Divadelní revue (Czech Theatre Review) 2014 · no 3
vol. 25 · September 2014 · no 3Summary
The third issue of 2014’s Theatre Review focuses on the post-war Czech theatre history. Jana Patočková’s treatise discusses the foundation and opening of Otomar Krejča’s Theatre Beyond the Gate in the political and cultural context of the 1960s. Krejča’s theatre, established in 1965 – in the atmosphere of inexorable liberalization –, is situated in the rather wide and diverse little theatre movement of the 1960s. Patočková closely looks at the first production of two one-act plays – Michel de Ghelderode’s Masques ostendais and Josef Topol’s Cat on the Rails – which clearly demonstrated that Krejča and his team will continue in their artistic programme, which articulated taboo existential topics (loneliness, death) in an unusual aesthetic style of poetic theatre. Honza Petružela’s “The Roots of Evil 1967: Unknown Draft of Alfréd Radok’s Theatre Production about Political Trials” seeks to reconstruct hypothetical form of unrealized Alfréd Radok’s production of Jiří Vilímek’s radio play The Roots of Evil (1965), adapted by Radok for the National Theatre. Based on an analysis of preserved director’s short draft, Petružela’s paper examines one of the crucial topics, which pervaded Radok’s work and life: mechanisms of totalitarian power, including the confrontation of “great” 20th century history with the position of “little” man. Petružela reveals that the proposed production should have been a multilayered social examination of political trials of the 1950s in a close relation to the current political situation of the late 1960s. Barbara Mazáčová’s essay examines five productions staged at the National Theatre in Prague during the 1970s that elaborated on the topic of so called class struggle. The analyses of stage adaptations of plays, whose authors – except for Mikhail Sholokhov – are virtually unknown today, reveal recurring dramaturgical as well as interpretive stereotypes and conventions by means of which the foremost Czech theatre actively participated in the culminating process of normalization. Klára Hanáková looks at the generational theatre Children’s Studio of the Brno-based Theatre on the String, founded by the stage director Zdeněk Pospíšil who was also the first artistic director of the theatre (1975–1980). Martin J. Švejda re-examines Jan Grossman’s production of Václav Havel’s Largo Desolato, staged at the Theatre on the Balustrade in 1990. The paper discusses artistic qualities of the work, describes the circumstances of its preparation, its critical reception, and situates it in the wider social context; it also presents a history of the Theatre on the Balustrade of the particular period and life stories of major protagonists, Václav Havel and Jan Grossman. Ladislava Petišková’s “Enmity to Geometry. The Company Derevo in Prague Between 1991–1992” focuses on the early history of the Russian company Derevo, which is connected with our territory (1991–1992). Derevo is one of the most influential groups who represent so-called physical and anthropological theatre: their work, based on radical experiment, synthesizes various impulses, stemming from Japanese butoh dance, Russian cultural past and present, as well as European theatre tradition. The essay also briefly characterizes both artistic and social situation of physical theatre in the Czech context. Vladimír Mikulka’s paper assesses Karel Steigerwald’s playwriting career after November 1989, which coincides and coalesces with his journalist career. Mikulka divides Steigerwalds’s post-1989 work into two phases. In the first one – 1990s – Steigerwald sought to define difficulties and instabilities of postcommunist society (Nobel, Play Comedy). In the second phase, he returns to the communist past which he artistically re-examines and re-assesses. His revisions are based on the distinctive restaging of real historical events and their protagonists (Horáková, Gottwald, She kissed Dubček). In his My Far Homeland (2013) these two lines converge: inspired by the real life of Dagmar Šimková (1924–1995; imprisoned by communists in the 1950s), he completes her story in the present day. The issue contains an interview with the Czech theatre director Helena Glancová, as well as two reviews of recently published books and two reports on two conferences: one dedicated to Václav Havel’s playwriting legacy (Prague, May 2014) and one to the conference of FIRT/ IFTR which took place in the summer 2014 in Warwick. This issue of Theatre Review includes a special section which presents Michel de Ghelderode’s one-act play Masques ostendais and four short plays by contemporary Czech playwright Hubert Krejčí.
post-war Czech theatre history
Jana PatočkováTowards New Theatre: the Foundation and Opening of Theatre Beyond the Gate in the Political and Cultural Context [article]
Honza Petružela
The Roots of Evil 1967: Unknown Draft of Alfréd Radok’s Theatre Production about Political Trials [article]
Barbara Mazáčová
“I am shocked by the measure of such lousiness”: The Image of Class Struggle in the Productions of National Theatre in the 1970s [article]
Klára Hanáková
Zdeněk Pospíšil and Children’s Studio [article]
Martin J. Švejda
This production makes us feel victorious… (Theatre on the Balustrade and Largo Desolato) [article]
Appendix State of Thinking About Sense and Mission
Ladislava Petišková
Enmity to Geometry. The Company Derevo in Prague Between 1991–1992 [article]
Vladimír Mikulka
Karel Steigerwald’s Two Postcommunist Decades [article]
Interview
Obligatory declamation of poetry is amoral. Interview with the director Helena Glancová (Barbara Topolová)reviews
Libor VodičkaA Guide to the World of “Happy Tomorrows” (Jiří Knapík – Martin Franc a kol. Průvodce kulturním děním a životním stylem v českých zemích 1948–1967.)
Tomáš Vokáč
An Academic Work on Illusion, or an Illusion of Academic Work? (Zdeněk Bartoš. Divadlo a iluze.)
new book releases (August—December 2014)
reports
Tomáš UrbánekFocusing on Havel, the Playwright
Martin Hanoušek & Věra Velemanová
Stratification in Warwick (FIRT-IFTR World Congress)
timeline (August—December 2014)
plays
Michel de GhelderodeOstend Masks: A Pantomime
Hubert Krejčí
Summer Event (Radio Playlet)
Director Morávek and Theatre Play Pig, or else Why do Vultures Fly around Theatre on the String (Patriotic Moravian Trauerspiel)
Constant Patriots (Sketch)
Prague Periphery Insect Play
content of theatre review 2014 (25th vol.)
Resumes of peer-reviewed articles
Jana PatočkováTowards New Theatre: the Foundation and Opening of Theatre Beyond the Gate in the Political and Cultural Context [article]
Jana Patočková: Towards New Theatre: the Foundation and Opening of Theatre Beyond the Gate in the Political and Cultural Context. The beginning of 1960s, when Antonín Novotný, a president and the first secretary of Communist Party, announced the victory of socialism in Czechoslovakia (the republic became officially ”socialist“), marked a serious reinforcement of the totalitarian power, which was slightly weakened in the late 1950s. One of the results of this process was an enforced resignation of Otomar Krejča – an artistic director of the National Theatre’s drama ensemble – and his team from their positions at the National Theatre. However, Krejča kept co-operating with the National Theatre as a director, as well as an actor. Moreover, he and his dramaturge Karel Kraus started to co-operate with both Czech (Theatre on the Balustrade, regional theatres) and foreign theatres. In 1965 – in the atmosphere of inexorable liberalization – Krejča and his group (Kraus, playwright Josef Topol, actors Jan Tříska and Marie Tomášová) established the Theatre Beyond the Gate, which could be, to certain extent, situated in the rather wide and diverse little theatre movement of the 1960s. Theatre Beyond the Gate opened with a production of two one-act plays: Michele de Ghelderode’s Masques Ostendais and Josef Topol’s Cat on the Rails. The production clearly demonstrated that Krejča and his team will continue in their artistic programme, which articulate
Honza Petružela
The Roots of Evil 1967: Unknown Draft of Alfréd Radok’s Theatre Production about Political Trials [article]
One of the topics, which clearly pervaded Alfréd Radok’s work and life, was the phenomenon of mechanisms of totalitarian power, including the confrontation of “great” 20th century history with the position of “little” man. In 1967, after his crucial productions of Devil’s Circle (1955), The Game of Love and Death (1964), and Last Ones (1966), Radok intended to adapt Jiří Vilímek’s radio play The Roots of Evil (1965) for the National Theatre stage. The production should have been a multilayered social examination of political trials of the 1950s in a close relation to the current political situation of the late 1960s. In Radok’s inheritance, there was preserved a short draft of director’s first ideas of the proposed production. The paper seeks to reconstruct hypothetical form of unrealized production and describe innovative stage and dramaturgical principals and devices Radok intended to employ.
Barbara Mazáčová
“I am shocked by the measure of such lousiness”: The Image of Class Struggle in the Productions of National Theatre in the 1970s [article]
The essay examines five productions staged at the National Theatre in Prague during the 1970s that elaborated on the topic of so called class struggle. The analyses of stage adaptations of plays, whose authors – except for Mikhail Sholokhov – are virtually unknown today, reveal recurring dramaturgical as well as interpretive stereotypes and conventions by means of which the foremost Czech theatre actively participated in the culminating process of normalization (socio-political process which resulted in the establishment of so-called “real socialism” and that was triggered by the occupation of Czechoslovakia by the Warsaw Pact military troupes in August 1968).
Klára Hanáková
Zdeněk Pospíšil and Children’s Studio [article]
The paper discusses Children’s Studio of the Brno-based Theatre on the String, founded by the stage director Zdeněk Pospíšil who was also the first artistic director of the theatre (1975–1980). Children’s Studio was a generational theatre, as well as an educational and training platform. To become a member of the Studio, children had to pass an audition after which the successful ones were divided into three groups according to their age. Individual productions of the Studio addressed an audience of the same generation. However, an analysis of four Pospíšil’s Studio productions (Little Nicholas, Potato Day, or else Discovering America, Little Vixen and A Bouquet) reveals a substantial correspondence between the children productions and the productions for the regular, adult ensemble of the Theatre on the String. For Pospíšil, both ensembles were equal and he paid a comparable attention to both groups and their productions. In conclusion the paper outlines a follo
Martin J. Švejda
This production makes us feel victorious… (Theatre on the Balustrade and Largo Desolato) [article]
The essay examines the production of Václav Havel’s Largo Desolato, staged by Jan Grossman at the theatre on the Balustrade in 1990. The paper discusses artistic qualities of the work, it describes the circumstances of its preparation, its critical reception, and situates it in the wider social context; it also presents a history of the Theatre on the Balustrade of the parti
Ladislava Petišková
Enmity to Geometry. The Company Derevo in Prague Between 1991–1992 [article]
The paper focuses on the early history of the Russian company Derevo, which is connected with our territory (1991–1992). Derevo is one of the most influential groups who represent so-called physical and anthropological theatre: their work, based on radical experiment, synthesizes various impulses, stemming from Japanese butoh dance, Russian cultural past and present, as well as European theatre tradition. The essay also briefly characterizes both artistic and social situation of physical theatre in the Czech context. Anton Adasinki – the leading personality of Derevo – is thoroughly presented, as well as his collaborators. Besides that, the paper examines the aesthetic style of Derevo’s Prague performances, which could be located in the context of artistic tendencies that sought to re-define and re-establish a current form of ritual.
Vladimír Mikulka
Karel Steigerwald’s Two Postcommunist Decades [article]
After graduating from FAMU (Film Academy of Musical Arts), Karel Steigerwald (1945) – a dramaturge and scriptwriter – started to write scripts for film and radio. In the late 1970s, he began his co- operation with the Drama Studio in Ústí nad Labem. In this period he emerged as one of the most openly political Czech playwrights. The presented paper discusses Steigerwald’s playwriting after November 1989, which coincides and coalesces with his journalist career. Steigerwalds’s two postcommunist decades could be divided into two phases. In the first one – 1990s – he sought to define difficulties and instabilities of postcommunist society (Nobel, Play Comedy). In the second phase, he returns to the communist past which he artistically re- examines and re-assesses. His revisions are based on the distinctive restaging of real historical events and their protagonists (Horáková, Gottwald, She kissed Dubček). In his My Far Homeland these two lines converge: inspired by the real life of Dagmar Šimková (1924– 1995; imprisoned by communists in the 1950s), he completes her story in the present day.