuous body of work, a peculiar theatre world that kept developing with the author. If – besides the plays “about the bureaucrats” that are generally highly regarded – we still are remembering the author’s plays about failing people, the plays with existentialist themes, it is because their potential to appeal did not disappear with the former regime. In this way, one can see Leaving as the logical conclusion of Havel’s theatre. (Sadly, he could not write his new play, the Sanatorium, as he had promised.) Havel’s “plays about human failure” can be seen as exorcism of his own anxieties or “demons”, as a reflexion on temptation nobody is spared, and we can be thankful to the author for being also able critically to reflect his own experience of sharing the power. Leaving, a play about saying goodbye, about the final failure and deep disappointment is obviously a piece of work best understood by people of a certain age but first of all of certain experience. This is the experience that leads to insight into the hard, universal and last human condition, into a pressing necessity of the final leaving; but it is also the general experience of the misery in today’s political world. And also of the need for cleansing laughter that helps to overcome it over and over again. The Last Days of Prague Chamber Theatre at Comedy Theatre /9 The Last Days of Prague Chamber Theatre at Comedy Theatre Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness / Prague Chamber Theatre – Comedy Theatre, 2011 / Direction and set design David Jařab Costumes Sylva Zimula Hanáková > Photo Viktor Kronbauer 10/ Prague Chamber Theatre (Pražské komorní divadlo), one of the most progressive dramatic ensembles in the city which since 2002 has operated on the premises of Comedy Theatre (Divadlo Komedie) under the direction of Dušan Pařízek, is coming to an end. Its outstanding dramaturgy, numerous critics’ awards (in the past decade it won the Alfréd Radok Award for Theatre of the Year three times, something no other Czech stage has done), and regular guest engagements abroad were not enough to secure it the financial resources necessary to fulfil the artistic programme that Pařízek joined Comedy Theatre with. F rom its first seasons Prague Chamber Theatre managed to turn Comedy Theatre into one of Prague’s artistically most exciting stages. Its repertoire focused mostly on 20th-century Czech, Austrian, and German drama (e.g. plays by Thomas Bernhard, Werner Schwab, George Tabori, Elfriede Jelinek) and on ‘the search for central European identity’. The company staged the Czech or world premieres of many texts and remarkable dramatisations. Its strong, explicit dramaturgy, outstanding ensemble of distinctive performers, and its unique directorial style secured the theatre the favour of audiences and critics, but not the money for its operations. The company’s work, which engaged the stars of Czech theatre (and film), was persistently underfunded and subsidies from Prague city hall were very low compared to what the city spends on other similarly sized (and often artistically dubious) stages. City hall didn’t have the courage to give more substantial support to this artistically unique theatre and unfortunately no money could be found for Comedy Theatre even within the still unsettled system of financing Prague’s theatres. In March 2010 Dušan Pařízek announced that Prague Chamber Theatre would be finishing at Comedy Theatre as of 31 July 2012, and rejected compromises proposed by city hall: ‘Grants are not suitable for our project. When bureaucrats say “play this less”, it means do it worse. And that’s something we cannot accept.’ Eventually city hall opened a competition for a new company to move into Comedy Theatre (once it realised that Pařízek’s decision was definitive), but the conditions were formulated in vague terms, with no concept and most notably without setting the amount of the subsidy for the new company. The finalists included several directors from the young generation who have already established a name for themselves on the Czech (and some even on the European) stage (Jiří Havelka, Jiří Adámek, Štěpán Pácl, Daniel Špinar, Flying Theatre / Divadlo Letí). The competition was won by the least interesting of all the applicants, an ensemble called Company.cz led by director Eva Bergerová, which till now had been operating out of one of the stages in Prague’s outskirts, Strašnice Theatre (Strašnické divadlo), and whose work to date can be described as decent, but in no way artistically exceptional. The selection committee played it safe and chose a company that has experience with running a theatre and enough productions in its repertoire to fill Comedy Theatre. Whether it will be able to sustain Comedy Theatre’s position as an artistically outstanding Prague theatre centre is a big question. In the meantime, under the direction of Dušan Pařízek and David Jařab Prague Chamber Theatre entered its final season, during which it won the Alfréd Radok Award for Theatre of the Year 2011, staged world and Czech premieres of five new productions, and embarked on a number of farewell tours abroad. There were line ups to get into the final shows and closing performances of its famous productions at the end of the season. Reviews of two of them, which rank among the best work of the theatre’s final period, are presented in these pages. ÙKarl Kraus, The Last Days of Mankind / Prague Chambre Theatre – Comedy Theatre, 2011 / Directed by Katharina Schmitt, Thomas Zielinski, Alexander Riemenschneider / Set design Andrej Ďurik Costumes Zuzana Přidalová > Photo Kamila Polívková The Last Days of Prague Chamber Theatre at Comedy Theatre /11 The Last Days of Mankind: A Decadent Show . and the Aesthetics . of Embarrassment Zuzana Augustová K arl Kraus’s The Last Days of Mankind is the fifth premiere in Comedy Theatre’s (Divadlo Komedie) Austrian season. The company bravely reached for a megalomaniacal project by this figure from fin-deVienna, who was a journalist, writer, and a distinctively anti-theatre artist. Kraus began writing his massive, five-hundred page anti-war drama in 1915 (it was published in 1920–1921), but allegedly it was never meant to be performed in the theatre, solely, as the foreword states, on Mars. Three works of the apocalypse German director, playwright, and graduate of the Theatre Faculty of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague, Katharina Schmitt worked with the actors in the first part. She limited the number of characters and focused on the propaganda, journalism, and charitable activities away from the front lines. The performances are shaped by a kind of uniform gestural language resembling military exercises, a collective, encoded ÙKarl Kraus, The Last Days of Mankind / Prague Chambre Theatre – Comedy Theatre, 2011 / Directed by Katharina Schmitt, Thomas Zielinski, Alexander Riemenschneider / Set design Andrej Ďurik / Costumes Zuzana Přidalová > Photo Kamila Polívková The production team cut the text to around one-tenth of its original length. The adaptation focuses almost exclusively on the work’s criticism of the media: the media’s portrait of the war, and how its reality as viewed through the media and propaganda statements is perceived by the soldiers on the front lines and by the people back at home. The production is divided into three parts, each of which is directed by someone else. The stage is designed very simply and effectively. It allows the stage and audience to be repositioned without actually changing itself: it comprises a long wooden platform (and no other furnishings) that bends in two places, one rising perpendicularly along the backdrop of the stage, and the other extending at an angle over the auditorium and up to the edge of the balcony. language of movement, and Meyerchold’s biomechanics, combined with suggestions of Nazi salutes. But no deeper meaning is apparent in these stylised movements. The only exception is the figure of some kind of state official, who in the opening is seen admiringly observing his shadow on the wooden wall as he practises an absurd war speech about the need for tourism, as he raises the theme of narcissism and totalitarianism: at home away from the front, where there is no danger, everyone is a potential little dictator. At the same time everyone wants to make money off the war: through tourism, charity, or media images. The production team reduced the crowds of journalists to just one figure, reporter Schalek (Ivana Uhlířová), who true to the original story forces the actress (Gabriela Míčová), returning from imprisonment in Russia, to 12/ The Last Days of Prague Chamber Theatre at Comedy Theatre ×Karl Kraus, The Last Days of Mankind / Prague Chambre Theatre – Comedy Theatre, 2011 Directed by Katharina Schmitt, Thomas Zielinski, Alexander Riemenschneider Set design Andrej Ďurik Costumes Zuzana Přidalová > Photo Kamila Polívková adjust the ‘truth’ to satisfy the hunger of readers for sensational journalism. The first part overall, however, comes across as rather muted and bland, and even the choreographic numbers fail to add any liveliness. Czech-German director Thomas Zielinski took on the second part and conceived it as a decadent cabaret show. A highspirited drunken party in spectacular evening wear is seated in the front rows of the balcony. The characters begin performing their individual acts, songs, and duets on the platform pointing towards the audience, who are seated on stage. The roles of the two parts of the theatre space have thus been reversed. Is this meant to create the impression that we spectators are participants in and the agents of war? A sense of alienation is continuously and cumulatively induced also in other ways, such as Vladimír Franz’s music, which no doubt deliberately resembles the songs of Brecht’s collaborator Kurt Weill (referencing is moreover part of the essence of Kraus’s poetics). Events seem to have been shifted into the era of the Second World War, and, judging by the style of rendition of some of the songs, into the milieu of Hollywood’s elite. The musical style of the final song, sung in English, evokes the image of America as remoulded in emigration by Brecht in his works. Once again the war as a media image and this time also as stylised in art. The journalist in her gauzy evening gown repeatedly asks the bomber pilot, ‘So how does it feel when you do that?’, while she sensually presses up against him. So war can be sexy too, though post-traumatic (pilot) feelings aren’t like that in reality. The third part, which German director Alexander Riemenschneider builds out of the aesthetics of embarrassment, is in theatrical terms the most successful of the three. This time the spectators are sitting in the balcony and the actors on the stage below and on the platform put on a school assembly, during which the curtain is opened and closed again and again by hand, so that sometimes they are reciting their little sentimental or euphoric ‘poems’ from behind it, which makes things all the more amusing. Most of the time, however, the actors stand perfectly in line, bow, or wait persistently for applause, which then comes at the wrong time, as it takes the spectators a moment to realise what’s expected of them. The recitations are punctuated by cynical ‘grown-up’ comments about executions of fourteen-year-olds, the presentation of a ‘nifty’ trench, an advertisement for a pillow intended for heroes and kneaded dumplings. Meanwhile, from time to time — and almost at risk to the actors — the War Reporter (Ivana Uhlířová)and Nörgler (Jiří Černý) pop out from under the edge of the balcony face to face with the spectators and suggestively and pointlessly ask: ‘How do you feel?’ This part is evidently intended to reflect the seemingly ‘innocuous’ but thus all the more absurd ‘peacemaking’ propaganda from the communist era. How to sum up the evening as a whole? It presented a hypedup, rhetorical, artistic yet deliberately primitive, and always propagandist rehashing of war and that is exactly what Kraus intended. It took us to the various contexts in which war is born. It is only then fought on the battlefield. Karl Kraus: The Last Days of Mankind. Directed by Katharina Schmitt, Thomas Zielinski, Alexander Riemenschneider, translation Hanuš Karlach, adaptation Viktorie Knotková, dramaturgy Viktorie Knotková and Vojtěch Bárta, set design Andrej Ďurik, costumes Zuzana Přidalová, music Vladimír Franz. Prague Chamber Theatre – Comedy Theatre, Prague, premiere 22 / 4 / 2011. The Last Days of Prague Chamber Theatre at Comedy Theatre Garbage, the City, . and Death C omedy Theatre (Divadlo Komedie), now in its final season, staged Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s play Garbage, the City, and Death (Der Müll, die Stadt und der Tod), in a Czech translation by Zuzana Augustová, adapted and directed by Dušan Pařízek. Even in this latest production Comedy Theatre has stuck to the course of exploring its ‘special’ themes. Once again we are presented with a vision of the city as a labyrinth, where the rawness and brutality of reality meld with the equally harsh inner world of the individual characters. Death is always present, as are overt and covert racism, homophobia, and, at the other end, the neuroses of people who are trying to come to terms with the reality that surrounds them. Fassbinder’s controversial play made it onto the screen as well as the stage when it was written in the 1970s, with a film /13 Jana Soprová of scenes and even just monologues Pařízek puts together a picture of a world in which there truly is nothing to cheer about, nothing but total alienation and the destruction of the human soul, the splendour and misery of a society in which success, but not happiness, is determined by economic prosperity. The groping search for personal identity and the longing to find a kindred soul founder on a fatal inability to experience emotion. Pařízek heightened the forcefulness of the play through its set design, in which the spectators sit at the same tables as the characters in a circular cabaret seating arrangement. At first all we see are flickering candles on a darkened stage, a vision of a kind of global cemetery. When the lights go up on the stage we see Romi (Gabriela Míčová) suspended on aerial silks in the centre of the space. She assails the audience with ÙRainer Werner Fassbinder, Garbage, the City, and Death / Prague Chambre Theatre – Comedy Theatre, 2011 Direction and set design Dušan David Pařízek / Costumes Kamila Polívková > Photo Kamila Polívková version titled Shadow of Angels in which the author himself starred and introduced his cult actress Hanna Schygulla. The story, which is closely tied up with the time and place in which it originated and the historically grounded tensions in the relationship between Germans and Jews, has in Dušan Pařízek’s adaptation been brought closer to present-day Czech society it literally cuts to the quick thanks to the addition of some new monologues. In the character of Romi the prostitute, an object of lust to her customers, but also a kind of confidant, and in the other characters, whether it is the successful Jew, aware of his ambivalent position, the emotionally unstable pimp, or the homophobic nationalist who makes his living as a cabaret transvestite, Pařízek seeks to illustrate the wretchedness involved in trying to survive, wherein everyone, even if through gritted teeth, sells himself or herself every day. Out of a mosaic the bitter words of a prostitute who is nothing more than an object of pleasure for others to use. She is a piece of material, an inanimate thing slowly gravitating towards the instrument of its liberation — death. In the next episode we meet Müller (Martin Pechlát), a proud nationalist who takes the audience off guard with a populist tirade about the purity of race that with painful accuracy takes aim at the subconscious of the Czech public. However ironic the nationalistic call he issues to the Czechs sounds, it still sends a chill down your spine. Another character is the Wealthy Jew (Martin Finger), a cold, rational merchant who uses his unusual position (political correctness allows him to do business, but does not spare him from being envied and hated by the others). Oskar (Jiří Černý), his young friend and minion, possesses a statuesque beauty that has the power to charm but also aloof coldness that wounds. On the other side 14/ The Last Days of Prague Chamber Theatre at Comedy Theatre ÙRainer Werner Fassbinder, Garbage, the City, and Death / Prague Chambre Theatre – Comedy Theatre, 2011 / Direction and set design Dušan David Pařízek / Costumes Kamila Polívková > Photo Kamila Polívková of the barrier is the emotionally unstable pimp Franz (Stanislav Majer), who vents his sense of inferiority on Romi with manic cruelty. Martin Pechlát as Müller, shapes his character out of the contrast between his shiny transvestite performances (with a delightful Shirley Bassey-style execution of the song ‘I Am What I Am’) and the intolerant, violent backstage behaviour to which he subjects his disabled wife (Dana Poláková) and his step-daughter Romi. It is natural that the only being that still has some feelings left is the one that carries the story of death to its climax while suspended from the ceiling on white aerial silks, creating the impression that she is being carried off by angels. As Romi, Gabriela Míčová gave a bold and psychologically powerful performance, but beyond that demonstrated her exceptional physical fitness, courage, and a surprising acrobatic ability. This forceful production, which paints a chillingly depressing vision of the present day, will shock many theatregoers with its theme and language, even to the point of endurance, but it really is a must see. The spectator will again appreciate the cohesion of the company that has taken shape under Pařízek’s tenure. Every acting performance is a perfect and even chameleonic transformation and fits perfectly with the overall concept of the production so that as a whole it functions like a well-oiled machine. Rainer Werner Fassbinder: Garbage, the City, and Death. Adaptation, direction and set design Dušan D. Pařízek, translation Zuzana Augustová, costumes Kamila Polívková. Prague Chamber Theatre – Comedy Theatre, Prague, Czech premiere 15 / 12 / 2012. The Last Days of Prague Chamber Theatre at Comedy Theatre 15 Years of Theatre in Dlouhá Street Kamila Černá Paul Claudel, The Break of Noon Theatre in Dlouhá Street, Prague 2011 / Directed by Hana Burešová Set design Martin Černý / Costumes Kateřina Štefková > Photo Martin Špelda 16/ 15 Years of Theatre in Dlouhá Street Theatre in Dlouhá Street (Divadlo v Dlouhé) is one of the most popular and most critically praised theatres in Prague and in late 2011 it marked its fifteenth anniversary. It has something to celebrate even without this anniversary – The Break of Noon, directed at Dlouhá by Hana Burešová, won the Alfréd Radok Award for best production of 2011, and polls of critics identified Theatre in Dlouhá Street as one of the three most successful Czech theatres and ranked three of its productions among the top ten productions of that year. ÙIrena Dousková, Onegin Was a Russky / Theatre in Dlouhá Street, Prague 2008 / Directed by Jan Borna / Set design Jaroslav Milfajt > Photo Martin Špelda T heatre in Dlouhá Street was founded in 1996, when two acting ensembles joined forces: one came with director Hana Burešová and dramaturg Štěpán Otčenášek from Labyrint Theatre (Divadlo Labyrint), the other with director Jan Borna from Dejvice Theatre (Dejvické divadlo). The newly established company began performing on the premises of a former youth and children’s theatre, and it received a commission from Prague city hall that at least a part of its repertoire be aimed at young people. And that’s what has happened – with surprising results: the productions that Theatre in Dlouhá Street staged for children and youths were hits also with adult audiences (for example, How I Got Lost / Jak jsem se ztratil, directed by Borna, or adaptations of Terry Pratchett’s Wyrd Sisters and Maskerade, directed by Hana Burešová). Throughout the theatre’s existence Hana Burešová and Jan Borna have been its key artistic figures. They both started out working as directors in the second half of the 1980s, and they are often mentioned in the same breath as members of the generation who in the 1990s made a strong mark on the Czech stage and shared a resistance to casual naturalism and bland ‘TV-style’ acting, which these directors challenged by asserting a sharply defined concept, playfulness, and stylised acting. Borna’s and Burešová’s directing styles have all this, but they differ from the most distinctive directors of ‘the 1990s generation’ (Lébl, Pitínský, Morávek) in how they approach the dramatic material they work with. Instead of a free, postmodernist treatment of the text, they typically respect the original and create faithful interpretations. Both of these two core directors at Theatre in Dlouhá Street tap into the musical, singing, and physical talents of the actors in their work and employ artistic and musical metaphors. Their productions often go beyond straight drama and move towards genres like alternative, musical, puppet, or cabaret theatre. There are two perceptible directions to Hana Burešová’s work. Besides comedy, in which she likes to use elements of commedia dell´arte, allusions to theatre’s carnival tradition, and clever situation humour, she also makes sophisticated, dramaturgically 15 Years of Theatre in Dlouhá Street innovative works a regular focus. In 2007 Burešová staged Seneca’s Phaedra for the first time in the Czech Republic, and one year later Calderón’s The Surgeon of His Honour (El médico de su honra). These productions were reviewed in previous volumes of Czech Theatre. Her latest work, Paul Claudel’s The Break of Noon, is the subject of a separate review in this volume by Jana Patočková. What all these productions have in common is a directorial interpretation that respects the author but boldly draws out the text’s potential, as well as excellent performances from actors given consistent guidance from the director. Helena Dvořáková, the female lead in The Break of Noon, ‘production of the year’ in 2011, won all three of the country’s top acting awards for her performance as Ysé (Alfréd Radok Award, Thalia Award, Theatre News Award), and the production’s set designer Martin Černý won the Alfréd Radok Award in the stage design category. Jan Borna has mainly become known for his ‘family’ productions that feature a strong musical component. His ‘Christmas musical’ How I Got Lost or a Little Christmas Tale (Jak jsem se ztratil aneb Malá vánoční povídka, 2000) told the story of a five-year-old boy who gets lost and wanders through Prague one Christmas Eve in the mid-1960s. Here Borna used a children’s story as a backdrop, against which he brilliantly captured the atmosphere of that time, full of hope, joy, and music, subsequently cut short by the Soviet invasion. Borna took a similar approach in a later production, Onegin Was a Russky (Oněgin byl Rusák, 2008), where he again uses /17 ÙJess Borgeson – Adam Long – Daniel Singer, The Collected Works of William Shakespeare (abridged) / Theatre in Dlouhá Street, Prague 2008 Directed by Jan Borna / Set design Jaroslav Milfajt > Photo Martin Špelda ÚArnošt Goldflam, From Hitler’s Kitchen Theatre in Dlouhá Street, Prague 2009 / Directed by Jan Borna Set design Jaroslav Milfajt > Photo Martin Špelda 18/ 15 Years of Theatre in Dlouhá Street pop songs and details from the 1980s to evoke the years of harsh ‘normalisation’, which turned people into cowards and buckpassers. This time he looks back on those years through the eyes of several secondary school students, whose innate resistance to the official world of adults is mixed with a resistance to the obtuseness and odiousness of the political regime. Another big success was the production of The Collected Works of William Shakespeare (abridged) by Jess Borgeson, Adam Long and Daniel Singer (2008). In Borna’s production, more ÙArnošt Goldflam, From Hitler’s Kitchen Theatre in Dlouhá Street, Prague 2009 / Directed by Jan Borna Set design Jaroslav Milfajt > Photo Martin Špelda ÚLadislav Stroupežnický, Our Swaggerers / Theatre in Dlouhá Street, Prague 2011 / Directed by Jan Borna / Set design Jaroslav Milfajt > Photo Martin Špelda important than the amusing ‘fly-by’ given to Shakespeare’s works was his portrait of the base mechanism of theatre entertainment pursued by three actors, who take their Shakespearian show to every possible stop on the road. Especially praiseworthy is the precisely escalated verbal and situation humour, the fond detachment of the actors (Jan Vondráček, Miroslav Táborský and Martin Matějka) and how convincingly and fervently they maintain their race with time (they genuinely have to manage to perform 37 Shakespearean plays in two hours). Also remarkable is the directness with which the protagonists turn to the audience and incorporate them without coerciveness into the play. Among Borna’s audience hits in the past five years is his production of From Hitler’s Kitchen (U Hitlerů v kuchyni, 2009), a farce by current Czech playwright and theatre artist Arnošt Goldflam. The text (and its stage rendition) uses humour in places where it doesn’t usually pay off to do so: it combines the trivial and the tragic, sentimentality and dark humour, real historical facts and fiction. We follow the Rise and Fall of the Third Reich and its Führer literally from the kitchen table. Characters representing what were once Europe’s movers and shakers are here transported into the small-town world of comfortable certitudes, where a piece of cake with one’s afternoon coffee is an assuring sign that everything is as it should be – regardless of the fact that millions of people out there are dying. Nazi celebrities chat in a comically exaggerated, domestically bourgeois style about baking, knitting and family life. The director moreover accentuates the sham small-town idyll depicted in Goldflam’s text by adding operetta melodies and lets the author himself (who had already worked with Borna as an actor on several previous productions) offer humorous commentary on the action from the stage apron several times in between scenes. Goldflam’s words to the audience point out the dangerous ease with which it is possible to surrender to the selfsatisfied feeling of domestic warmth and bliss and how easily 15 Years of Theatre in Dlouhá Street an alluring sentiment can become the ‘main stream’, whether in music, or a worldview. With their risky ‘boundary pushing’ the creators of the production put together great political theatre that plays amusingly with low genres and combines dark laughs with harsh comedy. From Hitler’s Kitchen is, however, also a warning – against the lunacy of Fascism, certainly, but also perhaps even more so against the inclination to hole up in the warmth of one’s own kitchen, where we are being driven not just by the growing number of celebrity cooks, but above all by our own resignation and complacency. Resignation and indifference are prominent themes in /19 comes about, and on more serious issues they powerlessly throw up their hands in a wordless gesture that says ‘what can you do?’. Borna’s production is the portrait of an age in which big, substantial issues are somehow getting lost and almost no one misses them. The village swaggerers muddle on merrily through their small-minded world. It is hard to find a single positive hero in the whorl of colourful village types. An entire Gogolian world wanders down the slanted stage that serves as the set, and it is apparent that even the successful resolution to the conflict will in no way alter the life of the village, and the local councillors will go on ruffling each other’s feathers and ÙDennis Kelly, Love and Money / Theatre in Dlouhá Street, Prague 2011 / Directed by Jan Mikulášek / Set design Marek Cpin > Photo Martin Špelda another of Borna’s productions, Our Swaggerers (Naši furianti) by Ladislav Stroupežnický (2011), a classic 19th-century Czech drama. The play’s simple plot follows two villagers (one honourable and one dishonourable) as they compete for the job of village watchman, embroiling the entire village and even the local councillors in the process. The Czech village portrayed in Borna’s production reflects the moral apathy and ignorance of the present day and alludes to the oftentimes grotesque features of Czech political life. Two typical gestures characterise the villagers: at the slightest offence or petty incitement they abruptly strip off their shirts and prepare for a ‘fight’, which ultimately (as they themselves know) never throwing up their hands as they pass the buck. This too is a way of looking at Czech reality today and judging by the response from audiences and critics it is a well-founded way of looking at it. Two of the three productions at Theatre in Dlouhá Street that ended up among the Czech ‘top ten’ of 2011, The Break of Noon and Our Swaggerers, have already been mentioned in this article. The third was directed by guest director Jan Mikulášek, who in recent years has won a reputation as one of the most promising talents in Czech theatre, and who regularly draws in stage designer Marek Cpin to collaborate and co-create his productions. At Theatre in Dlouhá they together staged Dennis 20/ 15 Years of Theatre in Dlouhá Street Kelly’s brutal comedy Love and Money (2011), which comprises several cleverly intertwined stories, and the tale is moreover told chronologically in reverse. Each episode of the production radiates a strange tension, generated by the almost overly stylised characters, whose phony social facades mask their real worlds inside. The rear wall of the stage is covered with a lineup of illuminated, large-format photographs of the characters in the play, and in the middle of the performance they are reversed, at which point their sexy smiles are exchanged for expressions of frustration. The combination of outstanding performances and original visual artistry results in a production that touches on the painful moments in the life of society and each of us. This portrait of Theatre in Dlouhá would not be complete without mentioning the two festivals that it hosts each year and its series of stage readings. It organises Children in Dlouhá for young children, where it presents the most interesting productions by theatres outside Prague, and since 2007 it has been the site of a theatre festival for teenagers titled 13+. Over the eight years they have been held the series of stage readings at Theatre in Dlouhá has introduced many new, forgotten, or undiscovered texts. Some of them were created in cooperation with the periodical World and Theatre (Svět a divadlo) or specifically with its editor Karel Král as their director (e.g. Stan Has a Problem / Standa má problém, The Road to Bugulma / Cesta do Bugulmy and Communism / Komunismus). An important portion of these stage readings are Slovak plays and adaptations in which the performances are by Slovak actors from Theatre in Dlouhá who otherwise perform in Czech in the theatre’s regular productions. All these activities have helped to forge a bond between the artists and actors at Dlouhá and their audiences. In most of the productions at Dlouhá it is apparent how in tune the artists are with each other and how much pleasure they derive from performing together. Collective input into creating a work and arriving at its final form should be an essential part of every good theatre, but rarely is this creative collectiveness and unity as pleasingly evident as it is here. I firmly hope that at Dlouhá it endures in the decades to come. ÙPaul Claudel, The Break of Noon / Theatre in Dlouhá Street, Prague 2011 / Directed by Hana Burešová / Set design Martin Černý Costumes Kateřina Štefková > Photo Martin Špelda 15 Years of Theatre in Dlouhá Street The Break of Noon /21 Jana Patočková ÙPaul Claudel, The Break of Noon / Theatre in Dlouhá Street, Prague 2011 / Directed by Hana Burešová / Set design Martin Černý Costumes Kateřina Štefková > Photo Martin Špelda D irector Hana Burešová not only works with a regular repertoire oriented towards wider audiences, she also systematically cultivates her own concept of poetic theatre which speaks to a narrower audience. In the Czech theatre scene today, where the importance of poetry has been stifled, staging Paul Claudel’s The Break of Noon (Partage de midi; Theatre in Dlouhá Street / Divadlo v Dlouhé) is perhaps even more difficult than were Burešová’s productions of Seneca’s Phaedra and Calderón’s The Surgeon of His Honour (El médico de su honra). The director did not try to superficially modernise the play and left the characters in their turn-of-the20th-century costumes, which she rightly felt was important given the context of the story. The result is that the analogies with today in the dialogue stand out more, and we see the play’s characters as nascent ‘modern’ people. The production relies on the old theatre arts triad of text, set, and actor to achieve its effects. Claudel put his four characters alone ‘in the cosmos’, and the production design accommodated the demands of this work in a purely theatrical way: by using the entire space of the theatre as the play’s set (with a set design by Martin Černý). The spectators are seated in the bosom of the stage, so there are deliberate limits on their number. They face the vast space of the auditorium covered with drapery that is given a plasticity through changes in lighting, movement, and the use of projections. Intimate scenes are performed on the apron, close to the spectators. Others are taken out onto the ground floor or the balcony, indicating the distance of the characters in outer space. The production is centred on the actors, who support the full weight of the task at hand — four actors, deeply focused, who are so able to master the language, space, and action that they hold the audience in constant suspense. Gesture is employed economically, and thus acquires added meaning as a way of underscoring words or bringing a scene to climax. Sometimes the gestures are soft intimations, other times grand and figurative, like the scene in which the lovers consummate their union. As a result, the raw reality of the bitter life and death struggle of a man, portrayed in the final scene, is all the more powerful. Not only do the actors cope brilliantly with the poet’s thicket of figurative language and its rhythms, which in itself is rare today, but above all they manage to persuasively embody his characters. Helena Dvořáková (Ysé), who is the centre of the action, is able to present a fascinating array of faces. She gradually unveils from behind her coquetry and ‘femme fatale’ pose the anxiety of a beautiful woman who’s reached the ‘noon hour’ in an evaporating life and a strong individual who with no regrets throws aside everything she has ever known to satisfy an unconditional passion. Ultimately she is a spent woman, who avenges betrayal with silence, but brings about reconciliation in the final vision. Opposite her 22/ 15 Years of Theatre in Dlouhá Street ÙPaul Claudel, The Break of Noon / Theatre in Dlouhá Street, Prague 2011 / Directed by Hana Burešová / Set design Martin Černý Costumes Kateřina Štefková > Photo Martin Špelda is Mesa (Marek Němec), the youthful, Tristan, resisting enchantment by adopting an evangelistic pose but is proved a hypocrite by his physical insecurity. He throws himself into the arms of Ysé with an awkwardness that reappears later in his frenzied struggle with a stronger opponent. This kind of passionate persuasiveness is also found in his hymn-like confessions. The foursome of main characters is rounded out by Ysé’s husband, aristocrat De Ciz (Miroslav Táborský), an engineer and unsuccessful businessman, whose smug smiling face indicates how abidingly self-delusional he is, and Amalric (Miroslav Hanuš), that ‘American’ type of manly lover, a realist, and an adventurous ‘soldier of fortune’. All the characters are doomed, their death announced at the start of the voyage. Only those whose death is the price paid for ‘forbidden love’ are given to see and understand the meaning of sacrifice and to attain reconciliation. The success of this play by Paul Claudel, who, despite having been included several times in the repertoire of a theatre, never secured much lasting popularity with the public, is testimony to the production’s extraordinary qualities and the public’s growing interest in the spiritual questions it poses. Paul Claudel: The Break of Noon. Adaptation Hana Burešová and Štěpán Otčenášek, directed by Hana Burešová, set design Martin Černý, costumes Kateřina Štefková. Theatre in Dlouhá Street, Prague, premiere 12 / 4 / 2011. 15 Years of the Theatre in Dlouhá Street The Phenomenon of Reduta Theatre in Brno /23 The Phenomenon of Reduta Theatre in Brno Luboš Mareček – Jitka Nováková Atrium of Reduta Theatre > Photo Luděk Svítil 24/ The Phenomenon of Reduta Theatre in Brno Reduta Theatre in Brno has been through big changes in the past decade, not just on the outside – its extensive and exceptionally well-executed renovations – and but also inside, with a revamping of how the theatre operates, its method of work, and its repertoire. Reduta, which is one of the three stages of the National Theatre in Brno (Národní divadlo Brno), has in the past five years become a bold, unique, and indispensable landmark on Brno’s theatrical and cultural map. T he building that Reduta occupies today has a long and complex history, in particular architecturally, as it was given frequent renovations and additions over the course of several centuries. It originated in the first half of the 17th century out of the fusion of two buildings into one enclosed, single-story complex, which was already the same size as the Reduta building today, and which had previously been used to host important visitors to the city. Theatre productions were already an occasional event at this site from the 1660s, but it was only in 1733 that a separate amphitheatre with typical box seating and a narrowing ‘perspective’ stage was built in the east wing of the complex. In 1767 Reduta was the site of the first Brno performance of the Czech-language Enamoured Watchman (Zamilovaný ponocný), and that same year an eleven-yearold Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart performed a concert here with his sister Nanerl. (To commemorate this important event, in 2008 a statue of Mozart, created by top Czech sculptor Kurt Gebauer, was unveiled in front of the theatre.) This era of the theatre’s history is also associated with the name of Emanuel Schikaneder, the librettist of Mozart’s The Magic Flute and director of the theatre from 1807 to 1809. In 1785 and 1786 the building was damaged by fire. It was restored, and was then laid waste again during the Napoleonic Wars and in the so-called Fourth French-Austrian War. Many prominent contemporary architects and artists had a hand in the reconstructions that followed, among them Lorenzo, Vincenzo and Antonio Sacchetti, members of a renowned Italian family of painters, decorators, and scenic artists. After another fire in 1870 the theatre hall was not restored, ÙAuditorium of Reduta Theatre > Photo archives The Phenomenon of Reduta Theatre in Brno /25 and in the 20th century theatre performances took place in the former dance hall in the west section of the building. Until 1919 Reduta was used by the German theatre in Brno, after which time it regularly alternated performance days with the Czech National Theatre. Reduta became especially popular with the Czech public after the end of the Second World War, from which time and up until it was condemned and closed in 1993 it was used by the operetta company of the National Theatre in Brno (Národní divadlo Brno, NDB). In 2005 operetta was added to the programme of Brno City Theatre and after extensive renovations Reduta reopened that same year and was intended to become a kind of laboratory for studio projects of the NDB’s three companies (drama, opera, and ballet). Reduta’s current architectural design is the work of the Brnobased architectural studio D.R.N.H., v.o.s., and was created by a team made up of Antonín Novák, Petr Valenta, Radovan Smejkal and Eduard Štěrbák, with contributions from Klára Michálková and Karel Spáčil and collaboration on the theatre area from Miroslav Melena. The renovation work, which was carried out between 2002 and 2005, sensitively integrated modern elements with the surviving original architecture, returned the theatre hall to the east wing, and restored the theatre’s social and representative functions. One major architectural change was the addition of a steel and glass roof structure over the original courtyard arcades and the introduction of two lifts and their equipment into the inner atrium. A restaurant and a café were opened on the ground floor. The crowning piece of renovation work is the decorative painting on the walls of the Mozart Hall, the vaulted ceilings of the café, and the artistically designed terrazzo in the atrium created by Petr Kvíčala. Modern architecture and design thus lie behind the surviving baroque mantle. The building is open all day; people come in for theatre, but also for art, refreshments, or to attend various kinds of social events, which are organised in the theatre hall and the ceremonial Mozart Hall as well as in the cellar stages and the gallery. All of the NDB’s companies still stage productions in the building, but since 2007 Reduta has had its own artistic management. Artistic director Petr Štědroň and dramaturg Dora Viceníková have worked determinedly and steadily to build Reduta’s new image, basing it not just on the exceptional history and tradition of the building, but also on progressive dramaturgy. Štědroň has transformed Reduta into something quite different from what it was before; into something that reflects contemporary theatre in a unique way, either through its own productions, the modern dramaturgy and aesthetic qualities of which are on a European level, or by hosting outstanding theatre productions from other theatres in the Czech Republic. ‘My objective was to bring in innovative techniques – but also to steer clear of self-serving experiments, arbitrary decisions, posturing. An important part of my artistic management is creative autonomy, the possibility for contrast and a progressive equivalent to the “permanent” -drama, ballet, and opera productions of the NDB, is how Štědroň summed it up. And under Štědroň’s leadership Reduta is truly becoming a vibrant island on the cultural map of Brno. Few established domestic theatre houses can boast a repertoire made up solely of Czech premieres and first-time productions of texts and librettos. Theatre events originate here that go on to collect arts awards and travel around the country and even abroad. None of this is customary for Bohemian and Moravian theatre artists. The company also regularly does guest performances at prestigious Prague theatres such as the New Stage of the National Theatre (Nová scéna Národního divadla), Theatre in Dlouhá Street (Divadlo v Dlouhé), and Švanda Theatre (Švandovo Divadlo). In recent years it has taken part in all the Czech international theatre showcases, such as the Pilsen Theatre Festival (Festival Divadlo), the Theatre of European Regions (Divadlo evropských regionů) in Hradec Králové, Encounters (Setkání/Stretnutie) in Zlín, and the Without Borders Festival (Festival Bez Hranic) in Český Těšín. It has also performed abroad (Stuttgart, Brussels, Vienna, Bratislava, Cieszyn). ÙBuilding of Reduta Theatre > Photo Jana Hallová ÙAuditorium of Reduta Theatre > Photo archives 26/ The Phenomenon of Reduta Theatre in Brno Today Reduta genuinely does serve as a notional antipode to the two large theatre houses in Brno, namely Janáček Theatre (Janáčkovo divadlo) and Mahen Theatre (Mahenovo divadlo), which use the traditional operational structure of a theatre with permanent drama, opera, and ballet companies. Reduta has no permanent acting ensemble and no permanent director, yet despite this Petr Štědroň and Dora Viceníková are trying to chart their own course. And it’s working; the artistic management initiates Czech premieres of stage adaptations of exceptional film and literary works or original creative projects. They bring a staging of the famous Houellebecq novel Les Particules élémentaires (see the review in Czech Theatre 26), staged in Brno as the Czech premiere. Mikulášek reworked this philosophical novel by one of France’s most controversial writers of the past two decades into a chilling production that demonstrated onstage and in an understated manner the utter obliteration of basic social values and human relations and the gratuitous worship of sex. The production was dominated by the performances of Václav Vašák and Jiří Vyorálek as life- and sex-weary brothers Michel and Bruno. ÙMichel Houellebecq, Elementary Particles / National Theatre Brno – Reduta Theatre 2010 / Directed by Jan Mikulášek Set design and costumes Marek Cpin > Photo Jana Hallová in bold directors who either are already established figures in Czech theatre or have the reputation of being newcomers with a distinctive creative aesthetic approach to theatre and the text. Four years ago the aforementioned duo of Štědroň and Viceníková regarded one such director to be Jan Mikulášek, and now they coddle him at Reduta and have branded him one of its ‘core artists’. Mikulášek’s work has won enormous respect and recognition from both critics and the general public. Other directors who have worked here in the past decade include Daniel Špinar, J. A. Pitínský and Jiří Pokorný. In 2010 one of Reduta’s most remarkable productions was At the end of the same year Reduta gambled on an original title of its own and was right to do so. Mikulášek’s production of V+W: Letters (Korespondence V+W; Czech premiere 5 November 2010) made a victory tour around the country and won unprecedented accolades for its home stage, one of the most important signs of which was its placing second among nominees for the 2010 Alfréd Radok Award for production of the year. This extraordinary stage project, composed out of the letters exchanged between the interwar comic duo Jan Werich and Jiří Voskovec (the script was written by Reduta’s dramaturg Dora Viceníková), was a remarkable spectacle that utilised the The Phenomenon of Reduta Theatre in Brno movement, dance, and at times even acrobatic abilities of the actors. The director managed in a relaxed but effective way to resurrect and reference the playful, Dadaistic environment of the early years of the Liberated Theatre (Osvobozené divadlo), where the two famous clowns started out. The production also came across as a bitter reminder of a bipolar world divided by the Iron Curtain, and ultimately also as a raw but extraordinary examination of the difficult lives of two men whom fate had separated but who could not live apart. The production also drew on the complex and subtly nuanced performances of /27 with stories, data, information, and trivia. Set in a strange scientific conference, with a repulsive visual reference to the onset of normalisation in Czechoslovakia in the early 1970s, the production turned into a fascinating spectacle, even though the original book has de facto no theatrical potential. While in Europeana Mikulášek did not achieve the kind of stylistic seamlessness or emotiveness as in V+W: Letters, the production was still an interesting and legitimate mastery of material that others would have cut their teeth on. Reduta never ceases to seek new dramaturgical and directorial ÙJiří Voskovec – Jan Werich – Dora Viceníková, V+W: Letters / National Theatre Brno – Reduta Theatre 2010 / Directed by Jan Mikulášek Set design Svatopluk Sládeček / Costumes Marek Cpin > Photo Viktor Kronbauer the superbly guided actors: slender and elegant Václav Vašák as Voskovec, Jiří Vyorálek, with a visibly padded paunch, as Werich, and Gabriela Mikulková as Werich’s solicitous but unstable wife Zdenička. The forenamed gentlemen are among the performers at Reduta who are helping build its theatre reputation. Mikulášek scored again with his production Europeana (Czech premiere 9 June 2011), inspired by Patrik Ouředník’s book of the same title. In his production Mikulášek created an ironic, searing commentary on 20th-century history while retaining the peculiar kaleidoscopic style of Ouředník’s work, overflowing ideas. Talented director Daniel Špinar staged his own adaptation of Choderlos de Laclos’s Les Liaisons Dangereuses under the title Valmont (premiere 4 November 2011). His ‘miniature’ version, in which there are only three characters, is an almost formalistic example of modern theatre. Špinar and Mikulášek will also be directing work at Reduta in the coming season, which will again be offering exclusively original, novel projects. In November 2012 Špinar’s Kafka Cabaret (Kabaret Kafka) will be devoted to the work of the famous German-language writer from Prague. A collage of short stories, numerous fragments, excerpts from three unfinished novels, diaries, and correspondence will be 28/ The Phenomenon of Reduta Theatre in Brno freely combined with the themes that the outstanding writer dealt with most often. Premiering in early April 2013 is The Golden Sixties or the Melancholy of Pavel J. (Zlatá šedesátá aneb Melancholie Pavla J.), in which director Jan Mikulášek will focus on a key figure in Czech film of the 1960s, director, screenwriter, and signatory of Charter 77, Pavel Juráček. His diaries were voted Book of the Year in 2004 in a poll in Lidové noviny newspaper and won the Litera 2004 publishing prize. Mikulášek’s fascination with Czech literature and key figures of Czech culture thus continues. June 2013 will see the premiere of Gourmets (Gurmáni), a work created by Mikulášek and Viceníková and directed by Mikulášek that will explore from various angles the themes of food, drinking, dining, and gaining weight. Reduta’s strategy has been to vary the stage formats in its programme. Traditional performances alternate with the unique talk show of Tomáš Matonoha, and its annual events include a masquerade ball, combining music, theatre, dance, and singing, as well as wigs, masks, and white stockings reminiscent of Mozart’s time. (One meaning of the word ‘reduta’ is masquerade ball or building with a dance hall.) Reduta Theatre also serves as an exhibition space. The regular exhibition activities on every floor of the building focus on works by exciting contemporary artists and especially students. Reduta exhibits the graduation work of students from the art academies in Brno, Prague, and Bratislava and from the fields of painting, sculpture, graphic arts, video, and multimedia. It also thinks about its potential future audiences with performances aimed at children. Every year Reduta organises the Redfest festival, inviting into Reduta exceptional drama projects from around the country and neighbouring states. The rich variety of Reduta’s here-named activities inside and outside the sphere of theatre all come together to make up its artistic programme, which refuses to follow a mainstream path: a dramaturgically interesting repertoire, new original works and Czech premieres, often provocative themes that force audiences to take part in the performance and take in more sophisticated forms of communication. What from a marketing perspective might have seemed imprudent or even self-destructive has after several years of conceptual work at Reduta been positively received not just by critics but also by a growing part of the public. If Reduta continues in its tireless pursuit of outstanding dramaturgy and sophisticated productions, even despite the inauspicious economic conditions that exist today, it will be able to secure itself also in the future a special place on the cultural map of (not just) the City of Brno. ÚPatrik Ouředník, Europeana / National Theatre Brno – Reduta Theatre 2011 / Directed by Jan Mikulášek / Set design and costumes Marek Cpin > Photo KIVA The Phenomenon of Reduta Theatre in Brno Europeana – Laughter from Hell /29 Richard Erml ÙPatrik Ouředník, Europeana / National Theatre Brno – Reduta Theatre 2011 / Directed by Jan Mikulášek / Set design and costumes Marek Cpin > Photo KIVA A t Reduta Theatre (Divadlo Reduta) resident dramaturg Dora Viceníková and director Jan Mikulášek have been attempting the impossible, staging Houllebecq (Les Particules élémentaires), the intimate letters exchanged between two clowns (V+W: Letters / Korespondence V+W), and the post-modern prose of Patrik Ouředník, Europeana. Where they found the courage to embark on this bold path is astounding, but with each new production they go further and further. The resulting stage rendition here has little in common with traditional dramatisations or adaptations of a literary text. In the case of Europeana one can speak of quality made larger, like what we find in a masterful musical rendition of a work of poetry or in a ballet choreographed to a well-known piece of music. In his book Patrik Ouředník attempts to compose a history of the 20th century in a way that makes some sense out of it. He tosses statistics, contemporary quotations, bits of stories, historical facts, ironic ingredients, and a few ice cubes of paradox into a large shaker, and then mixes up this monstrous cocktail of illusions, ideas, and crimes with a devilishly cynical smile that is not without sadness. Mikulášek has audiences sip from this cocktail, subtly at first, in small swigs. When the production starts there are three female and five male actors in attendance at an imaginary conference about the 20th century in the middle of a mathaler-like lavish set, and with their mouths they create the illusion of a train in motion. Immediately what comes to your mind is the oppressive image of trains headed towards the front or the transports to 30/ The Phenomenon of Reduta Theatre in Brno ÙPatrik Ouředník, Europeana / National Theatre Brno – Reduta Theatre 2011 / Directed by Jan Mikulášek / Set design and costumes Marek Cpin > Photo KIVA concentration camps, but you don’t know why. Perhaps there is that kind of gloom in the actors’ expressions? Or perhaps every even slightly sensitive participant in the previous century carries some awareness of its horrors, so it is enough just to tap the surface and the visions unfold on top of each other? The director works masterfully with that portion of human memory that, like an iceberg, lies below the surface, using elements ranging from sounds and musical themes to sketches and expressive physical actions. He sparks the imagination of the viewer using the method of association. While it is not always possible to decipher these associations with certainty (e.g. a speaker who for laughing and crying is unable to say a single word), the effects are always emotive. Ouředník’s text, mostly filled with horrifying information (the number of fallen soldiers calculated in kilometres: 15,508 km at an average cadaver length of 172 cm), is recited by the actors with steely calm, and as a result the text evokes a feeling of chilling laughter from the hell that people prepared for themselves while they were alive. The actors form a strange mercurial mass, which either splatters out into anonymous individuals or quickly locks together to form a single cluster of bodies that is either furiously leaping or masturbating. To describe the individual performances would be misleading, as their fascinating strength comes from these collective variations; and also from the sensitivity with which they together with the director are able to create emotionally escalating images. The image of bodies falling and collapsing onto the floor over and over and over again is a suggestive metaphor for the hopeless madness and ruination that humanity has willingly and repeatedly given in to – and not just during wartime. No one can put together the meaning of the 20th century, but this Brno production has at least hinted at the futility of our attempts to understand it. Patrik Ouředník: Europeana. Dramatisation by Dora Viceníková and Jan Mikulášek, director Jan Mikulášek, set design and costumes Marek Cpin, musical arrangement Jan Mikulášek. National Theatre Brno – Reduta Theatre, premiere 9 / 6 / 2011. The Phenomenon of Reduta Theatre in Brno Ostrava – an Oasis of Theatre That Refuses to Pander /31 Ostrava – an Oasis of Theatre That Refuses to Pander Jan Kerbr ÙTomáš Vůjtek, With Hope or Without It / Arena Studio Space, Ostrava 2012 / Directed by Ivan Krejčí / Set design Milan David > Photo Roman Polášek 32/ Ostrava – an Oasis of Theatre That Refuses to Pander O strava is a large industrial town in the northeast of the Czech Republic that has a rather lively theatre scene. The National Moravian-Silesian Theatre (Národní divadlo moravskoslezské) is one of the few multi-company theatres in the country, comprising four: straight drama, opera, operetta and musical, and ballet. There are two other professional drama theatres in Ostrava: the Petr Bezruč Theatre (Divadlo Petra Bezruče) and the Arena Studio Space (Komorní scéna Aréna). And to complete the list there is also the local Theatre of Puppets (Divadlo loutek). The comparatively harsh social environment in Ostrava (many local jobs have been in the mining and metallurgy industries) has always to at least some degree been reflected in the repertoires of local theatres, and the harshness and refusal to pander persisted even beyond the revolution in 1989, when the entire country experienced often have their premiere on one of the stages in this very city. Since 1997, each year local theatres participate in a severalday theatre review (called Ost-ra-var), where they present their annual ‘crop’ of work to journalists and theatre arts students and teachers from all over the country. The now annual domestic theatre event originated in auspicious circumstances, before the theatre calendar had become overly crammed with festivals. Several days in Ostrava quickly became a professional must, in the positive sense, for anyone in Prague, Brno, Olomouc (and even Bratislava in Slovakia) who is interested in the theatre. One nice feature of the local theatre scene in Ostrava is its chummy sense of community. Directors and actors will sometimes leave their home stage and hop over to a neighbouring theatre, so as I name some prominent figures in local theatres, it doesn’t mean they are strictly and solely associated with that ÙVenedikt Yerofeyev, Moscow–Petushki / The National Moravian–Silesian Theatre, Ostrava 2011 / Directed by Tomáš Jirman / Set design David Bazika > Photo Radovan Šťastný occupational restructuring and the unemployment rate in Ostrava began to soar. Stage ‘entertainment’ comes in the form of musicals and operettas, and occasionally a comedy by the biggest local drama company, but most of the local repertoire is made up of works that are modern (sometimes even locally based) and disquieting, and both domestic and foreign plays one given theatre. Among the directors who have shaped the dramatic profile of the National Moravian-Silesian Theatre in recent years Juraj Deák and Radovan Lipus especially warrant mention, both of whom now are no longer based in Ostrava. Deák made a rather successful stab at bringing some classic titles to the big stage (Hamlet 2003, Romeo and Juliet 1998, Cyrano de Ostrava – an Oasis of Theatre That Refuses to Pander /33 ÙFranz Kafka, The Trial / Arena Studio Space, Ostrava 2011 / Directed by Ivan Rajmont / Set design Martin Černý / Costumes Marta Roszkopfová > Photo Roman Polášek Bergerac 1998), and several musicals. His most outstanding production was that of George Tabori’s Mein Kampf (2004), which with some poetic licence depicts a scene from Hitler’s youth. Lipus did well with several unorthodox projects: in 1994 the ‘regional’ satirical cabaret Ongoing Blood Poisoning (Průběžná O(s)trava krve; the title of this festival is a play on words, as ‘otrava’, which means ‘poisoning’, differs by just one letter from the city’s name Ostrava), which however was staged with the company that operates out of the Arena Studio Space; and in 1998 an inventive stage adaptation of František Hrubín’s narrative poem Romance for Bugle (Romance pro křídlovku) and an affectionately parodic version of Alois Jirásek’s Lantern (Lucerna), which is a classic dramatic fairytale and one of the most frequently performed Czech plays. The National Moravian-Silesian Theatre also gave Ukraine-born director Oxana Meleškinová-Smilková, now domesticated in the Czech Republic, the opportunity to stage a very unconventional production of Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya (1998). One important artist with long ties to the Ostrava theatre scene is Janusz Klimsza, who studied acting in Poland and learned the director’s trade at the Theatre Faculty of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague. He divides his work between all three drama theatres in Ostrava, and he was even the head of drama at the National Moravian-Silesian Theatre for several years. He first brought his unmistakeable directorial style into the Arena with Tadeusz Słobodzianek’s Prophet Ilya (2000) and Tomáš Vůjtek’s Brenpartie (Brenpartija 2009); both productions are set in the tough Silesian-Polish border region and have a strong social theme. Klimsza staged Słavomir Mrożek’s demanding and multi-layered play Love in the Crimea (Miłość na Krymie 2000; to date the only staging of this play in the Czech Republic) at the National Moravian-Silesian Theatre, and he also created a production of Sam Shepard’s dark drama Buried Child (2007). Jan Mikulášek, one of the most distinctive figures in the young generation of Czech theatre directors, got his start in Ostrava. People began talking about him after his production of Albert Camus’s Caligula (2003) at the National Moravian-Silesian Theatre and his Three Sisters (2007), with its normalisationera kitchen set, at Petr Bezruč Theatre, where he later was also briefly artistic director. There he also put on an outstanding 34/ Ostrava – an Oasis of Theatre That Refuses to Pander ÙNaomi Wallace, One Flea Spare / Petr Bezruč Theatre, Ostrava 2011 / Directed by Peter Gábor / Stage design Katarína Holková > Photo Roman Tomášek ÙIsrael Horowitz, Lebensraum / Theatre of Puppets, Ostrava 2011 Directed by Marián Pecko / Puppets and costumes Pavol Andraško > Photo archives ÙThomas Vinterberg – Mogens Rukov – Bo Hansen, The Celebration Petr Bezruč Theatre, Ostrava 2011 / Directed by Martin Františák Set design Jan Štěpánek / Costumes Marek Cpin > Photo archives adaptation of Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin (2009), which was one of the most remarkable theatre events in the country, grounded in strongly stylised acting, featuring inventive background music composed by the director himself, and with a subtly artistic visual form designed by one of the great young hopes of Czech theatre arts, stage designer Marek Cpin. Mikulášek then gave Ostrava another artistically stylised production, Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler (National Moravian-Silesian Theatre 2008), and last year he hit home on the current problems in the region and in the country as a whole with his adaptation of Polish journalist Mariusz Szczygieł’s novel Gottland (2011), which examines the paroxysmal moments of late socialism and new ‘post-Velvet’ development in the Czech Republic. A production of somewhat Marthaleresque style, in a collective swirl it unfurls the stories of several well-known figures whose fates were dramatically shaped by the historical changes of recent decades. The current head of Petr Bezruč Theatre is Martin Františák, who also works with some amateur companies and whose roots, even as an author, are firmly anchored in the Moravia- Silesia Region. His play At Home (Doma) was staged by Michal Dočekal at the National Theatre (Národní divadlo) in Prague. In 2010 at his home stage Františák put on his own play The Bride (Nevěsta), and the intimate subject of the text and the production is woven into the harsh social ferment of the Silesian-Slovak borderland. Other important productions followed at Petr Bezruč Theatre, such as an adaptation of Joseph Roth’s novel Job (2008), his direction of thematically kindred author Jiří Pokorný’s play Daddy Shoots Goals (Taťka střílí góly 2009), and, above all, his dynamic take – with impeccably cultivated performances – on the famous Dogma 95 film The Celebration (2011). This story about the birthday celebration of a paedophile father who abused his children many years ago serves as the dramatic underpinning for an indirect parable on guilt, social decorum, indifference, and revolt. Ivan Krejčí is the artistic director of the Arena Studio Space, where he has staged both classics (Hamlet 2010, The Cherry Orchard 2009) and contemporary works (Tabori’s Goldberg Variations 2008). His most recent production is a highly political Ostrava – an Oasis of Theatre That Refuses to Pander ÙEmily /35 , Wuthering Heights / Petr Bezruč Theatre, Ostrava 2012 / Directed by Jan Mikulášek / Set design Marek Cpin > Photo Tomáš Ruta work that takes on the difficult era of communist dictatorship in the 1950s (a period not often visited in art). Tomáš Vůjtek’s play With Hope or Without It (S nadějí, i bez ní 2012) is based on the memoirs of Josefa Slánská, the widow of an executed, former high-ranking communist functionary, who during his trial was herself imprisoned in harsh conditions. For Czech theatre this is an unusually penetrating look inside a communist prison and bears witness to an arduous struggle to maintain human dignity. A production that has garnered significant attention in Ostrava (and not just there) in recent months is a coarse drunken ballad based on the famous Russian prose work by Venedikt Yerofeyev Moscow-Petushki (2011). The production is staged in the bar of the theatre club at the National Moravian-Silesian Theatre and is directed by one of the company’s actors, Tomáš Jirman, who steps in as director from time to time – and always rather successfully. Janusz Klimsza created an adaptation of Ivan Landsmann’s novel, Variegated Layers (Pestré vrstvy 2011), a true account of what it was like to work in a mine during the state-socialist period, and he staged it in a now inoperative mine. This production is a project of Petr Bezruč Theatre, and it too makes references to the previous regime and to the other side of ‘building up socialism’, as under that regime Ostrava was propagandistically known as the ‘steel heart of the republic’, a strange phrase that was more than just an allusion to the city as a base of mining and metallurgy. The site-specific performance space adds a strong element of authenticity to the project. In recent months Arena Studio Space has presented some unnerving productions, such as a staging of Franz Kafka’s The Trial (2011), directed by Ivan Rajmont, and, in its Czech premiere, the American playwright Naomi Wallace’s One Flea Spare, directed by Peter Gábor (2011). The latter play is an intimate drama about four people in a closed space, and the situation is modelled on the 17th-century plague that hit London and the associated quarantine arrangements that were set up. Humanity’s extreme forms are exposed in the first of these two productions by the absurdity of bureaucratic machinery and in the second by the fatefulness of the deadly epidemic. The Ostrava Theatre of Puppets put on a sophisticated production for audiences at the last Ost-ra-var. Israel 36/ Ostrava – an Oasis of Theatre That Refuses to Pander ÙTomáš Vůjtek, With Hope or Without It / Arena Studio Space, Ostrava 2012 / Directed by Ivan Krejčí / Set design Milan David > Photo Roman Polášek Horowitz’s Lebensraum (directed by Slovak Marián Pecko, 2011) presents a fantastical vision of post-war Germany, in which, as reparation for the Holocaust, the German chancellor offers six million Jews a life in Germany (needless to say, this cannot turn out well). The high quality of the theatre in Ostrava is naturally also the result of its excellent actors, some of whom sometimes make their way to the capital. Recent young talents that warrant mention include Lucie Žáčková and Jan Hájek, who perform, respectively, at the prestigious National Theatre and the Drama Club. After Prague and Brno, Ostrava is the Czech Republic’s third theatre hub. There is a seamless quality to the poetics of the local stages, and there is no mistaking their specific styles for those of productions in Prague and Brno. Ostrava – an Oasis of Theatre That Refuses to Pander Theatre with a Passion for New Plays /37 Theatre with a Passion for New Plays Jan Jiřík ÙMark Ravenhill, Pool / No Water Flying Theatre, Prague 2009 / Directed by Martina Schlegelová / Set design and costumes Jana Špalová > Photo Petr Krejčí 38/ T Theatre with a Passion for New Plays he Flying Theatre (Divadlo Letí) emerged in 2005 as a loose grouping of at that time fresh graduates from the Department of Alternative and Puppet Theatre at the Theatre Faculty in Prague. As a group that shared a clear vision about theatre, its members had as students the year before made a mark for themselves on the stage of the school’s DISK Theatre (Divadlo DISK), where, among the four graduate productions they staged, three were Czech premieres of contemporary Russian drama (Vassily Sigarev: Plasticine, Ivan Vyrypayev: Oxygen, Xenia Dragunskaya: Feeling Beards – all of which premiered in 2004). The production with which the Flying Theatre officially launched itself and from where it also took its name was Olga Muchina’s play Flying (premiere 8 October 2005 at Dejvice Theatre / Dejvické divadlo, directed by Marián Amsler). The theatre’s founding figures included dramaturg Daniel Přibyl (now dramaturg at the New Stage of the National Theatre in Prague / Nová scéna Národního divadla v Praze) and director Marián Amsler (a graduate of the directing programme of study at the Academy of Performing Arts in Bratislava and now artistic head of Brno’s HaDivadlo). Director Martina Schlegelová and dramaturg Marie Špalová are the current artistic heads of the Flying Theatre. In the Czech theatre arts, the Flying Theatre’s dramaturgical focus is unique – it only stages new plays. All the productions ÙThomas Artz, Grillenparz / Flying Theatre, Prague 2011 Directed by Martina Schlegelová / Set design and costumes Jana Špalová > Photo Alexandr Hudeček and projects for the stage that the Flying Theatre has put on in its more than six-year existence have been Czech premieres of local or foreign plays. Stages of this kind have long existed abroad (London’s Royal Court Theatre, Paris’s Ouvert, and Laboratorium Dramatu in Warsaw, to name a few), and the Prague version of a writers’ theatre has clearly been much inspired by their work. But the Flying Theatre differs from the above-named stages abroad in at least two specific respects. While the aforementioned theatres abroad and their activities (playwright residencies, competitions of productions of contemporary work, etc.) are already fully institutionalised (and often supported by the state), the Flying Theatre is still in the process of building such a network from the ground up through its activities. The second distinguishing feature of this theatre is that it involves a single generation of theatre artists. The Flying Theatre is led mainly by the generation in its thirties, who all became practising theatre artists in a specific period. While the UK was experiencing the wave of in-yer-face theatre and western Europe was absorbing related influences, Czech theatre was dominated by director-centred theatre, which focused on Theatre with a Passion for New Plays interpretations of classics and well-established works from the second half of the 20th century. For the artists at the head of the Flying Theatre, in-yer-face theatre was in many ways where they got their start. Like British theatre artists in the 1990s, they refused to seek new statements in old texts and decided to describe the world exclusively through new drama. Projects for the stage The Flying Theatre devotes itself to showcasing contemporary drama on several levels. In terms of the number of plays put on the biggest is its production project 8@8, wherein Czech or foreign productions of eight new texts are put on as stage readings over a single theatre season. The main aim of the project is to try out new drama right on stage and introduce it to the professional community and the general public. Since /39 productions that this Prague company has created to date are diverse in directorial approach and often in terms of genre and include plays by Mark Ravenhill (Mother Clap’s Molly House in 2008 directed by Daniel Špinar; Pool / No Water in 2009 directed by Martina Schlegelová), Dennis Kelly (Osama the Hero in 2006 directed by Tomáš Svoboda), and Thomas Arzt (Grillenparz in 2011 directed by Martina Schlegelová). The diversity of the Flying Theatre’s productions stems in part from the fact that the theatre has managed to maintain an openness towards the directors and actors invited in to work on a specific production (even if they are mainly theatre artists from the same generation), and in part from the fact that almost every production has been created in a different venue, as the Flying Theatre has no permanent workspace. Most of the company’s productions have been put on at Švanda Theatre (Švandovo divadlo), Theatre on the Ballustrade (Divadlo Na zábradlí), or Comedy Theatre ÙMark O‘Rowe, Terminus / Flying Theatre, Prague 2010 / Directed by Martina Schlegelová / Set design and costumes Jana Špalová > Photo Tomáš Bořil 2005, when the Flying Theatre embarked on this project, several dozen plays have been given a single staged reading (there are no repeat readings), and some of them later appeared in the repertoires of other Czech theatres. In addition to these staged readings the Flying Theatre also undertakes ‘full-fledged’ productions. The precisely twenty (Divadlo Komedie). With Heaven’s Closed (Nebe nepřijímá), comprising five short plays written especially for the Flying Theatre by David Drábek, David Gieselmann, Viliam Klimáček, Joe Penhall, and Falk Richter, the theatre also experimented with working in a non-theatre space, premiering this work in the departure hall of Prague airport; subsequent performances 40/ Theatre with a Passion for New Plays ØRoman Sikora, The Confession of a Masochist / Flying Theatre, Prague 2011 / Directed by Martina Schlegelová / Set design Jana Špalová Costumes Aneta Grňáková > Photo Ivana Tačíková ÙMark Ravenhill in the Mark Ravenhill Fur > Photo Alexandr Hudeček were added to the repertoire of Theatre on the Balustrade. The company has prepared a production of David Gieselmann’s play The Farm (Die Plantage), to be directed by Martina Schlegelová, which the author adapted into a musical for the Flying Theatre. At the premiere one of the roles was played by Mark Ravenhill. Among the productions for which the Flying Theatre has recently drawn attention, here we will describe two, both of them directed by Martina Schlegelová. Joe Penhall’s Terminus premiered on 13 March 2010 in the Studio space located in the cellar of Švanda Theatre, and this minimalist production used the atmosphere of this place to effect. The visual component of Terminus is very simple. There are three mobile iron constructions from where the characters in Penhall’s play deliver their monologues. A large projection screen onto which animations illustrating events are shown closes off the rear of the stage. The animations are created right before the eyes of the audience by two animators standing on one side of the stage and using a device that resembles an overhead projector to wield their artistic magic. This ‘spare’ concept enables Schlegelová to point up the performances (Richard Fiala, Marcela Holubcová and Pavlína Štorková) but above all the play’s difficult language. Another production is Roman Sikora’s The Confession of a Masochist (Zpověď masochisty), which premiered on 26 January 2011, again in the Studio space of Švanda Theatre in Smíchov. The play originated during the first year of an artistic residence at the theatre. Sikora’s grotesque satire tells the story of Mr M., a man whose desire it is to suffer and who, having been unable to satisfy that desire, becomes an advocate of contemporary Czech government policy, whose reform cuts into social and economic security are what finally gives him the masochistic pleasure he’s been looking for. In his play Sikora works expressively with language, which parodies itself, is filled with verbal pollution, media jargon, word games, and garbled words. Martina Schlegelová set the production in a circus environment, evidenced by the choice of music and the arc of coloured light-bulbs suspended from the ceiling. This setting helped the director to tie together the kaleidoscopic structure of Sikora’s play. With this exception the director again applied a minimalist approach, concentrating fully on each of the playwright’s words and on the actors’ interpretations of each of the characters. The production is embellished by Tomáš Kobr’s performance as Mr M. At the start of the play, Kobr, who never leaves the stage throughout the ninety-minute show, approaches the story of Mr M. as a kind of protest song, and by the end has transformed into a crafty enticer trying to lure the audience into his world, which is actually not that bad. The Confession of a Masochist is to date one of the most successful of the Flying Theatre’s undertakings. It won first prize and the Young for Young theatre festival in Most. In September 2011 the play was presented as a staged reading in the Stückemarkt (Play Market) at Berlin’s Theatertreffen: New European Drama, and in December of the same year it was read at Ouvert in Paris. It has been translated into four languages (English, French, German, and Polish). Centre for Contemporary Drama In 2010 the Flying Theatre broadened its activities with the creation of the Centre for Contemporary Drama (Centrum současné dramatiky / CSD), which aims to support contemporary Czech drama by offering an author-in-residence programme. This programme is changing the way new drama is being created in Czech theatres. Previously new work emerged in one of two ways: new texts were created within a specific theatre company whose poetics could not usually be transferred Theatre with a Passion for New Plays /41 42/ Theatre with a Passion for New Plays to other theatres; or new Czech plays were written outside the theatre, often won an Alfréd Radok Award for new plays, and rarely or even never made it onto the stage. Besides the Flying Theatre, the projects of the CSD involve the participation of other theatres and institutions, such as HaDivadlo, Theatre on the Balustrade, and the Arts and Theatre Institute. The first year of the programme was run in cooperation with Švanda Theatre in Smíchov and the theme of the residency was to write a political play set in the present day. The CSD is also the institution behind the Mark Ravenhill Award, which is intended for the best Czech production of a contemporary play. The winning production is selected by a jury made up of dramaturgs and theatre critics, and the top prize, the Mark Ravenhill Fur, is awarded to the production’s creators by Mark Ravenhill himself. Comedy Theatre In the autumn of 2011 the Flying Theatre bid in the competition to select a new theatre to move into Comedy Theatre, which was vacated at the end of June 2012 by its current tenants, the Prague Chamber Theatre (Pražské komorní divadlo). The Flying Theatre’s project envisioned a continuation of its current work and turning Comedy Theatre into a centre genuinely focused on contemporary drama and contemporary art (it planned cooperation with top art cinemas and with DOX Centre for Contemporary Art in Prague). Ultimately the competition was won by an ordinary directorcentred theatre from the district of Strašnice in Prague. However, the selection procedure revealed an interesting phenomenon in Prague theatre today. Besides the Flying Theatre, the other four finalists included strong theatre figures from the thirty-something generation (e.g. Jiří Adámek, Daniel Špinar, and Štěpán Pácl) who, like the Flying Theatre, do not have a permanent space and with their own companies are creating distinctive theatre outside the official network. A paradoxical situation has arisen in Prague theatre today, where on the one hand there is a relatively rich network of institutional theatres that are doing work that is beginning to make them look more and more alike, and on the other hand there are the aforementioned artistically based theatre groups. There is no mutual cooperation, continuous turnover, or even steady development in Prague theatre. It is obvious that such a situation is especially inauspicious for this art form. A share of the blame for this situation of course lies on both sides. It is as though a generation gap has emerged in Prague theatre in the new millennium, with each side retreating within its own safe enclaves. As for the Flying Theatre, it is a question how long this kind of artistically ambitious theatre can survive in its given itinerant conditions and how long it will be possible for it to preserve its innovative vigour and not come to a standstill. Theatre with a Passion for New Plays Les enfants terribles Lenka Šaldová ÙPhilip Glass – Susan Marshall, Les enfants terribles / National Theatre, Prague 2011 Directed by Alice Nellis / Set design Matěj Cibulka / Costumes Kateřina Štefková > Photo Hana Smejkalová 44/ Les enfants terribles ×ØPhilip Glass – Susan Marshall, Les enfants terribles / National Theatre, Prague 2011 / Directed by Alice Nellis / Set design Matěj Cibulka Costumes Kateřina Štefková > Photo Hana Smejkalová G lass’s minimalist opera Les enfants terribles was staged in June 2011 by the National Theatre as part of the Prague Quadrennial of Performance Design and Space, an international exhibition that this year included a number of site-specific projects. For her opera debut, Alice Nellis, director of this production, found a site on the grounds of the psychiatric hospital in Bohnice. While the grounds of this hospital have already been hosting theatre performances for years in the annual Mezi ploty music and theatre festival, which marked its twentieth anniversary in May 2011, unlike that festival the Les enfants terribles project was not intended to bring audiences and hospital patients together in order to fight prejudice and break down barriers. When the audience entered into the hospital gardens shortly before 9 pm for the performance, there was not a single patient around anywhere. As audience members passed through what used to be the hospital’s central kitchen they encountered individuals swaying autistically or giggling childishly, but these ‘patients’, watching the audience arrive, were played by extras. Hospital reality and all its related themes served as nothing more than a descriptive framework for a work in which the characters hover on the edge of normality and more often stray beyond it. Ultimately it was not the context of the hospital that was significant for how the story of Paul and Lise was viewed, but the actual space of the performance, which itself is very inspiring: a cold, clinical room with vaulted ceilings, stained walls, chipped tiles and dingy glass doors; a grim, bleak environment, very appropriate for the depressive story of two siblings enclosed within their own world and unnaturally dependent on each other. Glass’s opera, like the original work it is based on (Jean Cocteau’s novelette, or Jean-Pierre Melville’s 1950 film of the same name), offers just clues to but no explication of Paul and Lise’s world: we learn from the narrator that the two siblings are playing some kind of strange game together – but what is it actually about? They bicker and hurt each other, and then immediately snuggle up together in close cahoots. Incest? Probably, but Nellis does not paint a direct picture of the siblings’ relationship, she too just hints at something. Paul and Lise are young and at first glance seem no different from anyone else. The ostentatiously proud Agathe, by contrast, is the outlandish figure, being played as she is by countertenor Jan Mikušek (but in a restrained and elegant manner, and without any excessive mannerisms). Lise (Alžběta Poláčková) is the dominant female, a strong figure, who makes a great show of being the lady of the house, around whom everything revolves: she is after all caring for her dying mother and slightly hypochondriac brother. Dour in her house dress and apron, after her mother’s death she finds a job and is transformed into a beautiful young lady, strutting the catwalk – but even then she is really still just an ordinary girl. Paul (Pavel Hájek) is a submissive blond, physically weak, as though sapped of the will to live (especially after receiving a curious injury, treacherously inflicted on him early on in the action during a snowball fight by a boy he adores), wrapped up in a robe and choked by a scarf. He sinks easily into melancholy and even apathy, he seems as though he constantly needs to lean on something or someone. Are they deranged? Perhaps they’re just insane with love; or from the excessive bond that they are unable and ultimately even unwilling to break. She tries to leave, but her husband is killed while driving and with that her zest for a new life evaporates. He falls in love with Agathe (and she with him), but he is unable to profess his love. And Lise, whose new life has collapsed, will no longer allow Paul to go away with Agathe and leave her. Better that the siblings should die together. There is a disarming tenderness in the way they are lying next to each other in the end. A relationship equally as fateful as it is perverse, both hostile and tender at the same time. What director Alice Nellis and designer Matěj Cibulka brought most to this production is how they used the specific performance stage in their interpretation of Glass’s opera. They emphasised the reality of the former hospital kitchen with iron hospital beds and small tables and table lamps. They played up all the hopelessness and oppressive bleakness of the place. But then in a flash they were able to transform that into a magical space, reflecting the inner world of Paul and Lise. Glass wrote Les enfants terribles for singers and dancers. Perhaps the dancers were supposed to offer a peek inside the characters’ souls? Nellis scrapped the dancers and made do with somewhat hallucinogenic colourful lighting and nondescriptive, imaginative projections on the walls, ceiling, and glass doors. Flames, static faces, shots of Lise under water. The real space was transformed into a dreamlike place, with snow fluttering down from the ceiling, silhouettes visible through the glass doors or the cloth partition, a red shadow reflecting off the floor tiles… In the second part of the production the creators added a red sports car to the stark space and put portraits with gigantic frames in the gallery. Luxury invades the lives of Paul and Lise, but still Les enfants terribles /45 46/ Les enfants terribles ÙPhilip Glass – Susan Marshall, Les enfants terribles / National Theatre, Prague 2011 / Directed by Alice Nellis / Set design Matěj Cibulka Costumes Kateřina Štefková > Photo Hana Smejkalová nothing changes for those two. The car is moreover a constant reminder of the tragedy that sent Lise running back to Paul and of her futile attempt to escape into the real world somewhere outside. The meaning is clear, and the contrast between expensive toys and the hopeless space is striking. An intermission was required however in order to convert the space and that ultimately detracted from the overall impression of the evening. Regardless, Les enfants terribles offered a unique theatre experience and was one of the best productions in Czech opera theatre last season. Considerable credit for this should go to the conductor Petr Kofroň, who once again managed to reveal how much tension, emotion, and energy there lies in minimalist music. And to the technically and expressively perfect singers (among the others named above also Ljubomir Popović as Gérard, Lise’s suitor and, as a result of Lise’s machinations, later Agathe’s husband). Superb singers and excellent actors! A production put on as part of the biggest international exhibition of stage design, this was a truly inspirational contribution to the focus on performance space. Philip Glass – Susan Marshall: Les enfants terribles, conducted by Petr Kofroň, directed by Alice Nellis, stage and lighting design Matěj Cibulka, costumes Kateřina Štefková, choreographic collaboration Klára Lidová, National Theatre, Prague, premiere 17 / 6 / 2011 in the former kitchen of the psychiatric hospital in Bohnice. les enfants terribles kaleidoscope 48/ kaleidoscope A Play Just Oozing . with Vulgarities Jana Machalická The stage adaptation of the stories from Irvine Welsh’s Acid House put on at Dejvice Theatre (Dejvické divadlo) is a brilliant piece of work. The author’s anti-heroes, who do everything they can to vanquish the emptiness of their lives, have lost nothing of their sharply contoured features, and what’s more, they seem to have acquired that congenial obtuseness so familiar from the Czech pub environment. This seedy pub with its grubby windows and the choicest local idiots lolling about inside can be found in any Czech village or urban periphery. The Dejvice Theatre production was staged by a Slovak team – director Michal Vajdička, dramaturg and author of the adaptation Daniel Majling, and set designer Pavol Andraško – and it is astonishing how smoothly they slid right into the specific and distinctive style of environment the Dejvice stage offers. The combination of the unique poetics of Dejvice Theatre and Vajdička’s creative input gave rise to an extraordinary production, supported by the kind of brilliant interplay between the actors that we have already admired, for instance, in Patrick Marber’s Dealer’s Choice. However, A Blockage in the System is more refined and more ambiguous in meaning. Thematically this title is a good fit with Dejvice Theatre’s overall dramaturgical style; once again the subject is a bunch of hopeless existences who long ago lost the strength to make anything happen and are wallowing in their decline. Majling managed exceedingly well to meld Welsh’s stories into a compact whole. He uncovered their dramatic potential by a simple method: intuitively pinpointing their shared theme – the desperate inability of people to find any meaning in life and break through the crust of crudeness and resignation that surrounds them. He gathered all the characters in one location – a pub – and arranged them so that side by side their stories could play out almost in parallel and at the right moments naturally intersect. The seams between them are nearly invisible, so the audience watches unfold a dark grotesque with climactic situations and twists and surprising resolutions. The adaptation is titled A Blockage in the System and based on a story about a bunch of plumbers who haven’t the ability to fix anything let alone clogged drains. This was the source of some of the motifs and a framework was created for the production as a whole. It is a framework that is a little too faecal though, when we see one of the pub’s patrons (Ivan Trojan) arriving caked in excrement after the clogged drain exploded through the toilet bowl all over the flat. Thus coated in shit, he sits by the stove reading Nietzsche – and in the conclusion he turns out to be God, who is as fed up with humanity and its incompetence and indolence as he is with himself. The scatological atmosphere is inadvertently reminiscent of Werner Schwab and his metaphysical Die Präsidentinnen, though here the message is conveyed in a rawer, more direct manner. Ivan Trojan as the omniscient God in soiled pyjamas is unbearably stubborn and sarcastic and he has the ability to unsettle the intended target of his vengeance with just one look. The target here is dingbat Boab (Václav Neužil), a creature living out a pointless existence in the conditions that he finds himself in. In Neužil’s interpretation, he alternates between verbose feebleminded analyses and weepy aggrievedness. > Photo Hynek Glos Boab’s father is played by Miroslav Krobot, with his typically down-to-earth and authentic manner, which he also employs when his character discloses his feelings and erotic longings for waitress Marge (Jana Holcová). Especially well done is the scene where two university professors burst in on this domain (Martin Pechlát and Martin Myšička), and then very quickly adapt (albeit initially under coercion) and end up in a bloody fistfight with each other. Brilliantly incorporated into the plot is the character of Johnny, who in the book (in the story ‘A Soft Touch’) engages in a wounded soliloquy over his fate. He allows himself to be literally dragged around by his former girlfriend Catriona, who runs off, leaves him with their baby and sleeps with his friend. They then rob him, and she has him regularly beaten up by her brothers. Even so, in the conclusion Catriona (Klára Melíšková) just has to wiggle her finger and Johnny comes crawling to her like a beaten but happy dog. Jaroslav Plesl as Johnny spends most of the production with his back turned to the audience as he’s immersed in playing a gambling machine. His back and his whiney mutterings are expressive, as is the baby strapped across his belly, which is the source of small, subtle, but fantastic gags – as now and then someone caresses the baby’s head and it gets comically caught up in the middle of the fights and skirmishes. Language, packed with vulgarities, styles this production. And how! Here foul words are spewed out and stacked up with the naturalness of breathing. Showing an exceptional virtuosity the actors are able to express almost everything using a handful of vulgar words and create a kind of metalanguage that cannot be beaten for its ability to get a message across. Director Vajdička has created for the stage a showcase of curious figures, moral deviants who use aggression to solve everything and have no idea that another kind of world can exist. A Blockage in the System is an extremely depressing production, but it is a serious statement, even if kaleidoscope this statement is deliberately and sophisticatedly covered in layers of comedy and hyperbole. In terms of the performances the production is simply outstanding, and the company at Dejvice Theatre gets onstage teamwork better than anyone else out there today. Irvine Welsh: A Blockage in the System. Adaptation by Daniel Majling, translation by Olga Bártová, director Michal Vajdička, dramaturgy Daniel Majling and Eva Suková, set design Pavol Andraško, music Marián Čekovský. Dejvice Theatre, Prague, premiere 20 / 2 / 2012. KalibA’s Crime Petra Ježková Director Jan Antonín Pitínský, an expert at adapting classic novels and novellas for the theatre, has staged a version of Karel Václav Rais’s novel Kaliba’s Crime (Kalibův zločin) at Slovácko Theatre (Slovácké divadlo) in Uherské Hradiště. In the late 19th century, Rais wrote what is now still a gripping tale set in the harsh environment of the piedmont region of the Giant Mountains, where human relations and interaction are devoid of any soft social cushioning. The opening of the novel and one of the first scenes of the stage production immediately set the tone: two surviving daughters in the house of their deceased mother are haggling over clothing, dishes, and other pieces of their small inheritance. Vojta, the only son, taciturn, and still single despite his mature age, lives in the house alone with his father, and with no woman to look after the home. Vojta’s brotherin-law takes the initiative and plays matchmaker, and by his efforts a bride soon arrives in the home, but she comes with a mother-in-law and — as it turns out in the end — ‘a bun in the oven’. Simple and naive Vojta is gradually and ever more painfully dispirited and even psychologically tortured by his unloving wife Karla, who married him only to save herself from the shame of becoming a single mother. The machinations of the miserly, grasping mother-in-law are largely responsible for the insufferable situation in the family. The women gradually tighten the noose around their victim’s neck and he has no means of escape. Anguished and emotionally bound to his wife and child, Vojta commits murder in a paroxysm of jealous rage when, after returning home unannounced, he finds his wife with the child’s real father. He has a seizure and dies. The novel, a powerfully dramatic tale, penned largely in dialogue, employing colourful, distinctive language and vernacular elements, begs to be brought to the stage. Pitínský’s production represents the first professional on-stage rendition of Rais’s novel and confirms the work’s extraordinary stage potential. The director took advantage of the musical talent of the Hradiště theatre’s ensemble of actors, weaving a powerful and brilliantly performed polyphony through the story that adds a balladic undertone to Rais’s raw tale. Tomáš Jeřábek’s stage /49 music artfully fuses folkloric motifs with modern performance and makes many of the scenes more powerful (it adds more dynamism, for example, to the sleigh ride scene, in which a happy Vojta brings home his bride; it transforms the village dance into an intoxicatingly wild reel, in which, after pushing her awkward husband aside, Karla swings from one arm to the next). Pitínský’s fingerprints are all over the directorial concept, and of course it’s not a realistic take. The white painted faces of the actors, the stylised acting (though not with all the characters), the imaginative associations, and the grotesque hyperbole. Working with artist Jana Hauskrechtová, Pitínský set the production in almost featureless sets that only loosely suggest a village home. The light, airy interior of the home, lined with whitewashed panelling, is more reminiscent of Northern, evangelical surroundings. The avaricious nature of the mother-in-law, squirreling away possessions on the farm while burying Vojta deeper and deeper in debt, is illustrated > Photo Jan Karásek through the accrual of duvets that fill up almost the entire space of the interior during the second act. The set has two levels; the second floor, above the panelled interior, is where the premonitions appear (a soldier — the child’s real father; the menacing effect of this scene is unfortunately diminished by its overuse); another omen shines through the window curtain like a watermark. (This is how Karla’s mother’s husband, driven off in the past, appears as a portent of Vojta’s fate, and when he dies in poverty the curtain is torn down and his silhouette, in a chair seen through a window, rocks back and forth in a dead, mechanical, metronomic automatism.) The two-tier stage facilitates quick and smooth transitions: with the arrival of spring the entire ‘bottom floor’ that represents the inside of the home rises to reveal a dazzling horizon with a breath-taking mountain backdrop. Grotesque hyperbole also characterises the visual concept. The showy costumes, which distort the actors’ figures with the amplified contours of traditional folk attire, use traditional village clothing only as inspiration and from there they are then creatively and effectively reshaped. Outstanding performances are given by the two central figures, Jitka Josková as the temperamental, childishly capricious, and eventually viscerally female Karla, intolerant to the point of repulsion, and Tomáš Šulaj as the taciturn Vojta 50/ kaleidoscope whose slightly exaggerated, tight-lipped mumbling balances between poignancy and affable parody. Pitínský’s production is a remarkable, imaginative, associative, and opulent scenic collage. It could, however, benefit from a shortening of the text (despite how incredibly vivid, descriptive, and colourful it is linguistically), from fewer musical interludes, and from a greater focus on the dramatic escalation of the intense, desperate situation. Karel Václav Rais: Kaliba’s Crime. Adaptation by Iva Šulajová and Jan Antonín Pitínský, based on an dramatization by Bedřich Vrbský and additional themes by Hubert Krejčí, directed by Jan Antonín Pitínský, dramaturgy Iva Šulajová, set design Jana Hauskrechtová, costumes Eva Jiřikovská, music, lyrics, musical arrangement Tomáš Jeřábek. Slovácko Theatre, Uherské Hradiště, premiere 4 / 3 / 2012. Janáček, Uhde, Morávek, and All These Women Jana Machalická Some men might be traumatised by the idea of all the women in their life coming together and demanding their rights. This kind of disturbing vision is behind Milan Uhde’s new play Leoš, or Most Faithfully Yours (Leoš aneb Tvá nejvěrnější), in which the famous Moravian composer Leoš Janáček has to answer for his eventful emotional and sexual life. This play about Janáček brings the successful creative duo of Milan Uhde and Miloš Štědroň back after several years to Brno’s Goose on a String Theatre (Divadlo Husa na provázku). Uhde’s text is well crafted and open to creative theatrical adaptation. It grasps the subject of a great composer with its many paradoxes and facets, with requisite ambivalence, and, ultimately, even with humour. The text even fits well with the play’s musical format (for which its author, Miloš Štědroň, won an Alfréd Radok Award), both the newly penned variations and the excerpts from Leoš Janáček’s compositions. Music plays constantly, which, surprisingly, is not a bad thing; it sustains the production’s emotional tension, and it proves that musicality is still a tradition at Goose on a String and not just an empty word. Through Janáček’s despotic relationship towards women Uhde managed by simple and dramatically bracing means to put his finger on the composer’s complex nature, extreme sensitivity, and personal fears and insecurities. To some degree he uses a collage technique, disassembling well-known facts and putting them back together again. However, a problem arises in the first half as the message is drowned out by Morávek’s lavish directorial style, which, as usual, chases more rabbits than is prudent. First of all, the choice of setting, a conference on Janáček where musicologists and other scholars argue over the composer’s true nature and over whether it is fitting to divulge ugly things about the private life of a genius, is not the best idea. The characters are constantly shouting over each other and clamouring to the point, it could be said, of unseemly distraction, and they spoil scenes that are otherwise interestingly set up. As a form of defamiliarisation it is rather unnecessary and unwise. Morávek has added a demonic, black-clad violinist, Ms S. (Gabriela Vermelho), who repeatedly enters the action and comments on it musically. The audience comes away from the first half mainly with a sense of total chaos and of having fatally lost hold of the subject. They aren’t helped either by the sound, which has been amped up too high. However the director has done this deliberately, and even the solo performances exceed the bearable decibel level. The actors perform in an open space at the centre of the audience, but also move among the spectators, which creates generally a dynamic effect and helps maintain a good rapport with those watching. Among other things it unobtrusively serves to highlight the performers’ detachment from their roles. Ladislav Vlna’s set consists of several tables covered in layers of leaves and all kinds of props, from books to dishes; Janáček is then extricated out from under these piles in between the library, the kitchen, and the bedroom. The illusion of reality > Photo Jakub Jíra is augmented by large statues of buxom women, each with her hand raised in an erotic gesture, the identifying hand sign of Janáček’s lovers. Including the Cunning Little Vixen, who occasionally walks among the spectators with the Fox. A giant mythical Pegasus hangs upside down from the ceiling. A surprising calm sets in during the second half. The scholars move into the background, the firm contours of the production finally break through, and the actors get to say more, most notably the charismatic Martin Havelka, who plays the composer in his mature years. Obstinate, insufferable, inconsistent, internally divided, constantly succumbing to flights of emotion. An ever suffering and passionate temperament, driven again and again into a terrible state by his egocentric notions of what is or is not permitted within the scope of love. Havelka gives a concentrated performance that overrides all the superfluous noise. He is emotionally spellbinding and makes easy use of comical self-deprecation in various positions, ranging kaleidoscope from a young, exuberant lover to an old man on his last legs whingingly demanding sex. Perhaps he could tone down the exaggerated Ostrava dialect as in places it needlessly borders on the edge of parody. The scenes that work best with the grotesquely sarcastic spirit in which Janáček’s love escapades take place and which is brilliantly evoked by Morávek are those where the composer is trying to persuade Kamila to become his lover (Kamila: ‘Maestro, you are mistaken in your notions about me, I prefer operetta.’). Shining with similar humour and even greater irony are his absurd efforts to woo the opera diva Gabriela Horváthová, whom Eva Vrbková (who is also the Cunning Little Vixen) plays with the magnificently exalted and lofty manner of a dramatic artist, who always has to have the tiara from Verdi’s on her head whenever she speaks with the maestro. Another of the other female characters who stands out is Janáček’s wife Zdenka, convincingly infused with bitterness and anger by Anička Duchaňová. Cuts in the action allow Morávek to merge or reverse timelines and thus create different interpretative parallels right up until the production reaches its tragicomic conclusion, where Janáček, the petrified master, is brought back to life, and his plaster bust, the garnish on every household piano, ultimately begins to show a few cracks. It is just a pity that there has to be so much crushing ballast in the first half. /51 The production, with the subtitle The Stolen Diaries of a Phantom of Erotic Photography, uses a field collection of memories and other biographical material, and that means the relatively well-known sources, motives and facts still in living memory (Miroslav Tichý died last year and his life and work were discussed in great detail in print in the Czech Republic at the time). The production captures its audience mainly thanks to the brilliant performance by Ivana Hloužková in the role of Tichý and to the set design that brings some of the elements of the photographer’s own poetics onto the stage. Ivana Hloužková plays Tichý so convincingly that the audience soon stops wondering why he is actually being performed by a woman. Hloužková starts from a realistic image of an old man with all his physical features (hunched posture, unstable body attitude). She also took inspiration from the photographer’s real life gestures and voice inflections, overdoing them slightly (in the same way, the local dialect is somewhat Milan Uhde, Miloš Štědroň: Leoš, or Most Faithfully Yours. Direction and adaptation by Vladimír Morávek, dramaturgy Miroslav Oščatka, set design Ladislav Vlna, costumes Eva Morávková, music Miloš Štědroň. Goose on a String Theatre, Brno, premiere 11 / 11 / 2011. > Photo archives A Portrait of the Phantom of Erotic Photography Kateřina Slámová Bartošová An eccentric and a voyeur. A man looking like a foolish homeless in a coat bizarrely patched together. A maker of visual objects that, surprisingly enough, can be used to take photographs. Before 1989 (the pre-Velvet Revolution time), a persona non grata that was regularly moved out of way during the Folklore Festival in Kyjov in Moravia from the town to a lunatic asylum. A painter, a DIY man and the author of photographs that won the galleries world-wide by storm in the last decade – in fact against their author’s wish. An exceptionally original and talented artist. A product of successful manipulation by the curators. Whatever. In any way you take it, a man of a great obsession. The photographer Miroslav Tichý from Kyjov can be considered through a prism of all of these perspectives; he also is the subject of the production The Quiet Tarzan (Tichý Tarzan) by the director Anna Petrželková. exaggerated in the production). The result is a fine caricature of an old man endowed with both humour and a dimension of a real personality. By casting a woman in the lead, the production team strived to suppress the motive of voyeurism and tune down a possible superficial, obvious, “downstage centre” interpretation of Tichý as a sexual outcast. There is also a similar slight grotesque shift in the presentation of the other characters: the pair of girls who are the object of Tichý’s attention (Anička Duchaňová, Anežka Kubátová), the female neighbour looking after the artist (Gabriela Štefanová), Kyjov’s swimming-pool playboy (Robert Mikluš), Tichý’s father (Vladimír Hauser) and others. The performers successfully keep the production in the pleasantly rollicking mood that probably has the basis in the photographer’s ironic and detached view of the everyday world, always somewhat laughable with all its private views and vain glorifications. The leitmotif of the obtrusive, sniffing mice that the characters are changing into stresses the grotesque tone of the production even further. These mice are devouring the photos that had been carelessly thrown around the house, but they also represent mice sponging on Tichý’s personality. The basis of the stage design is a Perspex wall smeared with white colour that lends both the onstage action and the images behind it the same patina that features prominently in 52/ kaleidoscope the artist’s own underexposed, overexposed, half-destroyed photographs or blurred memories. It is both simple and efficient. The photographer’s reminiscing has a linear character; it runs through his life and closes at the moment of the unwanted glory that contrasts ironically with the visual artist’s own self-assessment: “If you want to be famous, you have to do something in such a stupid way nobody else would be able to do it as stupidly.” In a way, the production is a sort of theatre docudrama profile of an idiosyncratic personality; some might see it as perhaps too romantic a portrayal of an artist resisting the demands and customs of his society. Nevertheless, this portrayal features excellent acting performances and very pleasant humour. values and certainties of the age that is already moving away, and in their festering existential confusion they are attempting (sometimes using literary quotations or paraphrasing arts movements manifestos) to define the ideals, transformations and uncertainties of the times to come. This upcoming era enters the stage with the hasty rhythm of engines, with the Simona Petrů, Petr Jan Kryštof: The Quiet Tarzan. Director Anna Petrželková, dramaturgy Josef Kovalčuk, set design and costumes Lucie Labajová, music Petr Hromádka. Goose on a String Theatre – The Cellar Stage, Brno, premiere 13 / 1 / 2012. > Photo Jáchym Kliment A Sound Chronicle . of the Beginning . of the Modern Time Kamila Černá taking-off of a hot-air balloon, with the first drive in a car. With the sound vibrations, throbbing, murmuring, amplified whispering, onomatopoeia. The progress, technology, sports, expressed through the exactly dosed words, tone of voice, gestures, movements… And the upcoming political changes also get their due – the Revolution is waving its red fan at the protagonists during their imagined journey to Russia, wittily presented in “basic Russian” – their vain belief in a better, more just world has not been contaminated by the practice yet. That will only happen after a “big, prolonged war” whose turmoil, shooting and explosions conclude Adámek’s sound chronicle. Although the Boca Loca Lab productions programmatically avoid plots based on a classical story, the Fire has a more distinctive storyline compared to the previous productions; its scenario features deftly and unobtrusively inserted ministories about the couples, a lover one and a married one. The dialogues catching the spirit of the era are composed cleverly, originally and with humour; only exceptionally the occasional weakness of Adámek’s productions appears – some of the scenes being either too long or too monotone. There is an obvious parallel with our own times where the eras are breaking and the structure of the world is changing on both sound and idea level. As it was the case a hundred years ago, the values and the authorities of the previous era are disappearing, both the uncomfortable garments and unfashionable ideas are being taken off. One only has to hope that the sound history of the upcoming era will not be started, as the previous one according to Adámek’s production, with explosions and the hurly-burly of the war. The Boca Loca Lab Theatre Company, established in 2007 by the director Jiří Adámek, is among the few Czech theatres that keep getting invitations from the international festivals and that are often better known abroad than at home. Adámek’s original method of directing mixes theatre and music, works with musically composed production structure giving the text specific rhythms and playing with speech onomatopoeia. His productions often react to socially and politically urgent current affairs taking inspiration from the most banal media clichés and news headlines (The Europeans / Evropané), from the mechanism that changes people into politicians (Tics Tics Politics / Tiká, tiká politika), or from the web pages created by people obsessed with wanting to change the world (Changemakers, a production prepared in 2011 at the Berlin Neuköllner Oper Theatre House). They use fragments, quotes, tunes and sounds of the world that happen to be around us and that we stopped to take in. The latest Adámek’s production with Boca Loca Lab, Fire (Požár), is a story of European society and its transformation at the turn of the 19th and 20th Century. There are two timescales that meet and clash on the stage, as it were. The first of them has a sedate rhythm, rippled only by the disputations on arts, nature and existence conducted by Jiří Adámek: Fire. Directed by Jiří Adámek, dramaturgy Martina a small group seated for “a breakfast on the grass” around the Musilová, set design Ivana Kanhäuserová, music Jakub Kudláč. isles of fake greenery. The participants are brought up on the Boca Loca Lab, premiere 21 / 11 / 2011. kaleidoscope Gloriana Is Above All a Magnificent Sight Radmila Hrdinová /53 and impressive spectacle that never bores the audience. He is aided in this by conductor Zbyněk Müller’s musical arrangement, which accents the colourfulness of Britten’s instrumentation, the dynamic and expressional nuancing of intimate scenes and the chorus scenes, and the wit of the period references and influences. An excellent performance is given by the choirs rigorously guided by choirmasters Pavel Vaněk and Jiří Chvála (Kühn’s Children’s Choir). German soprano Gun-Brit Barkmin is perfect in the role of Elizabeth, not just because of the sovereign and emotive sound of her voice, but above all for her extraordinary physical skill and acting ability, including a feeling for the grotesque. Her Elizabeth dominates the production as a truly animate and tragic figure and a unique human being. ‘Gloriana’ is the name the poet Edmund Spenser gave to Queen Elizabeth in the poem he wrote in her praise in the 1590s. This moniker became a generally well-known synonym for the ‘virgin queen’ who ruled England from 1559 to 1604. In name and length of reign she is recalled in the current British monarch Queen Elizabeth II, for whose coronation in 1953 Benjamin Britten composed the opera Gloriana. The Czech premiere of the opera was at the National Theatre (Národní divadlo). It was directed by the former head of the opera company Jiří Heřman, who initiated Benjamin Britten: Gloriana. Directed by Jiří Heřman, conductor Zbyněk Müller, set design Pavel Svoboda, costumes Alexandra the project to have it brought to the Czech stage. Heřman had already made plain his deep affinity with Britten Grusková. National Theatre, Prague, premiere 3 / 3 / 2012. when he directed the latter’s Curlew River seven years ago in the atrium of the Czech Museum of Music (České muzeum hudby). And he’s demonstrating it again with Gloriana, an opera with Animals on the Kitchen CounteR Jan Kerbr > Photo Hana Smejkalová a somewhat comlicated structure that is tied together here by Heřman’s figurative form of direction full of visual symbols. Britten tried to overcome the static nature of a coronation opera by taking up the theme of the inner conflict between ruler and woman, for which he found material in Lytton Strachey’s Elizabeth and Essex: A Tragic History, but his opera remained nonetheless formally and musically split between the spheres of exaltation and intimacy. The story of Elizabeth’s secret love for ‘Robin’, the Earl of Essex, is interspersed with illustrative images of tribute to the sovereign, including masques, a 16thcentury English stage genre. Heřman, however, managed to cope with the splintered structure of the opera by emphasising the symbolic level, represented, among other things, by a giant crown that descends upon the queen like a cinch around her desire and freedom as a woman. In conjunction with choreographer Jan Kodet he imaginatively sets the simple but functional stage alight with the choruses, dancers and soloists to create a stylistically pure Stuffed toys are the main (and only) heroes of Amberville, a production staged by Pilsen’s Alfa Theatre (Divadlo Alfa), based on Tim Davys’s novel of the same name. But this is no theatre for children. The soft fluffy ‘toys’ star here in a tough detective thriller. In his novel Tim Davys created an artificial civilisation of stuffed animals that have their own laws, religion (their god is named Magnus), medicine (including plastic surgery), police, and criminals. The inhabitants of this world form families, but they also indulge in kinky sex (with alternating partners, like the sadomasochist gazelle Sam). They are not however subject to the cycle of life; the Cub List and the Death List determine when they’re born and die. Interference with these lists and the search to find out who has hold of them form the basic plot of the story. Alfa Theatre sets Davys’s story on a kitchen counter, which the stuffed animals move around on. The animals are handled by actors. We can see their hands, their black shirts and lightcoloured neckties, and we can sometimes see the bottom half of their faces (but not their eyes) whenever ‘on behalf’ of the animals the actors eat hot dogs or smoke. Intrigue, sexual escapades, murder, and arrests all take place on the kitchen-counter stage. Director Radovan Lipus inserted some Czech elements into Davys’s fluffy civilisation: the head of a criminal organisation is the Little Mole, a popular Czech cartoon figure, and pop songs by the Czech band Buty underscore the dynamics of the plot. The actors artfully manipulate the animals to create a bizarre fusion of a toy with the flexibility of the human hand. Equally bizarre is the parallel between the animals’ fates and our real 54/ kaleidoscope > Photo Pavel Křivánek world. The tough ‘toy’ morality explores the boundaries between good and evil, how the two intertwine, and the impossibility of using one to the advantage of the other. Despite the relative complexity of the fable, Alfa Theatre’s production of Amberville managed in a humorous and original way and through the fates of stuffed animals to call attention to the rot and artifice that we people inject into our lives. Tim Davys, Marek Pivovar: Amberville, or the Tough Town of Soft Toys. Translated by Robert Novotný, directed by Radovan Lipus, set design David Bazika, dramaturgy Pavel Vašíček. Alfa Theatre Pilsen, world premiere 27 / 5 / 2011. Cross fingers for Bullerbyn Petra Ježková Recent graduates of the Department of Alternative Theatre at the Theatre Faculty of Academy of Performing Arts (DAMU) got together to form their own independent theatre society called Športniki. They created an unostentatious, playful show charged with energy called Back to Bullerbyn. From the cult children book by Astrid Lindgren, they only kept the main characters and the compelling mood within the group of children, with their first loves, their boyish and girlish “deadly confidential” secrets, their group competition in spitting and so on. Starting with the moment the pack of children decide to set up a music band, the story leaves the book that inspired the production and goes on to follow the genesis and the peripeties of the relations within the Swedish legendary pop group ABBA. The second part of the production then becomes a satire on the show business and its traps that often destroy both friendship and human relations. Yet rather than for its storyline, the production is remarkable for its authentic, captivating spirit that the actors are conjuring with a minimum of sparely used means of expression. The show is performed with six small finger puppets representing Lisa, Bosse, Anna, Lasse, Olle and Britta on an empty table, in the air, on the puppeteers own bodies. Through their simplicity, the “Swedish”- style yellow-and-blue knitted puppets are reminiscent of the results of the school handicraft lessons or of DIY crocheted toys. That’s all that is needed. Plenty of use is made of the exceptional musical skills of the actors; the whole show is accompanied by the live acoustic guitar onstage playing by the production’s director Jakub Vašíček together with the most musically endowed of the actresses, Johana Vaňousová, who plays her flute with bravura. It is during the songs with solid polyphony arrangements that are woven into the production structure (the most impressive of them are the Swedish language songs about Bullerbyn written and composed by the author duo Vaňousová – Vašíček) that the possibilities offered by hand puppets are shown in the most effective way: they prank in imaginative choreographies, transcending human limitations, they create aerial images and ornaments remindful of musical clips effects (those usually made using film tricks and special effects). During the applause, there is a witty encore: the actors perform “a scenic manifest” for puppet theatre: they try to recreate the same choreography that had been brilliantly performed by the finger puppets; but in the physical version it becomes a worn out, noisy and clumsy piece of gymnastics. Unobtrusive wit, infectious passion and authenticity are all the main features radiating from the performance as a whole. The production attracted attention in November 2011 at the One Flew over the Puppeteer‘s Nest festival where it was awarded the main prize, the so-called Erik Award, as the most inspiring Czech puppet show of the past season. Both the exceptional reception the production was met with and the clear closeness and teamwork of the interprets led to a logical promise of the follow-up life of the Športniki Company. This young adhoc group – created in January 2011 in Maribor during the preparations for the production of Why? (Zakaj?) at the Maribor Puppet Theatre Studio (Lutkovno gledaliště Maribor) where the authors thought up and rehearsed Back to Bullerbyn – is > Photo Boštjan Lah going to continue its work featuring the same people. The next premiere by this enthusiastic and pleasantly unobtrusive theatre workshop will open in June 2012 with the authorial production of Gagarin! (current information at http://www.sportniki.cz/). Astrid Lindgren and Športniki: Back to Bullerbyn. Director Jakub Vašíček, dramaturgy Tomáš Jarkovský, puppets and costumes Tereza Venclová, music arrangement Športniki. Športniki, performed at Maribor Puppet Theatre Studio, premiere 8 / 3 / 2011. NOTEBOOK /55 notebook Theatre Awards 2011 l Theatre Alfréd Radok Awards 2) The Alfréd Radok Awards, awarded by the Alfréd Radok Foundation, are based on the results of a survey carried out by the magazine The World and Theatre (Svět a divadlo), were 3) awarded for 2011 in following categories: Production of the Year 1) 2) 3) Paul Claudel: The Break of Noon (Polední úděl), Theatre in Dlouhá Street (Divadlo v Dlouhé), Prague, directed by Hana Burešová, adapted by Hana Burešová and Štěpán Otčenášek Patrik Ouředník, Dora Viceníková, Jan Mikulášek: Europeana, National Theatre in Brno – Reduta Theatre (Divadlo Reduta – Národní Divadlo Brno), directed by Jan Mikulášek Philip Glass: Les enfants terribles, National Theatre (Národní divadlo), Prague, directed by Alice Nellis Best Actress Helena Dvořáková – Ysé in the production of Hana Burešová The Break of Noon (Polední úděl), Theatre in Dlouhá Street (Divadlo v Dlouhé), Prague Miroslav Bambušek: Czech War (Česká válka), Theatre on the Ballustrade (Divadlo Na zábradlí), Prague, directed by Martin Glaser Petr Zelenka: Endangered Species (Ohrožené druhy), National Theatre (Národní divadlo), Prague, directed by Petr Zelenka Best Set Design Martin Černý – set design for the production The Break of Noon (Polední úděl) by Paul Claudel, Theatre in Dlouhá Street (Divadlo v Dlouhé), Prague 2-3) Marek Cpin – set design for the production Embarrasing Torture (Trapná muka) by Karel Čapek and Jan Mikulášek, Goose on a String Theatre (Divadlo Husa na provázku), Brno 2-3) Jan Nebeský and Jana Preková – set design for the production King Lear (Král Lear) by William Shakespeare, National Theatre (Národní divadlo), Prague 1) Best Music Miloš Štědroň – music for the play Leoš, or Most Faithfully Yours (Leoš aneb Tvá nejvěrnější), Goose on a String Theatre (Divadlo Husa na provázku), Brno 2) Aleš Březina – music for the play King Lear (Král Lear) Best Actor by William Shakespeare, National Theatre (Národní Martin Pechlát – Andreas Karták in the production of David divadlo), Prague Jařab The Legend of the Holy Drinker (Legenda o svatém 3-4) David Babka – music for the play Wanted Welzl by Karel pijanovi), Prague Chamber Theatre – Comedy Theatre František Tománek, Dejvice Theatre (Dejvické divadlo), (Pražské komorní divadlo – Divadlo Komedie), Prague Prague Xindl X (Ondřej Ládek), Dalibor Cidlinský jr. – music for the play Cyrano!! Cyrano!! Cyrano!! by Edmond Rostand, Theatre of the Year Pavel Kohout, Xindl X, Theatre in Vinohrady (Divadlo na 1) Prague Chamber Theatre – Comedy Theatre (Pražské Vinohradech), Prague komorní divadlo – Divadlo Komedie), Prague 2) National Theatre in Brno – Reduta Theatre (Divadlo Talent of the Year Reduta – Národní Divadlo Brno), Brno Michal Isteník, actor 3-4) Buranteatr, Brno 3-4) Theatre in Dlouhá Street (Divadlo v Dlouhé), Prague 1) Playwright’s Competition Best Czech Play in Repertory 1) David Drábek: Chocolate Eaters (Jedlíci čokolády), Klicpera Theatre (Klicperovo divadlo), Hradec Králové, directed by David Drábek 1) 2) 3) Jan Kratochvíl: Vladimir’s Slut (Vladimirova děvka) Nenad Djapić: Vienna Sin (Vídeňský hřích) Iva Procházková: Gross (Brutto) 56/ NOTEBOOK a century with loutkář ÙA drawing by Marek Zákostelecký dedicated to Loutkář magazine on its 100th anniversary T he Loutkář (Puppeteer Magazine) is the oldest continuously published Czech theatre magazine and the oldest theatre magazine in the world specialising in the art of puppetry and alternative theatre. With 6 issues a year, the magazine regularly brings news, reviews and interviews with some of the world’s leading puppeteers, information and articles about puppetry festivals around the world, theoretical and historical studies, puppet plays and news from UNIMA. The first volume of Loutkář was published in 1912 and the first editor-in-chief became dr. Jindřich Veselý. Veselý recruited several key collaborators – playwrights, visual artists, active puppeteers, teachers and promoters of puppetry who together with him managed to cover a wide range of topics. Loutkář was writing about the importance of puppet theatre, new puppet plays, the work of theatre groups from various towns and villages and their experience, as well as about puppetry abroad. As supplements, the magazine published full texts of puppetry plays and occasionally also remarkable art drawings. The magazine was naturally also writing about history. In May 1929, when a Congress of Puppeteers and a great puppetry exhibition took place in Prague and UNIMA was founded here, Loutkář as its official journal became known internationally. In the thirties, several young personalities enter the scene: Jan Malík, Erik Kolár, Vladimír Šmejkal, Vladimír Matoušek, Karel Baroch, Zdeněk Vyskočil and others. Of this group of young and upcoming puppetry directors, Jan Malík was among the most prominent, not only as a director but also through his many other activities, including journalism. Like Veselý, Jan Malík was a good organiser, knowledgeable about theatre history and with extensive knowledge of puppetry activities in Czechoslovakia and abroad that he applied in the articles written for Loutkář. Already Malík’s first articles in Loutkář focused on issues of set design and technology, it is important to note, however, that all the questions he was asking were primarily seen from the perspective of a director, from which he was also evaluating their importance and means of solving them – a brand new perspective that was very significant in its time. After the Nazi occupation, when the magazine was stopped for several years, the first issue of Loutkář (renewed under the title Loutková scéna) was published already on 15 October NOTEBOOK /57 1945 with the same cover, and with Dr. Jan Malík as editor. In 1951, the magazine was renamed to Československý loutkář (Czechoslovak Puppeteer). Since the end of the sixties more fundamental theoretical studies start appearing, written by Erik Kolár, Miroslav Česal and later also Jan Císař, Karel Makonj, Petr Pavlovský, Henryk Jurkowski and others. Although the magazine was unable to resist the pressure of the period known as Normalisation (particularly in the editorials, some party-dictated material and the evaluations of politically committed plays and shows, as well as in a slight reorientation back towards the East), it still maintained the same level of quality in theory as well as in criticism where it published even ostracised authors. It started focusing more consistently on the topic of “Children and puppets”, previewing the later enormous development of dramatic education. In 1980 Eva Hanžlíková–Křížková, who had already demonstrated her unusual talent for journalism and criticism many times in the magazine, became editor-in-chief of Loutkář. Under her leadership the magazine was successfully broadening the horizons of puppetry, placing puppet theatre in the context of other theatre activities (studio theatres) and art in general, and discovering fields where they overlap. Names of new young authors start appearing in the index; more plays are published, Czech as well as foreign ones, accompanied by a dramaturg’s note. Despite that, a certain ennui started setting in after 1990, and the magazine was slowly losing its core concept. This situation crystallised at a meeting of the Association of Professional Puppeteers at the Skupa Plzeň festival in 1992 with an almost unanimous call for a change. On 1 May 1993, after long negotiations, the magazine (renamed to Loutkář due to the dissolution of Czechoslovakia) was taken over by new editors: Pavel Vašíček as the editor–in–chief and Nina Malíková. In 1993, the publishing of the magazine was taken over by the Theatre Institute, where its office has been located ever since under the heading of the Association for the Publishing of the Loutkář Magazine. On 1 January 2000, the leadership of the magazine changed one more time to current editor–in–chief Nina Malíková. ÙOne of the first issues of Loutkář magazine ÙLoutkář as it looks today 58/ NOTEBOOK Twenty Years of the Kylián Foundation in Prague ÙGala performance of Different Shores at the New Stage of the National Theatre, Prague 2011 T he Kylián Foundation was established in 1988 in The Hague, Netherlands, by the Czech dancer, choreographer, and long-time director of the Nederlands Dans Theater, Jiří Kylián. Its objective has been to support new dance activities, help young performers and choreographers with their start into professional life, and encourage them in their creative work. After the Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia, Jiří Kylián began thinking about how he could contribute to his native country and help it overcome forty years of isolation from the developments in modern dance to the west of the country’s borders. He decided to establish a branch of his foundation in Prague. In May 1991 Jiří Kylián brought the Nederlands Dans Theater to Prague to perform at the Prague Spring Festival. On this occasion and in the presence of Jiří Kylián personally the Kylián Foundation in Prague was established at the Theatre Institute. Given the motives that led Kylián to open this foundation it is obvious that it differed in character from other such foundations that were operating in Czechoslovakia. The foundation was not about giving direct financial support for individuals or projects, but about educational activities and the provision of practical and moral assistance from the Dutch side, represented by the Kylián Foundation in The Hague and by the Dance Institute in Amsterdam. Within the scope of these activities exchanges and study visits were organised for dance teachers, choreographers, and performers between the Netherlands and the Czech Republic. In 1998 cooperation between the Theatre Institute and the Kylián Foundation in Prague entered a new phase. In the years that had passed the Czech dance scene had changed substantially; it became unnecessary to put Czech artists in touch with contacts abroad. The foundation therefore turned its attention to activities geared towards education and consultation. In connection with this change the foundation assumed a new name, the Kylián Videotheque. Its work began to revolve around its extensive collection of video recordings, which currently contains more than 2100 recordings of Czech and foreign productions, documentaries on the history and present of dance, profiles of particular figures, recordings of theatre events and seminars. All this encompasses not just dance and ballet, but also non-verbal theatre, alternative groups, scenic dance, and movement theatre. These collections are accessible to the public on the premises of the videotheque based at the Arts and Theatre Institute (items in the collection are non-circulating). In 2011 the transfer of the video collections from the Netherlands was definitively completed. The remaining items in Jiří Kylián’s personal and artistic archive were also relocated to the Prague branch, including documents relating to his work for various dance companies around the world, reviews, interviews, and press responses in different languages. The Kylián Videotheque is thus currently the only institution in which researchers have access to archive materials about Jiří Kylián. The collection also contains written materials relating to the development of some of his choreographic works, theatre programmes, theatre posters, personal correspondence, prizes awarded to Kylián’s work, and so on. The Kylián Videotheque organises seminars and screenings in various towns in the Czech Republic. Since 1998 it has cooperated closely with NIPOS-ARTAMA on the continuing education of choreographers in the field of stage dance and of teachers working at such places as basic schools for the arts and youth centres, and it has worked with the dance festivals Na třikrát (Brno), SIRAEX (Klášterec nad Ohří) and a summer school for actors (Šumperk). In the past two years, in cooperation with Zóna dance association (Taneční NOTEBOOK sdružení Zóna), the Kylián Videotheque has organised regular seminars and video screenings in Ostrava and Nový Jičín. In November 2011 the Kylián Foundation celebrated its twentieth anniversary and marked two decades of cooperation with the Theatre Institute in Prague (now the Arts and Theatre Institute). As part of celebrations of this anniversary a number of workshops, seminars, and screenings were organised, culminating in the gala performance of Different Shores (Různé břehy) at the New Stage of the National Theatre in Prague. The celebrations were organised by the Arts and Theatre Institute /59 in cooperation with the dance group 420PEOPLE, the Jiří Kylián Foundation in The Hague, the New Stage of the National Theatre, the Institute of Lighting Design, the National Theatre Ballet, with the support of the Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic, the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in Prague, the Embassy of the United States in Prague, Fondation BNP Paribas, the Czech-German Fund for the Future, and media partners. This event was also the occasion of the christening of the new book Different Shores – Choreographer Jiří Kylián between The Hague and Prague (Různé břehy – choreograf Jiří Kylián mezi Haagem a Prahou). Czech Theatres in Numbers In 2011 a total of 151 theatres and permanent groups of artists regularly and consistently participated in theatre life in the Czech Republic. There are 49 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 (2 theatres and 3 theatre schools). There are other 39 permanent stages without their own company, financed from public funds (local budgets). All the Czech theatres presented a total of 1 700 titles and 2 632 productions. 693 premieres were presented. A total of 27 866 performances took place in the Czech Republic which were seen by more than 5,7 million theatre goers (average attendance 78 %). The Czech companies gave 808 performances abroad. New Books New Books l New Books l l Věra Ptáčková, Barbora Příhodová, Simona Rybáková: Czech Theatre Costume (CZ / ENG) (Český divadelní kostým) This is the first ever book on theatre costumes in the Czech lands, accompanied by a key text by Věra Ptáčková, the author of the legendary tome Czech Stage Design of the Twentieth Century, and with notes on the contemporary use of theatre costume written by Barbora Příhodová and insights into Czech costume written by the designer Simona Rybáková. It contains approximately 400 illustrations, most of them drawn from the abundant archives of the Arts and Theatre Institute in Prague (Department of Collections and Archive and the Photographic Collection). Arts and Theatre Institute and Pražská scéna, Prague 2011, 263 pp., ISBN 978-80-7008-258-4 (ATI) ISBN 978-80-86102-71-9 (Pražská scéna) l New Books 60/ NOTEBOOK New Books l New Books l l Isabelle Lanzová, Dorota Gremlicová, Elvíra Němečková, Roman Vašek: Different Shores: Jiří Kylián between The Hague and Prague (CZ) (Různé břehy. Choreograf Jiří Kylián mezi Haagem a Prahou) Different Shores: Jiří Kylián between The Hague and Prague is the most in-depth monograph devoted to Jiří Kylián to date, divided into three sections and spread over 301 glossy pages. The first section traces Kylián’s work chronologically and looks at its development at Nederlands Dans Theater up until 1995. The core chapter in this section is the translation of a text by Dutch dance critic Isabelle Lanz titled ‘A Garden of Dance’. The section also includes a chapter by Dorota Gremlicová and Elvíra Němečková on Kylián’s work between 1995 and 2010, and a chapter by Dorota Gremlicová examining the characteristic features of Kylián’s choreographic style and the changes it has undergone in the first decade of the third millennium. The second section focuses on the ties between Jiří Kylián and first Czechoslovakia and now the Czech Republic. Elvíra Němečková explores Kylián’s early years in dance in Czechoslovakia in the 1960s, and Roman Vašek describes how Kylián’s work made its way into Czechoslovakia in the normalisation period after 1968 and then Kylián’s return to the Czech Republic after 1989. The third section contains several lists (e.g. a list of recordings of Kylián’s choreographic works stored in the Kylián Videotheque in Prague) and an annotated bibliography. The numerous illustrations convey to readers the atmosphere of Kylián’s dance world, and the book even includes an English summary. Arts and Theatre Institute, Prague 2011, 301 pp. ISBN 978-80-7008-267-6 l Eva Uhlířová: The Creative Will (CZ) (Vůle k tvorbě) Czech Theatre Editions – Essays, Criticism, Analyses Series Eva Uhlířová (1933–1969) was a scholar of Romance languages, a theatre arts teacher, and a translator, who in 1957– 1968, when she was publishing her theatre studies and reviews, very quickly developed into one of the most noteworthy young theatre critics and journalists. She ended her life at the close of the 1960s. Her writings on theatre are an ideal example of intellectual emancipation from the mandatory politicalaesthetic directives imposed in the 1950s. They show the growth of one member of the generation of critics and theorists born in the 1930s, whose names are still well-known (Jaroslav Vostrý, Leoš Suchařípa, Jan Císař, Milan Lukeš, Zdeněk Hořínek, Jindřich Černý), and who became the most productive thinkers in the theatre arts in their day. Eva Uhlířová was a member of this generation and one of its most talented figures, exceptional in her gifts and her fate. She was a person of high New Books l New Books NOTEBOOK New Books l New Books l standards and deep erudition, firm in character and extremely conscientious. This selection of her studies and critical writings on the playwrights and phenomena in the theatre of that period (Ionesco, Genet, Dürrenmatt, Topol, Havel) constitutes a rich addition to this publishing series devoted to Czech theatre criticism and theory. The book also includes a study by Jana Patočková, the book’s editor, a complete bibliography, notes, and an index. Arts and Theatre Institute, Prague 2011, 564 pp. ISBN 978-80-7008-281-2 l Ivo Svetina (ed.): Occupying Spaces. Experimental Theatre in Central Europe 1950–2010 (ENG) This English-language publication presents for the first time in history a comprehensive overview of the development of experimental theatre in the countries of central Europe. The publication is part of the outcome of the project “Theatre Architecture in Central Europe” and on almost 600 pages it presents texts by 16 authors from the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia. The texts are accompanied by 150 black-and-white and colour photographs and there is an index of names at the end of the book. Arts and Theatre Institute, Prague 2011, 592 pp. ISBN 978-961-6860-01-7 l Arnold Aronson (ed.): The Disappearing Stage: Reflections on the 2011 Prague Quadrennial (ENG) The Disappearing Stage is a book of reflections on the recent 12th edition of the Prague Quadrennial of Performance Design and Space. The authors include both domestic and foreign theorists and artists: Marvin Carlson (USA), Christopher Baugh (UK), Thea Brejzek (DE), Beth Weinstein (USA), Guy Gutman (IL) and Barbora Příhodová (CZ). The publication’s editor as well as author of last essay is American theatre theorist Arnold Aronson. The book’s essays look at various projects or aspects of the 2011 Prague Quadrennial, but many of which serve as a starting point for a deeper theoretical evaluation of contemporary theatre and scenography. Arts and Theatre Institute, Prague 2011, 100 pp. ISBN 78-80-7008-283-6 New Books l /61 New Books 62/ NOTEBOOK New Books l New Books l l Bohumil Nekolný, Eva Žáková and col.: Study of the Contemporary State of the Support for the Arts, Volume II (CZ) (Studie současného stavu podpory umění – Svazek II) Volume II of the Study of the Contemporary State of Support for the Arts is the working output of the Study of the State, Structure, Conditions, and Funding of the Arts in the Czech Republic project, supported by the Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic, and realized by the Arts Institute from 2006 to 2011. This publication follows Volume I published in 2009. The basic subject of the both volumes is the situation of professional arts in the fields of the so called live arts (i.e. theatre, dance, music, visual arts, literature, film) since 1989. Volume I elaborates on the definition and specification of the particular domains, their history until 1989, the transformation of their institutional base after 1989, the historical, theoretical, and critical reflection, and the issue of education and research. Volume II deals with the issues of funding, legislature, social matters, addressees of works of arts and performances, international cooperation, and state of the fields of arts as of 2010. The conclusion brings Miroslav Petříček’s reflection on the role of our arts and culture in the European context. Arts and Theatre Institute, Prague 2011, 225 pp. ISBN 978-80-7008-266-9 l Martina Černá, Jitka Sloupová, Marie Špalová (eds.): GAME’S NOT OVER – New Czech Plays (not only) for Your Tablet / E-Reader (ENG) The electronic book GAME’S NOT OVER – New Czech Plays (not only) for Your Tablet / E-Reader brings you recent plays by Czech authors. Though the publication includes a broad spectrum of playwrights – beginning with the youngest generation aged 35 and under (Radmila Adamová, Magdaléna Frydrych Gregorová, Petr Kolečko, Kateřina Rudčenková), middle-aged authors (David Drábek, Roman Sikora, Petr Zelenka), right through to the mature doyens of the Czech cultural scene (Arnošt Goldflam, Václav Havel, Milan Uhde) – all authors included are currently active figures who have participated in contemporary Czech theatre not only in the roles of playwrights and authors but also as literary managers, directors or artistic directors. Two Slovak authors – Vladislava Fekete and Viliam Klimáček – are included as a special bonus in the publication. The book is published by the Arts and Theatre Institute in cooperation with the agencies Aura-Pont and DILIA. Free download at www.theatre.cz, 702 pp. ISBN 978-80-7008-265-2 New Books l New Books NOTEBOOK New Books l New Books l l Martina Černá (ed.): Czech Theatre Guide (ENG) This English-language guide to the Czech theatre is a handbook that provides clear and easy orientation in the goings on in Czech theatre. The publication is divided into two parts. The introductory texts offer a brief excursion into the contexts of individual areas of theatre life (funding, the theatre network, festivals, historical context, etc.), the second part contains a directory of Czech theatres, theatre organisations, festivals, venues, schools, periodicals and publishers. The publication is intended for both professionals and lay people with an interest in Czech theatre. Arts and Theatre Institute, Prague 2011, 138 pp. ISBN 978-80-7008-275-1 l Jana Návratová (ed.): Czech Dance Guide (ENG) The Czech Dance Guide presents profiles of Czech dance companies, personalities, venues, schools and other subjects who operate in the field of contemporary and classical dance. The publication also contains a short historical overview of Czech professional dance. Arts and Theatre Institute, Prague 2011, 90 pp. ISBN 978-80-7008-280-5 l Viktor Debnár and Jaroslav Balvín (eds.): Czech Literature Guide (ENG) The Czech Literature Guide presents a panorama of the contemporary life of Czech literature with a short historical overview. It is designed for anyone with an interest, whether layperson or professional, in Czech literary culture and its milieu. Arts and Theatre Institute, Prague 2011, 94 pp. ISBN 978-80-7008-272-0 l Lenka Dohnalová (ed.): Czech Music Guide (ENG) The Czech Music Guide presents an up-to-date panorama of Czech music life with a short historical overview for everyone with an interest, whether layperson or professional, in understanding Czech music culture and its milieu. Contents: About the Czech Republic, A Short History of Music, Contemporary Music Life, Current Culture Policy, Music Institutions, The Music Education System, Archives, Science and Research Centres, Journals, Information Centres, Regional Panorama, Links. Arts and Theatre Institute, Prague 2011, 72 pp. ISBN 978-80-7008-269-0 New Books l /63 New Books 64/ NOTEBOOK New Books l New Books l l Marie Jirásková and Pavel Jirásek: Puppets and Modernism (CZ) (Loutka a moderna) Layout: Klára Kvízová, Petr Krejzek Puppets and Modernism: The Visual Quality of Czech Puppetry of Family, Group Theatres and Arts Stages in the First Half of the 20th Century as a Distinctive Reflection of the Avant-garde and Modernist Ventures of Czech Fine Artists (Loutka a moderna – vizualita českého loutkového rodinného divadla, spolkového divadla a uměleckých scén v první polovině 20. století jako osobitý odraz avantgardních a modernistických snah českých výtvarných umělců) is a scenographer’s look at a half century of development of puppetry set design during a time when this art form experienced an extraordinary boom in the Czech lands. The publication examines the connections between artists and specifically the top Czech figures behind various styles and fields – designers, woodcutters, painters, and scenographers – and the development of avant-garde and modernist work in European art. It describes the changes in the puppetry stage over time, from historicism, Art Nouveau and Symbolism, to Impressionist and Expressionist influences, to Cubism and Art Deco, and finally fundamental and brightly coloured Functionalism or the shiny stage-show stylisations. The book contains 750 illustrations including period photographs of puppetry performances, stage, costume, and puppet designs, photographs of puppets, posters, programmes, drawings, ex libris, caricatures, visual images of puppetry periodicals, and a collection of new colour photographs showcasing unique items in the most important Czech public and private puppetry collections. The publication serves as a comprehensive and systematic guide to puppetry scenography of the first half of the 20th century. The book came in first in the contest for Most Beautiful Book of the Year 2011 in the category of scholarly and scientific publications. Arbor vitae and Janáčkova akademie múzických umění, Brno 2011, 456 pp., ISBN: 978-80-87164-85-3 l Christian M. Billing and Pavel Drábek (eds.): Czech Stage Art and Stage Design (ENG) Special Issue of Theatralia / Yorick 2011/1 This volume is a special issue of the peer-reviewed journal Theatralia/Yorick, devoted to new historical and theoretical studies of Czech Stage Art and Stage Design – both diachronically and as an investigation of synchronic practices specific to a number of key historical periods, individual artists and important theoreticians. The essays in this volume include several studies of discrete historical phenomena: medieval stage practice and its scenographic elements (Petr Uličný and Kateřina Vršecká); the costuming and scenic practices of central European Baroque theatres (Jana Spáčilová and Sylva Marková); the scenographic legacy of late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century Czech family New Books l New Books NOTEBOOK New Books l New Books l New Books l /65 New Books marionette theatres (Jaroslav Blecha); the invention and early performance programmes of the Laterna Magika of Josef Svoboda and Alfréd Radok (Eva Stehlíková); and a study examining the radical disruption of stage space undertaken in Moravian and Silesian theatre from 1960 to 1989 (Tatjana Lazorčákova). Other essays focus in detail on selected aspects of the work of important Czech practitioners: the ballet scenography of František Zelenka (Lada Bartošová); the scenic designs of Karel Zmrzlý (Lucie Pelikánová); the paintings and set designs of Jaroslav Malina (Joseph E. Brandesky). Also contained are two important studies evaluating Czech articulations of the significance of scenography as a discrete sub‑discipline of theoretical inquiry within the wider field of Theatre and Performance Studies: an account of the project of the Czech Scenographic Encyclopaedia and the series of journal issues it advanced – the Prolegomena (Šárka Havlíčková Kysová); and an evaluation of early Czech contributions to the theorisation of scenography (Barbora Příhodová). Finally, there are two important appendices: one giving a detailed account of the extensive Czech collections held in the Theatre Research Institute of Ohio State University (Nena Couch); and a second providing a detailed explanation of the creative design process that led to a recent Czech production at the National Theatre Brno of The Excursion of Mr Brouček to the Moon (Výlet pana Broučka do Měsíce) by Leoš Janáček (Pamela Howard). Masaryk University, Brno 2011, 308 pp., ISSN 1803-845X l Petr Kolaj: The Landscape of a Life. A portrait of Professor Ivan Vyskočil (CZ, with english subtitles) (Krajina osudu – portrét profesora Ivana Vyskočila) The film takes us into the landscape of fateful places and moments of creation of the writter, dramatist, actor and pedagogue Ivan Vyskočil (born 1929). The actual enviroment acts out real motifs from his stories and plays for us. We are witness to meetings with his colleagues and friends (like actor Leoš Suchařípa, theatre maker Jiří Suchý, and dramatist Václav Havel). We also look at his work with students at the Theatre Faculty of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague (DAMU), at the classes of his original authorial discipline, Inter(acting) With the Inner Partner. In the film you will also hear Vyskočil’s recollections of his creative and personal relationships with Swiss dramatist Friedrich Dürrenmatt and Czech philosopher Jan Patočka. Accompanied by the singing of Vyskočil’s close friend Eva Olmerová, we continuously return to the monument of the unfinished bridge, which becomes the leitmotiv of the entire film. Film with english subtitles, Academy of Performing Arts and Arts and Theatre Institute, Prague 2011 l Czech Performance Collection (ENG) catalogue + DVD A collection of Czech theatre productions that are creating innovative and interesting work accessible to international audiences and currently available for touring activities. The catalogue contains information on productions divided into the genres of theatre, opera, dance, puppet theatre and physical/ visual/experimental theatre. The catalogue contains a brochure with information on individual productions (authors, summaries of productions, information about the company, photographs, technical requirements, and other practical information for potential guest engagements) and a DVD with excerpts from all the productions. Czech Performance Collection is also available in electronic form on the Information Website about Czech Theatre www.theatre.cz/performance-in-profile. 66/ NOTEBOOK New Czech Plays in Repertory Alfréd Radok Awards 2011 Playwright’s Competition l Jan Kratochvíl: Vladimir’s Slut (Vladimirova děvka) 7 men, 3 women The play is extraordinarily built on the ground plan of an absurd drama. The repeated motives and situations (the pub landlord who serves in a remote Scandinavian village, Olaf, the regular, bottles of alcohol, an unnecessary killing of a mare, etc.), flashbacks when in framework of Olaf’s repeated story many more village people appear and shape the cruel story: a slut had arrived into the village with her bastard son and was accepted into a house (that of Vladimir) and died soon afterwards. The bastard son (eventually we find out it’s Olaf himself, the main teller of the story) obviously slept with Vladimir’s wife and is killed by him as a consequence. At the end, the text hints at Olaf killing the landlord. The other characters become the ghosts of the past, coming to the pub as regulars and then leaving Olaf with the Landlord alone. The storyline is constantly questioned (“people keep saying that”) and make even Olaf insecure: he wants to put the story together again (he’s probably already dead) but the landlord is only doing his job not helping Olaf with his story – on the contrary, he lets Olaf bring in the characters from the past and construct an insecure storyline that can only be one of the possible interpretations of what really happened. The winning entry in Alfréd Radok Playwright's Competition for 2011. l Nenad Djapić: Vienna Sin (Vídeňský hřích) 2 men, 1 woman In the subtitle, the author of the play taking place in Vienna’s police card index department, says it is a “scenic historical-criminological, almost musicological time slice image of the 1801.” In fact, it is post-pseudo-baroque, almost postpseudo-neo-baroque dialogue mesh with unsure ending: it also deals with the issue of coffee grains prophecy (the coffee finely ground) and cooked goat’s head, and also the phenomenon of Czech surnames in Vienna’s phonebook. The main duo of protagonists, the Czech servant Růžena Čížková and a young police inspector Hautschrubber, is complemented by a mute role of a police officer sent sometimes by the inspector to get things. The main storyline, interrogation of Růžena in connection of her husband’s death (did he drink the potash lye himself while drunk, or did she have a hand in it?) and in connection of her illegal profession as a midwife reminds of Cimrman-like mystification humour in many ways, but it is only a bare skeleton on which Růžena‘s lines, full of black humour, resembling both Švejk and Hrabal, sometimes almost surreal, spiced with dialect, religious superstitions and human interest stories about the forced abortions of Czech maids in Vienna after “the landlord mistook their rooms for toilet”, about local criminal underworld or absurd visions of future through the means of prophecy from coffee grains and cooked goat’s head. On the other hand, the inspector wants Růžena to tell him whether he will become famous for solving Mozart’s murder – did Salieri kill him, or not? But the street-wise Růžena only sees anything in the future (for instance Oscar for Amadeus by Miloš Forman and the eponymous play by P. Shaffer): the play is open-ended and, as in its beginning, the inspector uses remote control to make the two barrel organs play music by Mozart and Salieri… The play won the second place in Alfréd Radok Playwright's Competition for 2011. l Iva Procházková: Gross (Brutto) 9 men, 6 women A dramatic collage The author calls her play “a dramatic collage with a fixed axis for the story and mosaic structure of the storyline. The production presumes the division of the set into parallel ‘islands’ of life that can repeatedly shift from the periphery of attention into its centre; everything is latently present, it can be activated at any time but the island can also suddenly, unexpectedly go under and disappear from our section of perception.” Great stress is being put onto the imagery (projection, unexpected images) and sound/music components of the text. From the fragments of individual characters’ fates, an extraordinary story of a gay man in the contemporary postCommunist Czech society emerges. The play won the third place in Alfréd Radok Playwright's Competition for 2011. l David Drábek: Chocolate Eaters (Jedlíci čokolády) 4 men, 4 women The Heavenly Love comes to Bohemia. A story of three sisters trying to get back on their feet after their father had died aged sixty, while taking a driving lesson. The youngest of the sisters, Valérie suffers from agoraphobia and didn’t leave the house since his death, the oldest one, Róza, ate herself to two hundred kilograms of weight, and the middle sister, Helena, is the only one earning her living and keeping the suburban house working. In his last will, the father bequeathed Valérie his pink Superman costume he was using during his life to save anonymously the NOTEBOOK /67 New Czech Plays in Repertory life’s losers. Will it help his own children now? Then three men get into the three sisters’ way: a dog walker Jan wearing a flat cap on his head and an addiction in his heart, the dedicated Ludvík with a broken grocery van, and Samuel, with his John Lennon imitations and suicidal tendencies. Who will be putting on the pink Superman costume in the end? And who will save whom in the end? The play won the second place in Alfréd Radok Playwright's Competition for 2010. l Arnošt Goldflam: Wobbly Boards (Vratká prkna) 5 men, 3 women A comedy from the theatre world – nevertheless, a bit sad. The splendours and miseries of the theatre, seen through a perspective both ironic and self-ironic, both the outside and the inside view. The boards that represent the world – as they are called in the Czech theatre – are indeed very wobbly though, at the same time, very attractive. These boards are a world where reality morphs into fantasy and dreams. The actors perform, sometimes consciously, sometimes involuntarily, as much on the stage as they do backstage and in their personal lives. But that does not mean they are not living it all through. On the contrary, they transfer their exacerbated, often hyperbolized feelings from theatre into everyday life. It’s exactly this life-long schizophrenia Arnošt Goldflam tells about with relish in his play. The actor Radek, his wife Eva with her lover of the moment, a young actor called Vlasta, form a love triangle surrounded by other characters of people linked to the theatre – including very sceptical Jaruška, eternally waiting for the success that never comes, a and sexy Liduška, a stage manager with an unfulfilled desire to get a role and finding selfrealisation in a transvestite show, and a Napoleon-like director oscillating between attacks of creativity and powerless rage. The play ends at the party following a successful premiere, with the usual social interactions featuring wine, women and singing. The situations from the play are intermeshed with personal relationships, and alcohol causes both unexpected conjunctions and notoriously well known situations linked to characters’ self-obsessions, compulsive desire to confirm one’s own talent, ability to charm the others and soul-searching monologues. l Lenka Lagronová: From the Stardust (Z prachu hvězd) 4 women Three daughters are living together with their mother in an abandoned house. Táňa and Dáša are remembering their former shared love, a man they were linked to more by a very intensive friendship that never transcended into a sexual relationship; and, despite or because of that fact, they are unable to get over his death. On the other hand, the youngest of them, slightly retarded Kája uses a flash lamp and a transistor radio trying to “send signals” to the extra-terrestrials – this is the “legacy” of their father who told them everything about conquering space. The only “reasonable” person left in the family is the Mother, but behind her hard pragmatism and down-to-earth attitude one can feel the very same loneliness and desire for love and hope her daughters have. The closing “theatre of the universe”, the apparition of many celestial phenomena, could offer a feeling of a happy end, i.e. the answer to the sisters’ call, but everything stays open. The play was awarded the second place in the competition for the best play in Czech or Slovak language DRÁMA 2010. l Karel Steigerwald: My Remote Country (Má vzdálená vlast) 6 men, 5 women Dagmar Šimková spent fifteen years in a Communist jail. She described her experience there very truthfully, in a suggestive way and with unexpected literary beauty in her book, We were there, too. The extraordinarily strong description of what the Communist regime was able to do was the inspiration for the play, set in our times, called My remote country. The theme of the play is not the cruelty of the 1950s regime but the way the Czech society is nowadays unable to deal with it. Our failure to see the past openly and to have an opinion produces only one thing – hiding the past and keeping silent about it. The protagonist tries, unsuccessfully, to get a legal rehabilitation, and sees the vanity and comic side to her current efforts. She survived the fifteen years in a jail fighting a clearly defined enemy. Nowadays the enemy is blurred, without decisively defined borders or clarity. The goal of our society nowadays is to create a past with which we could live easily and without problems. The play is reflecting on this tragicomically, looking both at the Czech efforts to deal with the past and at the impossibility and vanity to put a fat black line behind it with irony; at the lamentable form of Czech way of farewell to Communism. 68/ NOTEBOOK New Czech Plays in Repertory l Pavel Trtílek: Artists’ Night Out l Petr Zelenka: Endangered Species 4 men 3 women A satire portraying the contemporary artists’ world and our reality’s shallowness. Monika and Radek just moved into a new house somewhere in the suburbs. For the house-warming party they invited some of their friends from the somewhat questionable “artistic circles” to show them their bizarre world full of hypocrisy. Those invited include a female weather forecast dramaturg, an amateur photographer, a debutant writer and a movie director. Both Monika, a PR person for a ballet ensemble, and her husband Radek, an unsuccessful actor, also think of themselves as artists. Gee! A snowstorm prevents the guests from leaving thus disrupting the housewarming party. Gee! The reality of the housewarming mixes with dreams where the characters become quite different people! Gee! Anxiety, cakes, embarrassment, nostalgia, wine, grief, desire for both a Saab car and discovery of one’s own soul, for salvation, for the end, for a new beginning, and, in fact, for everything… “Gee, what will the guests say!” The play won the Third Prize in the Goose on the String Theatre Konstantin Treplev Award literary competition. 4 men, 2 women The play from contemporary Prague shows the world of advertisement and business of pharmaceutical giant companies. The world-wide renowned photographer and past exile, known as Jeremy (60), is lately out of luck. Only the efforts to find better care for his father-in-law who suffers from Alzheimer make him accept a lucrative offer to work with an advertisement agency Pitch Productions on a campaign for Cogitamin, a medicine produced by Delete Company. The man who decides about the campaign is Jeremys former classmate, a homosexual Jan Šustr. Jeremys wife Jana shows specialist interest in Cogitamin. According to her the drug is suspect for dangerous side-effects that could lead to outbreak of some brain illnesses, but Jan keeps referring to successful tests. Pitch productions finally lose the tender anyway and Jeremy, despite Jana’s protests (in the meantime, she got a position with Delete), starts fighting the corporation on the level of a professional campaign. Jeremy beats the company by bringing Jana’s father in a wheelchair to his press conference to demonstrate possible consequences of the medicine. This misuse of a member of her family makes Jana decide to leave Jeremy. Cogitamin is taken off free sale. Although Jana admits Jeremy was right, she refuses to return to him and instead is taking care of Jan who is recovering from his personal crash. Jeremy is offered a high position at another multinational pharmaceutical company which he accepts. (Večer umělců) l Milan Uhde / Miloš Štědroň: Leoš, or Most Faithfully Yours (Leoš aneb Tvá nejvěrnější) variable casting, doubling (for instance, 8 men, 7 women) Three visions of the composer Leoš Janáček (as a boy, as a young man and as an adult) and six women (Marička, Amálie W., Mrs Sch., Zdenka, Gabriela H., Kamila St.) on the ground plan of notebooks of very laughable loves are discovering their hearts, longings and disappointments… The direct commission from the Goose on the String Theatre in Brno and a collaboration by the composer Miloš Štědroň and Milan Uhde led to this musical and dramatic production about Leoš Janáček’s life in the specific poetics of the famous experimental theatre in Brno that opened on November 11, 2011. From the well-known and less well-known historical facts, the authors create the image of the genius’ private life framed by the tragicomical and fateful ascent by the composer to the hill in Hukvaldy side by side with his young Muse Kamila. The dramatic scenes mapping Janáček’s private troubles, his laughable loves are set against the fragments of his genius music. The third level of the text is a “scientific” argument by two academics about the place love played in Leoš Janáček’s music… (Ohrožené druhy) l Buranteatr (after the original by Moli re): The Misanthropist (Misantrop) 5 men, 3 women This adaptation of ’s famous tragicomedy was created out of group improvisations on scenes from the original work that acquired a fixed form over the course of rehearsals. tale is taken from its noble Roccoco parlour and resituated in a teambuilding weekend of an advertising agency, to which successful photographer Alcest has come to see his girlfriend Celimena after having been charged for releasing photographs of a corrupt meeting that took place between an important politician and a prominent lobbyist. Although thoroughly transported into the present day, the play respects plot and characters — and tragicomic climax, when humiliated before everyone, Celimena refuses to give up her career, and instead of going to live with Alcest ‘away from civilisation’ prefers to make a pathetic apology to everyone. notebook beyond everydayness – theatre architecture in central europe unique book of extraordinary dimensions presenting 73+ most interesting theatre buildings Warsaw, Grand Theatre - National Opera ´TACE is not just an overview of history, but a journey rediscovering the nature of Central Europe.´ (from the text of the TACE exhibition) Igor Kovačevič from the region of central europe The book presents detailed information about the history of 73 of the most important theatre buildings in six countries of the Central Europe: Austria, the Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and Slovenia. Each text is accompanied by rich photographic documentation and building ground plans and sections having an unified pattern that facilitates their mutual comparison. Theatre architecture is recorded in the book as a characteristic component of human culture and as a specific building type which, apart from often being itself a unique and artistically valuable structure, also creates space for another kind of art – theatre art. 608 pages / ISBN 978-80-7258-364-5 Gustaw Holoubek Dramatic Theatre of the City of Warsaw ´The singular role that theatre played during the fall of the Iron Curtain, as the epicentres of social transformation, in many ways ties in with their primordial function and purpose.´ (from the book´s foreword) Václav Havel Buy the book through the e-shop PROSPERO at http://prospero.divadlo.cz or order it from the Arts and Theatre Institute at Celetná 17, 110 00 Prague 1 by contacting Tereza Sieglová, +420 224 809 137, E [email protected]. Also available on www.amazon.com