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Czech

Marie Reslov

THEATRE Contents

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Uncertain Theatre . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
Viktor Kronbauer

Richard III, through the Lens of Viktor Kronbauer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5


Ivan ek

The Simpleton and The Wall, Radoks Study of Fear . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9


Milan Luke, Karel Krl

Marlowes Dr Faustus Underground . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14


Jana Patokov

Portrait of the Artist as an Old Man . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19


Karel Krl

In-yer-face but Gently . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25


Jan Kol, Marie Reslov, Jitka Sloupov

Return not only to the Desert . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30


Jan Kerbr

Dejvice Theatre in Celebration and Still an Inspiration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35


Josef Mlejnek

Theatre U stolu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
Radmila Hrdinov

The Revival of Opera in the Czech Lands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45


Nina Malkov

Puppets in Bohemia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50 Notebook . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55


CZECH THEATRE 18
Issued by Theatre Institute Prague Director / Ondej ern Responsible editor / Marie Reslov Editors / Kamila Patkov, Jana Patokov, Jitka Sloupov Translation / Barbara Day Cover and graphical layout / Egon L. Tobi Technical realization / DTP Studio Hamlet Printed by / Tiskrna FLORA, K ikova 30, Praha 8
August 2002 Editors e-mail: editio@divadlo. cz Subscription: Divadeln stav, Celetn 17, 110 00 Praha 1, Czech Republic fax: 00420 22481 1452, e-mail: books@divadlo. cz 2002 Divadeln stav Praha ISSN 0862-9380 William Shakespeare, Richard III / Globe Theatre, Prague 2001 / Directed by Vladimr Morvek Set design Milan David / Costumes Sylva Hankov >Photo Viktor Kronbauer

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Theatre
Ten years after the transformation of our social system which for the Czech theatre meant a change from state control (but also relatively generous funding) of the theatre network to a free (but of course only partially free and unfortunately somewhat accidentally and injudiciously funded) theatre structure theatre workers are still learning to live and work in the new conditions. There have been only attempts to transform the system of subsidies into a more flexible form and to transform theatres subordinated to the binding prescriptions of planning units in independent economic institutions. There is here even an attempt to make the grant system of the Ministry of Culture more transparent the amount of money at its disposal dramatically decreased in 2002. And wealthy sponsors finance, with ever more difficulty, only demonstrably commercial projects, almost exclusively musicals. The basic running of the theatres and the way it is organised and funded is still to a large measure a determining and limiting factor for most theatre companies in the Czech Republic. It may influence the choice of the repertoire, the stage design, composition of acting companies, length of rehearsal time or investment into desperately antiquated stage equipment. Naturally, outstanding talents can make their way even under totalitarian management and have equally survived in the jungle of commercial theatre projects and, over time, diminished budgets for culture. However, we do not have so many dynamic personalities in the contemporary Czech theatre. This fact emerged most evidently in the straight theatre roughly two years ago, when the Board of the National Theatre began an intensive search for a Head of Drama at the National Theatre in Prague. All at once there was no one whom the informed public (be it only behind the scenes) wanted to see in this prestigious post. The only person who would have been acceptable to everyone (in spite of the controversial nature of his productions) and who in the second half of the 1990s had proved himself by turning the small Divadlo Na zbradl (Theatre on the Balustrades) into the premier Czech stage was Petr Lbl (b. 1965). At the end of 1999 Lbl took his own life.
Egon Tobi, Jan Nebesk, Martin Dohnal, JE SUiS
Divadlo Na zbradl, Praha 2001 / Directed by Jan Nebesk Set design and costumes Jana Prekov >Photo Bohdan Holomek

Marie Reslov

It was not until after his death that it became clear how much his visually meaningful and intellectually challenging directorial style (for the last time in Chekhovs Uncle Vanya) had created the language and style of Czech theatre. There are a few other directors, each of whom in their own way has proved themselves able to stir the stagnant waters of Czech theatre production, but none of them has combined to that measure talent and consistency in the realisation of their visions. Jan Antonn Pitnsk (b. 1955), dramatist and director, like Lbl first worked in the amateur theatre movement at the end of the 1980s. He established himself on the stage of the National Theatre with Jaroslav Durychs Wandering (dramatisation of the voluminous novel published in English as The Descend of the Idol), Alois and Vilm Mrtks Marya and Vladislav Vanuras Markta Lazarov, but at the same time showed that the lyrical and poetic staging of prose, the daring rhythmatised and somewhat abstractly stylised acting for which he was famous, to some extent became, in the environment into which they were merely implanted, mannerised. Two years ago Jan Nebesk (b. 1953), a director of esoteric spiritual depths, crowned a series of productions of Ibsen and Strindberg with The Master Builder. He persuaded the actors into a permanent dialogue between the character and their own selves, between reality and stage fiction. His Beckettian triptych, Endgame, Terezka, Marta (Mal dor) and the production JE SUiS on motifs of Bernanoss novels form a concentrated theatrical dispute about the basic matters of life, about love, faith and death. Nebesk examines the borderline possibilities of theatre, which sentences him to an existence on the fringe of the theatrical spectrum. Vladimr Morvek (b. 1965) is primarily a director of clear theatrical visions on classical motifs his naive, vigorously theatrical interpretations of Shakespeare (Hamlet, Richard III) and Chekhov (Three Sisters, The Seagull) are simplified, highly tragi-grotesque, provocatively sincere and impossible to ignore. In the Klicpera Theatre in Hradec Krlov he created one of the most multi-faceted acting companies in Bohemia. Michal Doekal (b. 1965) was at one time, together with Lbl, the youngest head of a theatre in Bohemia (the Divadlo Komedie [Comedy Theatre]). He is informed about contemporary trends in the theatre, an inventive director tending more towards an attractive, originally conceived form

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than towards spiritual depths (Shakespeares Midsummer Nights Dream and Taming of the Shrew, Marlowes Dr Faustus). He has been named the new Head of Drama of the National Theatre as from September 2002. Ji Pokorn (b. 1967), dramatist and director, a daring and generous propagator of contemporary dramatic work, provoking actors to clear stylisation and raw authenticity, is the artistic chief of the HaDivadlo (HaTheatre) in Brno. To a certain measure these directors represent the basic artistic tendencies of contemporary straight theatre in the Czech Republic. Of course, possibly more than 90% of the repertoire of Czech theatres is made up of day-to-day productions of greater or lesser professional quality. In some companies there is a clear tendency towards a renaissance in the art of acting as a counterweight to heavyhanded directorial concepts (inohern klub [Drama club], Spolek Kapar [Kapar Association], Dejvick divadlo [Dejvice Theatre], Divadlo u stolu [Theatre at the Table]). Attempts at finding a congruent scenic shape for contemporary dramatic work appear all the more frequently, whether international (Thomas Bernhard, Werner Schwab, Bernard-Marie Kolts, Mark Ravenhill, Sarah Kane, Patrick Marber, Martin McDonagh) or Czech (Lubo Balk, Zdenk Jeceln, Ji Pokorn, Markta Blhov, Egon L. Tobi). The inohern

studio (Drama Studio) of st nad Labem, HaTheatre and Divadlo Husa na provzku (Goose on a String Theatre) in particular have focused consistently on original drama. The most highly-regarded new Czech play of recent years has been the debut by the screen-writer and director Petr Zelenka, Tales of Common Insanity, staged by the Dejvice Theatre. The attempt by a number of theatres (especially the Dejvice Theatre, the Klicpera Theatre in Hradec Krlov, the Divadlo v Dlouh [Theatre in Dlouh Street] and the Komedie Theatre) to confront a market and consumer oriented society by sticking to an elementary human and professional ethic of consistent theatrical work is sympathetic and worthy of note. It is a longterm effort, unnoticed by the media, but it has brought results in the form of productions whose strength is not only a theatrical strength but also a strength of human community. The straight theatre in the Czech Republic today has an uncertain existence, but in many respects also insufficient selfconfidence. There has been no unexpected explosion in the last three seasons of any bright new theatrical star. The Czech dramatic theatre has not for the time being penetrated any of the great European festivals. As far as its high points are concerned however it does have enough vitality, audience base, invention and particular qualities to take its place alongside the culture of other European countries.

UncertainTheatre

Richard III
This cycle of photographs by Viktor Kronbauer of the production of Shakespeares Richard III (directed by Vladimr Morvek) in the Globe Theatre in Prague won the Silver Medal at this years Triennial in Novi Sad.

through the Lens of

Viktor Kronbauer

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RICHARD III INTRIGUES

Intrigues

RICHARD III MURDERS

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Murders

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RICHARD III KINGDOM FOR A HORSE

Kingdom

for a Horse

The Simpleton

and th

e Wall Radoks S
Ivan ek

tudy of Fear

Alban Berg, Georg Bchner, Wozzeck / Nrodn divadlo, Praha 2001 / Directed by David Radok / Conducted by Elgar Howarth Set design Lars-ke.Thessman / Costumes Ann-Mari Anttila >Photo Viktor Kronbauer

David Radoks production of Alban Bergs Wozzeck brought him for the second time the Prize for the Best Theatre Production of the Year named after his father, the renowned Czech director Alfrd Radok.
Wozzeck is anguish transformed into music. Along with all its daring and immensely pondered Constructivism, the driving force of this opera is pure, naked, utterly unadorned fear. Nameless, inexpressible fear such as we sense from the paintings of Edvard Munch. Alban Berg was the most lyrical of the three composers of the Second Viennese school; as he said himself in 1921, his imagination was more than generously saturated with personal experience of the Great War (as yet numberless). He succeeded in putting to music human misery in all its existential exigency all those eerie states full of anguish and confusion with an immeasurably suggestive power which stuns us even now. Bergs musical language open-ended, essentially already atonal, though still derived from Mahlers late symphonies was in style and expression clearly the ideal medium not only for its capacity to put Wozzecks terrified vision to music: Der

Platz ist verflucht!, but directly to experience it, its endeavour to in-tone the psychological unease of that moment. In Bergs music the tonal centrum securitatis becomes lost in the same way as the ground gradually disappears beneath the feet of the desperate Wozzeck. Whereas other opera composers might have used music to throw light on the story more dramatically, thus giving it sharper contours, in Wozzeck (even more so later in Lulu) Berg throws light through the story, right to its marrow. His musical irradiation pierces like X-rays and his Wozzeck, even though a figure of flesh and blood, appears before us as a phantom, a skeleton. Every slightest melodic and rhythmic pattern, every molecule of musical fabric, every apparently meaningless intonation has no other function in the musico-dramatic structure than to analyse the most volatile tremors of the human psyche, the most internal twists and turns of the soul. It is the musical dramaturgy of Wozzeck which has to be admired much more for its simple lack of precedent than for its compositional and technical skill. For the first time in history a composer used absolute form in setting to music a syncretic work, a form often taken over from musical history long past. David Radoks production comes to Pragues National

The Simpleton

and the Wall


Theatre essentially unchanged after three years at the Gteborg opera, most the leading roles still sung by Swedish singers. This analysis concentrates primarily on the directing, design and musical staging, not so much the score itself. This production is an example of a confident and mature directorial reading, confirming considerable experience in modern opera together with a particularly individual mannerist style. What are the constants of Radoks productions of opera? A well-considered formulation of spatial relationships (the directions of the movements especially the key movements at the ends of the acts always have their own clear dramatic logic); a largely liberated but always very clean scene design; distinctive work with colour; an almost critically sharp mintage of characters (their logic is, at least in individual readings, transparently intelligible even to the gallery); an unusual musicality of direction, which with humility, sensitivity and knowledge listens to the score from which it takes its inspiration, often wisely coming to terms with the fact that the first and main director was the composer himself who not only expressively interpreted every movement on the stage an achievement reserved only for the best but above all gave it an obligatory time dimension in principle made by everyone). The most expressive attribute of Radoks reading is a mature symbolic vocabulary, a tendency towards a ubiquitous, allpenetrating space, without partial punctuation in the sense of classical internal-external articulation. It was here in Wozzeck that this tendency achieved its impressive best. No standard measure can be made of the time and space deployment of figures; they inter-penetrate, often in dialectic contradiction the closest may be dramatically the most remote and vice versa thus replenishing the whole production line of the story. In Wozzeck that is somehow played out everywhere and nowhere, in an abstract, impersonal, grey space where stage properties move quite freely, even wilfully, from one space to another when required, according to the immediate dramatic (albeit Radokian) need. The main carrier of the meaning is the permanent, even obtrusive, presence of the title character. One can say that the silent, motionless simpleton becomes just an attribute of the staging, standing with shockingly inactive apathy against the mass of impersonal, desolate, grey wall. The oppression of the surroundings and of the situation contained within them is difficult to credit. To achieve this concentration of desperation, Radok even gets rid of the experience of the countryside, usually staged in harmony with Bergs text as a striking contrast to the greyness of the barracks. The most effective slices of the expressionistically distorted perspectives are Wozzecks kneeling legs under the almost completely lowered curtain (3rd act, 1st-2nd scene) so near and so far is Wozzeck from his Marie! the marching jackboots (1st act, 3rd scene), and the coldly alienating scene in the barracks with the heads of the sleeping soldiers in a blue dawn. The murder scene is also a suggestive image. Marie, felled like a sacrificial lamb, does not even defend herself. Wozzeck rises and, aghast, steps away from the fallen corpse in the way murderers do. He flees, from himself more than anything, to a bar where he

THE SIMPLETON AND THE WALL

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wants to forget the deed he has committed, having left his knife beside Marie. Even the brutally jeering polka brings no peace to his tortured soul. Wozzeck catches hold of Margaret in a desperate effort to drown out his demons. She however discovers the blood on his hand. He flees from the threateningly gathering chorus to the place of his action, throwing himself in sorrow on the lifeless body of Marie. Finding the knife, he throws it into the water. A red moon rises. In a desire to wash the blood off himself he steps into the lake Radok makes it the watery metaphor of Maries body. Wozzeck embraces it more and more, submerging himself in its treacherous depths until with horror he realises he is washing in blood welling up in a red geyser, the ever-open gash which emerged in Maries neck after his caress with steel. In the moment he is completely covered in her blood, his body merges with hers. He dies. The unusually austere visual poetic of the staging (set: Larske Thessman; costumes: Ann-Mari Antilla; lighting: Torkel Blomkvist) is essentially very similar to Radoks production of Shostakovichs Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, but even cleaner and simpler. Again, a key role is played by an iron bedstead, understood metaphorically, like everything else in Wozzeck. (We would be well advised not to draw any down-to-earth logic from some of the spatial arrangements. According to this the bedstead, which is a symbol of privacy, of habitation, should not find itself in the street, which it does in the 3rd scene of the 2nd act. The direction is even at odds with the text at this moment. [Hat er da gestanden? asks Wozzeck, leaning on the bed, to which Marie replies evasively: Ich kann den Leuten die Gasse nicht verbieten.]. ) The scene arises from the frame of reference of grey walls shifted vertically and horizontally, connoting the gruelling context of the barracks, the dreariness and the vicious circle of the military machine. The movement of the sombre surfaces suggestively focuses our attention to the individual slices of the action, seen internally as though through the eyes of the bullied simpleton Wozzeck. However, in spite of this the whole context of the scene works through an impression of impersonalised, inert objectivity, thanks to the mass of chill, grey walls. This particular subject-object tension, a characteristic mark of the production, culminates in the conclusion when Wozzeck, drowned in Maries blood, slowly wades through the surface of the water. It is only here that he escapes the cynical desperation of this world; after the bloody redness of his act, he steps through to a kind of blue epicentre an up-to-now unanticipated space, impressively deep, spreads out before him and us, leading him on and on, right up to his Marie, who sits somewhere on the horizon. In particular in connection with the indifferently playing children, the mysticism of this conclusion, the basic interpretational lynchpin of the production, is very striking. I am only afraid that the pathos of this mysterious place where Wozzeck and Marie again set eyes on each other could, by its essentially religious nature, cause an atheist some difficulties. I would say that a person might feel a little betrayed, as in Vladimr Morveks production of Tosca in the National Theatres same

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THE SIMPLETON AND THE WALL

Alban Berg, Georg Bchner, Wozzeck / Nrodn divadlo, Praha 2001 / Directed by David Radok / Conducted by Elgar Howarth Set design Lars-ke.Thessman / Costumes Ann-Mari Anttila >Photo Viktor Kronbauer

season, which likewise takes the age-old deus ex machina almost too literally, in too biased a way for its explanation for the world. For if someone attends a performance, he has come to a theatre and not a church. As can be seen, I have expended most praise on how the production has been shaped by the director and designer. The musical interpretation, although very praiseworthy and remarkably active, does not achieve the standard of the direction. The responsibility for this does not seem to lie with the concept of Elgar Howarth, an experienced interpreter of modern opera, but rather the inadequacies of the Prague production, primarily the National Theatre orchestra. The basic conceptual plan is good, healthy and convincing but not fully realised in its original intentions. The orchestra plays above its usual average, but even so there are a number of passages performed only in its usual, approximate way. The Czech singers settle well into the supporting roles and keep up with their Swedish colleagues. One cannot however hold any stricter measure to the details of the musical production. The most distinctive vocal quality is that of Marcus Jupither in the title role. His pliable, gently sounding baritone is capable in principle of covering the broad expressive register of the role from quiet, resigned situations up to states of pathologically destroyed delirious fantasy. He plays his simpleton with a heavy

head, pursued by visions, with a stylised, austere gestic and mimic expression. He is especially successful at catching Wozzecks endless misery, the humiliated, impoverished, human degradation (Wir arme Leut!). In type he is ideally suited to the role, as is his partner playing Marie, Irma Mellergard. Her Marie, slender and well-proportioned, sensuous in gesture and voice, presents a prototype of the deceitful woman. It is a striking study of infidelity, vanity and coquetry; but also loving, tragic motherhood. Her vocal material, albeit sometimes very raw, is richly coloured and expressively shadowed, capable of dramatic transformation from lyrical prayer to the explosion of an awakened bad conscience. Ingemar Andersson and Anders Lorentzsons performances as the Hauptmann and the Doctor are of a very high standard. They both create bizarre, expressionistically succinct caricatures, full of eerie grotesque elements, spasms and depersonalisation. One can say with certainty that the movement and acting of all the singers surpassed their specific vocal quality, except possibly for Jupither, who did convince. This Wozzeck is based on a particular robustness which is often close to a straight theatre performance. This would not matter too much in the case of Wozzeck, as evidence of a certain naturalist expressiveness but of course it is not ideal. This is the main

The Simpleton

and the Wall

THE SIMPLETON AND THE WALL

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Alban Berg, Georg Bchner, Wozzeck / Nrodn divadlo, Praha 2001 / Directed by David Radok / Conducted by Elgar Howarth Set design Lars-ke.Thessman / Costumes Ann-Mari Anttila >Photo Viktor Kronbauer

problem of the title role: Berg precisely fixed the greater part of the music at a certain pitch, yet it is also necessary to animate the pure singing dramatically by speech components, for example in the closing scene. It should however always remain primarily singing, albeit through the folded urgency of the actors delivery. Even in the predominantly reliable vocal delivery, managed on a good professional level, one can uncover places marked by haste and competent but superficial study, even in the case of the Swedish singers. The sung phrase sometimes did not come out naturally, in speech cadence and the specific quality of the requirements of Sprechgesang. It sounded as though lacking an immediate, deep expressive adoption, lacking experience. My only essential reproach of the concept as a whole is the uninterrupted flow of 15 scenes in an hour and forty minutes. However much one understands a need for one uninterrupted gradation unfolding through the evening, Berg himself certainly did not conceive the opera like this. The three-act construction relies on intervals. Berg based the individual acts on contrast,

and lay exceptional demands on everyones concentration, both performers and audiences. So, thanks to these (interrupted) transitions, the climaxes of the first and second acts did not succeed in the way they were originally conceived. In Radoks production sensitively, prudently and consequently working with the chosen symbolism the conclusion of the opera is powerful. The main reason is that Berg already made it exceptionally powerful, himself relying on Bchners fascinating dramatic vision. However, this does not diminish Radoks contribution. We have above all to appreciate how well all the lines of motif are thought through at the conclusion of the opera; motifs which at the start are vaguely ambiguous, finally led to their final clarification.

Alban Berg, Georg Bchner: Wozzeck, directed by David Radok, conducted by Elgar Howarth, set design by Lars-ke Thessman, costumes Ann-Mari Anttila, National Theatre Prague and Gteborg Opera, premire in Prague 11. 3. 2001

s u t s u a F r D s e Marlow

Christopher Marlowe, The Tragical History of Dr Faustus / Divadlo Komedie (Vyehrad Gorlice), Praha 2001 / Directed by Michal Doekal Set design Petr Matsek / Costumes Zuzana Krejzkov >Photo Martin pelda

d n u o r g r e d Un
Milan Luke, Karel Krl
Last summer Pragues Komedie Theatre under the direction of artistic director Michal Doekal, performed Christopher Marlowes Tragical History of Dr Faustus in the Vyehrad dungeons in Prague. The production won the Divadeln noviny Award; Petr Matsek the Alfrd Radok Award for stage design; and David Pracha in the title role the Alfrd Radok Award for best actor.
The origins of Marlowes texts are in some respects even more ambiguous than Shakespeares. In the case of Dr Faustus in particular it is difficult to know whether it came early or late in Marlowes career. Expert opinion inclines towards the view that Marlowe wrote Dr Faustus around 1588-1589, but even so it is difficult to explain how he came to know this story, which had scarcely come out in popular literature in Germany and was not published in English until 1592. With even greater admiration, we wonder how a youth of no more than twentyfive handled this ur-thriller with such dexterity as the first to identify and outline one of the archetypes of European literature. The qualities of comedy, grotesque and even burlesque were a part of the Faust archetype right from the start; in this lies its individuality and the proof of its origin. From the very beginning of its stage history, Dr Faustus was famous alike for its sinister quality and for its facetiousness. Only the Middle Ages knew such turnarounds, and Marlowe did actually handle the story of Dr Faustus in a medieval spirit, with academic disputations and clowns all thrown together. It is a comedians comedy, coarse-grained, drastic, and indeed in the Elizabethan sense commonplace. Marlowes Dr Faustus does not even in the text derived from the two surviving versions closest to Marlowe from which years ago Alois Bejblk wisely created a Czech version have any definitive integrity. All that someone staging a production today can do is to put together their own version from the few brief scenes of contestable origin (even contestable sequencing). And so in Doekals version many of the historical and anecdotal scenes have been abandoned: the seven deadly sins, the Pope and cardinals, the Emperor and knights, the Duke and Duchess. It is Dr. Faustuss situation which is foregrounded, in itself hellishly serious. Much of the text has disappeared; as far as the serious parts are concerned, only fragments of the Good and Evil Angels remain, and for the comic side, a new construct by the name of Kaprek (Punch). In giving a name to this new figure, however contestable we may think it, the adaptation makes known one of the unmistakable intentions of the whole production: even the subsequent development of the Faust archetype and myth is, as though by reciprocal agreement, symbolically added to the early Marlowe which absorbed the (medieval) past. There are reminders of Goethes Faust scattered around this production, as well as of puppet and film Fausts. The idea has its own raison dtre: all of these are at home here in central Europe; and the whole of the Faustian archetype and myth which followed Marlowe, who was the first to imbue it with the genius of literature and philosophy, returns back here. There is a philosophical discourse going on in Marlowes Dr Faustus, a discourse with moments so penetrating you are

MARLOWES DR FAUSTUS UNDERGROUND

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astonished by their modern quality. But alongside this discursive Faustus and grotesque Faustus, the text still holds the possibility for a spectacular Faustus. Even this aspect is not neglected in Doekals shortened version; it is actually more striking and meaningful than the grotesque. In this case the stimulus to the spectacular is the very environment in which the production of Dr Faustus is played: the Vyehrad dungeon

Marlowes Dr Faustus
Vyehrad Faust: the baroque environment, in itself highly theatrical, determines the nature of the lighting, inspires the creators of the set, costumes and music, and sensitively takes into consideration the impulses of all seven actors (magic number!) who perform as though it came naturally: David Pracha, Jan Dolansk (alternating with Jan Brta), Martin Uk, David Matsek, Zdenk Vencl, Viktorie ermkov and Petra Lustigov. In the Divadlo Komedies production of Dr Faustus in Gorlice on Vyehrad, an artificial and artistic image blends with one which is real. The space is actually false, an artificially created underground. Nevertheless, it feels as though you are descending into the depths. Thanks to the image (the imagination) it is easier to understand that Mephistopheles did not have to leave hell to guide Faustus through the world, because hell is here. And more: statues and puppets, artificial people and saints, scaffolding, the building of the theatre as an artificial level of the world, and sounds which although artificially created sound very credible (for example, the limping step of the devil) which also merge into music, or stand as equivalent with the music And the symbols: a real chain (to which Faustus is also shackled to hell and on which he is drawn up) and cross (which rises from the water in a stone vessel in the centre of the acting space and on which the knell is tolled); real water which can even be amniotic fluid in which the newly-born Faustus is rejuvenated; real earth which clings to the body like wrinkles, the first traces of the approaching grave; real fire which, Mephistopheles uses as the fires of hell, to warm up Faustuss hearts blood And furthermore: maybe that heart and blood itself. Faustus, wrapped in a transparent plastic girdle, wears his heart right on his chest. It is both an image of a heart and a real heart (probably a pigs) which Mephistopheles then tears out of Faustuss chest and replaces with an alarm clock in place of feeling, a mechanism; in place of the heart-beat of time an agreed, measured beat. Before the hellish travelling salesman takes possession of it, before it ceases to beat in his hands, before he puts it in a suitcase, the blood from the warmed-up heart really gushes pure. The devil and the director Doekal know whether we should become aware that the bodily ingredient is adulterated by its cultural, artificial form red ink. The characters are clearly also both artificial and real. As usual; and at the same time unusually. Those ingredients, various scents, the artificial incense of joss sticks and the real smell of blood, the touch of the muscles of the borrowed heart on your own body, and above all the cold and the chill of the water in which Faustus is submerged (whilst the audience huddles under blankets in the cold air of Gorlice), David Pracha is saturated with all this in his magical realisation. Pracha presents sudden movements of thought as examples of virtuoso technique. Even more than in his Hamlet he

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MARLOWES DR FAUSTUS UNDERGROUND

Christopher Marlowe, The Tragical History of Dr Faustus / Divadlo Komedie (Vyehrad Gorlice), Praha 2001 / Directed by Michal Doekal Set design Petr Matsek / Costumes Zuzana Krejzkov >Photo Martin pelda

with a constant temperature of 15 degrees centigrade; an extensive underground hall of the baroque citadel, in whose gloom cower the originals of the statues from Charles Bridge, enabling them at the end of the performance to step out from dark anonymity in all their glory. The magic of the place is such that this dramatic environment shared by audience and actors, figures of a real and of a virtual world becomes so to speak the protagonist of the whole production. It would in fact be fitting to speak of this production of Dr Faustus as the

Underground
Christopher Marlowe, The Tragical History of Dr Faustus / Divadlo Komedie (Vyehrad Gorlice), Praha 2001 Directed by Michal Doekal / Set design Petr Matsek / Costumes Zuzana Krejzkov >Photo Martin pelda

Christopher Marlowe, The Tragical History of Dr Faustus / Divadlo Komedie (Vyehrad Gorlice), Praha 2001 Directed by Michal Doekal / Set design Petr Matsek / Costumes Zuzana Krejzkov >Photo Martin pelda

abandons the traditional form in which the character is created naturally and fluently. On the contrary, he deviates sharply from the normal, but always carefully controlled position: he croaks, speaks toothlessly, sulks like a child, flirts like a cabaret performer, staggers drunkenly At first glance it gives the impression of failures in the presentation of a serious role, pure exhibitionism. The exhibitionism in the acting does not however lead to the traditional Czech alienation, to a commentator stepping out of role. The effect of Prachas outbursts is precisely opposite: the actor and the character merge into one. Through this the theatre becomes transparent. And beyond it some sort of black mass is being played out. Prachas Faustus is the plays protagonist, its victim. Because he is the one who fools around, David Matseks Mephistopheles has no reason to produce the ridiculous: he is serious, dignified, only very unobtrusively miraculous (on his forehead sticking plasters hiding the wounds of little horns; the stump of a wing protruding from his back; and the multifingered glove he wears). The priests celebrating the mass are Kaprek (Punch) with the acolyte Wagner (Zdenk Vencl). They make comic appearances; such are especially the numbers of the Theatre Cooperative Marionette, when in a pornographic puppet-play with a long bread roll and a small bun they demonstrate a hot (the roll is burning) whore. Their humour lacks charm; it is rough, devilish. The acting scale of the performers, Uks Kaprek creating one pole and Matseks Mephistopheles the other, mirrors the scale of Prachas Faustus with its poles of grotesque outbursts following others intensively and probably even painfully experienced. To perform like this may not be a matter of life

and death, but it certainly affects ones health. This Faustus is not a mere modern man of the Goethe and Enlightenment type, who sacrifices his soul for superhuman knowledge. He is more of a medieval or post-modern man who, when it comes to it, resolutely tempts fate. There is something German about him. Now I am thinking of the acting style: the manifest and bravura technique, remote from Czech approximation (in the worst case) or improvisation (in the better); the existence on stage during which the actor is led into dangerous situations in which he is exposed to genuinely authentic physical experience and pain (as in productions by the Germans Frank Castorf and Johann Kresnik). And I have in mind whether or not it may be an audacious assertion that German soul which on the one hand inclines towards the rational, even to military discipline, to strict exactness; on the other to the irrational, romantically poetic, in spite of everything serious (but also comic) mystery of life (or death, as the case may be). This Faustus, so to speak, carries Mephistopheles within himself; a spirit which fools around in the name of self-destruction. (An edited version of the articles by Milan Luke, Local Colours and Karel Krl, Hell is below Vyehrad published in Svt a divadlo (World and Theatre) 5/2001. )

Christopher Marlowe: The Tragical History of Dr Faustus, translated by Alois Bejblk, directed by Michal Doekal, set design Petr Matsek, costumes Zuzana Krejzkov, musical cooperation DJ Blue, production Jana Burianov, Divadlo Komedie (Vyehrad Gorlice), premire 27, 28 June 2001.

Marlowes Dr Faustus

Underground

as an

Portrait of the Artist

Old Man

Jana Patokov

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PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS AN OLD MAN

In November 2001 the theatre director Otomar Kreja celebrated his eightieth birthday with a new production for the Theatre of the Estates, the drama stage of the National Theatre in Prague. He worked here as actor and director from 1951 to 1965, before leaving to found his own company, the Divadlo Za branou (Theatre Beyond the Gate). The period from 1956 to 1961, when he was head of the National Theatre, is considered to be the most important post-war period of this company.
Otomar Kreja chose as his eighty-first production a work by the Austrian writer Thomas Bernhard: Minetti Portrait of the Artist as an Old Man. In this production the sub-title became the main title; the director read into the authors text his own experience as an old artist. However, Krejas personal engagement never in any way indicates narcissistic selfprojection or manneristic deformation of the authors text; everything arises out of love and respect for the poets work, out of a striving for precision and factuality in the reading. Otomar Kreja, who began his theatrical career of more than sixty years as an actor, had to give up acting for good when, in the period of Communist normalisation in the 1970s, he was forced to leave the Czech stage and work as a guest director abroad. However, acting always remained at the heart of his work; his direction became more and more a dialogue with the actors with whom he created theatre. The whole development of Krejas production method in which a unity, often with a complicated structure, is created primarily through the dynamics of the relationship between the characters onstage, indicates that for him acting and theatre are one and the same thing. How could a play not absorb him when its theme is, as Minetti says himself, the art of acting, homage to the art of acting? The play works with a number of motifs of modern theatre whose manifest paraphrase constantly suggests movement in this independent world: from the masques ostendais through to a futile wait for an unrealised meeting; from a King Lear abdicating his theatrical kingdom and (in a raging storm) encountering his final contest through to acceptance of the inevitable end. Kreja rightly finds motifs related to other authors with whom he is in tune, Chekhov and Beckett. Bernhard devoted several plays to the issue of acting, their heroes inspiring an ambivalent relationship of sympathy, admiration and antagonism, an impression of the tragic and the ridiculous, so that the question Is it tragedy? Is it comedy can never be answered in an unambiguous way. Amongst them however is the play Minetti, dedicated to the outstanding actor of the same name on his seventieth birthday, exceptional in that its hero arouses sympathy, admiration and compassion

rather than negative emotions; in spite of all the embarrassments and absurdity he maintains his dignity, even greatness. The positioning and timing of the single situation of the play anticipates its conclusion. It takes place on the sea coast (at the end of the continent of Europe) at the end of the year, on New Years Eve in the foyer of a hotel where the maniacal merriment of drunken masquers imitates the furious element of the snowstorm which rages over the city of Ostende. An old man comes here for a meeting with the head of drama of the municipal theatre for whose bi-centenary he is to play King Lear, the only classical role he spared when years ago he revolted against classical literature, that convenience of the public (and the theatre) and had to leave the stage. Now, thirty years later, his only and final opportunity to play in the real theatre should present itself. But the head of drama does not arrive and the only proof of the agreed meeting a telegram is lost. At the end of an evening consisting of nothing but futile waiting only one final outcome is left to the old man. A background to this anti-action is created by the actors soliloquy in which real facts indistinguishably interpenetrate with unreal, the inner action, an image of the struggle of one life. The destination of a journey to the absolute of theatrical art, of possession which is on the boundary of madness or which rather long ago crossed that boundary cannot be reached with certainty. Was that old actor once really famous? His insistence arouses indifference, doubt, even derision, and what possible evidence is there? Photographs, a suitcase of cuttings containing along with rave reviews, documents of failure his only property, anxiously guarded and whose content he sums up at the same time in one word: Revulsion? Everything is in the past, unverifiable; unquestionably, Bernhard here captures the essence of the art of the theatre including the impossibility of retrospective verification. Acting as an art which at the moment of its realisation loses touch with reality, is thus as Minetti says himself more than anything threatened with death. For Kreja, Bernhards play is the myth of acting. The myth of an art which is in its transience an appropriate image of human existence. The production realises the text itself interwoven with theatrical allusions by analogous means, by references and by quotations in the music and design (music by Jan Klusk, masks by Jan Klobasa). Kreja opens the performance with a self-reference: the use of an element through which with set designer Josef Svoboda he often
Thomas Bernhard, Portrait of the Artist as an Old Man
Nrodn divadlo, Praha 2001 / Directed by Otomar Kreja / Set design Ji Sternwald / Costumes and masks Jan Koblasa
>Photo Oldich Pernica

Portrait of the Artist as an Old Man

A DIRECTOR AND AN OPERA FOR THE HAPPY FEW

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PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS AN OLD MAN

indicated the transience and multiplicity of stage reality: a large spherical mirror, the ancient symbol of mimesis. Simultaneously it is a reminder of his most recent work with the great designer, Faust even though in this case Svoboda had to be replaced by his pupil Ji Sternwald. At the beginning it ostentatiously confronts the auditorium as a reminder of the apparently banal, simple, and at the same time ambiguous relationship between the stage and the auditorium. The element, which creates illusion at the same time as it disturbs it, indicates the permanent ambivalence of the set, both its authenticity and lack of it. The mirror reflects the theatre lighting, but the typical murmur of the auditorium is inauthentic, only a recording played from the other side of the footlights; even the reflection in the mirror of the set, which lives its own, independent life, can be similarly uncertain. The lights are dimmed, music sounds, the mirror is raised, creating a heavenly sphere which reflects and multiplies the projection of thickly falling snow and reveals on stage the action ground of the play: a hotel foyer, around which rages a snow storm in Ostende. Against the penetrable black backcloth, through which light can shine and people pass again one of Svobodas magic tricks only a belle-poque lift, a reception desk and a sofa indicate the setting. The simple turning and manipulation of this last piece of furniture changes the disposition of the individual scenes. The method whereby the director makes the text concrete and places the accents is apparent from the beginning of the performance, from the Ladys opening monologue. As performed by Johana Tesaov she is not as in the original play an old lady, but an ageing but still attractive woman who makes a strong impression through her first rejoinders: To hold out / to be alone. The emphatic exclamation marks with which the Lady performs her monologue contrast with the absurd and simultaneously banal aim she is striving for: all her energy is focused on achieving a state of alcoholic stupor. Thus the first thing meaningfully displayed on stage is the ape mask of the Lady. This is not actually shown until the conclusion, but is so to speak made present from the first moments of the insistent monologue, thus creating an invisible antithesis to Minettis hidden but carefully guarded mask of King Lear. The protagonists arrival contrasts with the theatrical appearance of the Lady: at the beginning Frantiek Nmecs Minetti merely gives the impression of being a moderately old world comic gentleman, as the hotel receptionist characterises him. The audience only gradually notes that the black coat and white scarf are past their best, only gradually becomes aware of the down-at-heel shoes and the tapes trailing from his underpants, the umbrella, of very archaic type seemingly from the first half of the last century, serving as a walking-stick. Our attention is drawn by the way he enters, stands and looks around, as though creating space around himself for a dignified aloofness. He enters like a self-confident artist aware of his own importance, and even though this selfawareness soon has some holes torn in it, he maintains it to the

Thomas Bernhard, Portrait of the Artist as an Old Man / Nrodn divadlo, Praha 2001 / Directed by Otomar Kreja / Set design Ji Sternwald Costumes and masks Jan Koblasa >Photo Hana Smejkalov

end. Whatever happened to this character in the past the text does not allow for an unambiguous judgement the director and the actor take it seriously and at least believe in the authenticity of his mortal wounding by an artistic work. The dialogue the character leads with the world develops from this temperate entry through an unusually worked-out scale of expression. The detailed construction of every individual sequence enables the actor to display an organic linking of contrasting moments, gestures both dignified and bizarre, rational arguments, heterogeneous fragments, sudden flashes of madness. A sudden bizarre jump surprisingly interrupts an outraged polemic, his own words merge with excerpts from Lears monologues, explosions of energy abruptly alternate with moments of weakening, disappointment and weariness, an evermore nervous glance at his watch as it measures the passing time. Nmecs Minetti is markedly younger than assumed in the text dedicated to the first performer in the role on his seventieth birthday, but the actor does not try to simulate the weakness of age in its outer form. We are reminded of it only from time to time through an impatient gesture, a vain attempt to rouse a failing memory by exasperated stamping or banging with the umbrella, by a muscular relaxed face which disappointment at times changes into a tragic mask. It does not even deprive the figure of humour, discrete, ironic, precisely placed dry points. The unobtrusive comedy excels in situations where the character attempts to conceal weakness and maintain his dignity. So, in the sequence with the unravelled tape from his underpants, Minetti tries first of all to confront the mockery of the Lady with only a depreciatory tone and an embarrassed stammering through which he hopes to overcome such trifles; then he increases his efforts through his movements, hopping on one leg and vainly trying to tie up his tape. In the end he succeeds with the help of a willing hotel porter whom Minetti drags around with him whilst continuing to emit his tirades. It is a small clowning episode, the increasing embarrassment of a comic which does not evoke laughter but rather the uneasy flicker of a smile an expression of the audiences sympathy, appreciating this metaphor as part of the common human situation. Minetti makes himself ridiculous by his exaggerated self-veneration; in fact he invites ridicule by trying to defend himself against it, through which an indication of senile decay, a small but humiliating mistake, grows into something immeasurably great. But at the same time his situation, commented on by the untimely, pathetically mean ridicule of the Lady, is seen as her own situation which is, even though she is unaware of it, analogous. Or rather, essentially worse than the situation, in which he is derided: an extinguished life lived in a stupor is opposed to the pathos of a true contest in life. In every micro-situation the invisible hand of the direction shows itself thus, a hand which opens it to a dramatic quality, finds and sharpens the encounters, the small conflicts; increases the contrasts, points to the similarities of being left

Portrait of the Artist as an Old Man

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PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS AN OLD MAN

alone in the human situation and at the same time to the mutual isolation, to the blindness towards this situation. That is Krejas signature, the fundamental approach he brings from his beginnings as a director. He stages Bernhard in the same dramatic way as dramatically he once staged Chekhov. Minettis waiting time is measured off and divided by the incursions of the New Years Eve masqueraders and the arrivals of hotel guests. The guests, no more than types passing in silence, are themselves reminiscent of masks: an elderly couple, a drunken youth, a Lilliputian in officers uniform and a man on crutches wearing the mask of a dog. In the production these gradually merge with the crowd of masqueraders. The masqueraders, consisting entirely of young people, come down in the lift from time to time and burst shrieking into the foyer where they sweep everything and everyone before them. Without the masks the young people behave naturally, just a little drunk and unruly; in their masks they are a dangerous instrument of irrationality. The anonymity of the masqueraders multiplies the strength of an unleashed crowd, changes the merriment into something sinister, the movement of the masqueraders as unpredictable as their aims. Under the masks are faces still a long from age, suffering and death. The madness of New Years Eve, connecting an end with a new beginning, best suits those who look only to the future. However, from time to time during the unmasking a lower layer of mask is revealed, a white corpse-like skull, resembling the ever-present death each one of us carries within ourselves. The masqueraders who present this interior as a defiant mockery of the world over which they temporarily rule, eventually turn literally against Minetti, casting doubt on all his striving through their chorus-like ridicule. At the end the guests mix with the masks in a procession which is some kind of dance of death. They pass the bench where Minetti finally rests in his mask of King Lear: the mask of a dead king which, unlike all the others, is golden. But before Minetti definitively escapes from the round dance of the masks, he is rewarded with a meeting with another young human being, a girl (Jaromra Mlov) waiting for her lover. The actress, who is referred to the fundamentals of the art of acting to hear / and see / and understand is a sensitive partner for the protagonist, even though her part is almost wordless. Nmecs Minetti turns to her with an altered tone, more intimate and heartfelt; her courteous attention provides him with a last opportunity to unload the whole story of his mortal blow through art, and in the end reach a sincere, bitter admission of defeat. The naive, uncomprehending but

patient listener leaves him with the compassionate admiration we devote to someone or something which to us is alien and incomprehensible, but which we are at the same time forced to respect. She leaves him a gift which is in itself absurd: a transistor radio, broadcaster of a constantly-present background noise which for her is synonymous with music, something she assumes to be a shared value. The point of the meeting again has a double meaning, but even the ironic accent is in Bernhards own way proof at the same time of the emotional presence accompanying Minettis last battle. The compassion does not rule out lack of understanding, and here creates a unique mixture which leaves us in uncertainty Is it comedy? Is it tragedy? In the script, the last responses in the play belong to one of the masked characters who turns to the bench where Minetti, on whom snow is settling, is sitting, and then runs away, calling out: Artist / Theatre artist / Actor. It is typical of Krejas interpretation that he has entrusted these lines to the girl and her lover, and on their lips they sound not as mockery but amazement and respect. It is an unobtrusive but explicit accent just as the structure of rhythm and meaning in the whole production is explicit, all its elements focused on the actor. At the end of the play the mirror again descends and hides the set where, for a while, only the bench with Minetti remains, covered with theatrical snow. The actor slowly rises, steps out of the play, lays down his mask and overcoat, and moves towards the mirror with his back to the auditorium. Then, out of character, he turns round to us to reap his due reward. The director and the actor remind us once again of the power of the stage, of the mirror; not an ordinary mirror which does no more than reflect, but one which in its imaginary, transient and multiplied reality is much more powerful than a simulation of life, than a place of entertainment where the theatre worker, grown lazy, provides a comfortable audience with his services. A mystery remains which can mortally wound and which is worth dedicating ones life to. Krejas production of Portrait of an Artist as an Old Man is a confession; a committed, magnificent homage to the theatre and to the actor, bearer of the mystery of the theatre.

Thomas Bernhard: Portrait of the Artist as an Old Man, translated by Josef Balvn, directed by Otomar Kreja, set design Ji Sternwald, costume design and masks Jan Koblasa, music Jan Klusk, National Theatre Prague, premire 22. 11. 2001

Portrait of the Artist as an Old Man

Karel Krl

II n y e r f a c e n-yer-face
but Gently

In-yer-face
Three comments on the in-yer-face school in the Czech lands
If there is any direct equivalent in Czech of the English word cool, then it is vcnost, the word which, in the period between the wars, translated the German Sachlichkeit in the context of the movement neue Sachlichkeit or new objectivity. The disarming cool, the objectivity which is a necessity, which means a shift forward, which does not question and is thereby dramatic, thereby communicative. Someone who is really making an effort to shock usually ends up looking stupid, in the same way as if he had made a decision to create something of genius. Kane and, somewhat later in the same field, Ravenhill, simply appeared, knocked on the door, and presented something unexpected, unusual, strong, something that belonged to this world, as we would know, if we did not make out we didnt know.
Ji Pokorn, director it does seem to be a tradition in the Czech theatre to incline toward amiability, ironic exaggeration and metaphor. The following comments* on productions of three plays of the inyer-face school in the Czech lands are no more than a small and unsystematic, but also open, contribution to the issue of whether this inclination is our strong or weak side. Mark Ravenhills Faust (Faust is Dead) was voted by the Czech critics as the best play of those shown for the first time in Czech theatres in 2000. Myself, I would not exaggerate this praise. If one has something with which to reproach Ravenhill, it is his simplification of the philosophy of Michel Foucault (whose persona is recast in the character of the French philosopher Alain) to an essentially banal thesis. We have reached the End of History, therefore there is no hope of progress; man and mankind have gone to rack and ruin, we are free, but all we have left is fucking, or in other words, desire and cruelty both towards the other and oneself. What follows from this is that

Mark Ravenhill, Faust (Faust Is Dead) / HaDivadlo, Brno 2000 / Directed by Ji Pokorn / Set design Petr B. Novk
Costumes Kateina tefkov >Photo Ivan Kuk

We Czechs are supposed to be doves, squeamish about violence or of a cowardly nature, jokers along the lines of the Good Soldier Schweik. They say we use irony as our form of resistance, even as an opportunistic alibi, that were players of games, able to take the language of metaphor to perfection whilst being unwilling to commit ourselves directly Even though it is odious to generalise about any national character,

not only Alain but all the characters in the play, all of us, are already the living dead. Only death brings meaning. The story, a road movie, corresponds to the notion. Donny, who shows off on the internet how he has slashed his body, chooses The Golden Section as an expression of human authenticity and slices the artery in his neck. Alain has already decided to die before he sets off on a journey with Pete, a casual American

IN-YER-FACE BUT GENTLY

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but Gently
lover; that is, before he provokes Pete, lets himself be slightly wounded with a gun, and completes the incomplete murder by the suicidal refusal of medical aid. It seems (all one can do is interpret) as though even Pete, the only survivor, is in his way a dead man. Son of Bill (i. e. Gates), prince of cruel virtual reality, he starts by rebelling, stealing a diskette from his father with the programme chaos. In the end however he returns with this treasure of doubtful content and undoubted power to daddys throne. In so doing he ceases to be a human being. Pete is the angel of death. The director Ji Pokorn, who successfully staged the play at HaTheatre, holds the author in honour. So much so that in homage he makes his own contribution to the play (to its theatricality and to a certain measure to its ideas). Ravenhill counts on the use of video. Pokorn however, with his set designer Petr B. Novk, achieves a specially remarkable effect by projecting onto a screen set in the shape of a V. In the circle thus evoked of new theses the following can emerge: if we excise any sort of detail of the human body by a camera shot, it becomes pornography; all pornography is vivisection, vivisection is death, therefore death is sexy, if pornography is sexy Thesis or no thesis, it is valid that the staging in showing details is adequately cool or hard (I am confused by these expressions). The public is shocked; however, it seems that Alains (Tom Matonoha) playing with Petes (Pavel Lika) sex is not an acted reality but a live show. Naturally; the boundaries between authenticity and media duplicity (not only television and internet, but also theatre) have to be unclear. In the same way it has to be unclear who according to the authors (or Alains) central question is the seducer and who the seduced. In this direction the better instructed spectator can miss Alain, who would be appropriately seductive in a Foucault-like way (magically bald). That is one of the small but serious reproaches which can be made of the staging. On the other hand, I think Pokorns own stage ideas or metaphors are an asset. The chorus, which has lost its function as a commentator (it only reproduces the words of other people, characters in the play) is made up of a few revived statues of the female sex When it comes to it, they are just the kind of women suitable as car seats for men on a journey and during sexual games in a car. The altar placed in an elevated position in the background is a counter with a pan in which popcorn, the manna of the global audience, roasts and erupts (or ejaculates). And the peak of the directors wilfulness? Pete can stand reality only in the frame of a computer screen. Therefore he follows his own sex act with Alain on camera and even as though on television commentates on it. When he says he sees a racoon hopping along the prairie, a strange lizard-like

creature crawls out of a trapdoor, crosses the stage and disappears. We see it for a couple of seconds, but it is unforgettable. It is even whilst looking exotic a Czech feature. This joke is delightfully subtle, soft

It can be playful, it can be soft, but it can be treacherous. And this in spite of the fact that at first sight the subtlety can appear as something more sensitive than the naturalism with which in the Czech lands (Pokorns Faust is an exception) we have nothing but problems. This treachery and its problems are documented in the staging of Sarah Kanes play Cleansed at the Theatre Na Zbradl (Theatre on the Balustrades). The author who requires, as far as violence is concerned, the cutting off of an arm and a leg, appealed to the Zbradl actors so little that they refused to appear in the play. Allegedly they were even scared by Gerardian Rijnders Lieffhebber, which has a repertoire of horrors, masturbation, naturalistic-seeming incestuous sexual intercourse, murder and suicide. The actors, maybe all of us, seem to lack the appropriate genetic make-up; bloodthirsty pieces such as Shakespeares Titus Andronicus were never part of our domestic fare. In the end it was young guest artists such as Petra palkov who appeared in the Zbradl production, directed by the young Brno talent Pavel Baura. The premiere, which I am in a position to write about, was little more than a staged reading, but it seems that even later performances were no more than that. A blatant incongruity arose between the sketchy characters and actions (they could clearly be no more than this when the actors carried their scripts the whole time) and the veneer of complete direction which the production otherwise brought. The decor especially, chic black blinds, was almost too definitive and chilly. This wouldnt necessarily have mattered if the exalted emotion and passion (and through

Sarah Kane, Cleansed / Divadlo Na zbradl in the Eliade Library, Praha


2001 / Directed by Pavel Baura / Set design and costumes Lucie Kuropatov
>Photo Martin pelda

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IN-YER-FACE BUT GENTLY

blood the hot breath of death) had achieved the appropriate temperature. What awaited the audience and not only in the violent scenes was a mere, for the most part banal, suggestion: the manipulated people are presented by actors suspended in harnesses, the peep-show is staged as a coy little dance and so on and so on Even from such ideas I can judge the direction in which the direction deliberately set out: we have to imagine that which should, according to the author, be visibly in-yer-face. At first glance the production was excessively sensitive. Naturalism had no place; the empty space was filled with metaphors and comic exaggeration. Such delicacy seems to me a typical Czech anaesthetic. The question however remains: what, protected from pain, do we actually feel? I fear, just a mild excitement over foreign deviations. Pur-lease! Pur-haps we have here our national contribution to what it means to be cool Being cool for us means that we can experience absolutely everything, and feel nothing.

The play Boiled Heads by the young Czech author Marek Horok (prize winner in the Alfrd Radok Award for the best original play of 2000) has some of the attributes of the in-yerface school. At first sight verbal cynicism and its consequently violent inclinations are the properties of youth, but then it is shown that the generation of apparently decent,

settled parents are much better at it: papa, whom we wouldnt expect to be a murderer of anything more than rabbits and hens, really does boil those importunate young heads alive. The division of roles, a variant of the generation conflict, incites the reader to see a naturalistically rough morality on the theme: Who really is responsible for todays marasmus? in the play. It seems as clear as day in this case that it is the parents. A production comprehended as directly as this would soon run out of breath. Director Pavel imk, also from Brno, made the right decision to read the play as a wild and grotesque fairy story. And there was nothing wilful about that. The story is perhaps too reminiscent of the Gingerbread Cottage (for which as can appropriately be mentioned in this connection the Brothers Grimm were inspired by the murder of an old woman in the Black Forest, burnt to death by a couple of evil adolescents). In this story first a lost girl (a character known as angel-devil) finds her way to the cottage in the depths of the forest where the old married pair live, followed by two youths (known as city types) whose car has crashed nearby looking for refuge. A second fairy-tale inspiration is then unwittingly supplied by the author: the girl in his play is wearing in spite of the bitter cold outside the suspiciously scanty garb of a prostitute, but explains it away by saying she went to the forest to look for her missing pussy-cat. The director doesnt hesitate to take the girl at her word, whereupon Puss-

Sarah Kane, Cleansed, Divadlo Na zbradl in the Eliade Library, Praha 2001 / Directed by Pavel Baura
Set design and costumes Lucie Kuropatov >Photo Martin pelda

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Marek Horok, Boiled Heads / Divadlo Husa na provzku, Brno 2001 / Directed by Pavel imk / Set design Pavel Bork
Costumes Markta Oslzl >Photo Radan Koryansk

in-Boots appears in front of our very eyes. Does it matter? I dont think so. This fairy-tale pussy-cat always shows things in the right measure, and immediately indicates by its presence that this is no naturalistic crime but a fiction. A fiction, at least as I understand the play, is here in form and theme. When we look for the answer to the abovementioned ethical question, we would have to mention two things. The first is that as well as being a moralist the author takes a suspicious enjoyment in playing with motifs (even fairytale motifs), with language situations, characters i. e. , in writing a theatrical play. Another is that there is no reason to be optimistic about Horoks young people (even the surviving young men pass on the news about the boiled heads coldbloodedly, as a sensation). What turns the fairy-tale catastrophe on its head is the fact that the young do not have time to express themselves thoroughly, for they have undervalued the combat readiness of the married couple in the cottage in the forest. The couple, apparently cut off from civilisation, have been prepared by television for the intruders. Tutored by TV, they also anticipate that every chance guest is a dangerous criminal for whom it is necessary to be actively prepared. Television also gave them the basic guidelines for what to do. This theme that it is not only reality which inspires fiction (including theatrical fiction) but also fiction which gives guidelines about what life is, can be and should be, seems to me much more interesting than, for example, the question of generational guilt. The theme is in any case inspirational, as is clear from the actors energy, both comic and bravura in the best sense of the world. Giving superb performances are not

only the old masters of the Theatre Husa na provzku (Theatre Goose on a String) Alena Ambrov and Pavel Zatloukal but also the truly sexy and indeed angel-devil Kateina udkov, and the innocently dangerous types Tom Skora and Radim Fiala. A joy to behold. Just the kind of enjoyment which I would like to describe as the Czech hallmark is also a perfect balance to the hopelessly bestial cool connotations of Horoks play. (This article appeared in the journal Svt a divadlo [World and Theatre] no. 4/2001)

Mark Ravenhill: Faust (Faust is Dead), translated by Jitka Sloupov, directed by Ji Pokorn; set design Petr B. Novk, costume design Kateina tefkov, music Roman Hol, dramaturge Lenka Havlkov, film shots Marek Najbrt, Benjamin Tuek and J. Pokorn, HaDivadlo, premire 28. 11. 2000 Sarah Kane: Cleansed, directed by Pavel Baura, translation, dramaturgy and lyrics by David Drozd, designer Lucie Kuropatov, music Jan Buda, specialist assistance on the translation Ivory Rodriguez, Divadlo Na zbradl, premire in the Eliade Library 14. 1. 2001 Marek Horok: Vaen hlavy (Boiled Heads), directed by Pavel imk, dramaturge Radan Koryansk, set design Pavel Bork, music Jan Buda, costumes Markta Oslzl, Divadlo Husa na provzku, premire 9. 3. 2001

In-yer-face

but Gently

Return
not Only to the Desert

Return

RETURN NOT ONLY TO THE DESERT

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not Only to the Desert

The inohern klub (Drama Club) is a small theatre right in the centre of Prague. Ever since the theatre opened in 1965 the shallow stage, minimally equipped, has predetermined it for the kind of theatre that starts out with a strong text and, in interpreting it, relies mainly on the personalities of the actors and their ability to convince the audience through their art. After the inohern klubs famous era in the 1960s and beginning of the 1970s, the theatre settled for a period into a routine inertia, due first to administrative changes resulting from the end of the Prague Spring, and later when the founder generation of actors grew older and left their home stage. The disintegration of the formerly close-knit company was speeded up at the beginning of the 1990s by the arrival of the Slovak director Vladimr Strnisko as artistic director. At the end of the decade the post was taken over by the long-term dramaturge of the inohern klub Vladimr Prochzka, supported by the director Ladislav Smoek, who had for twenty years been virtually responsible for maintaining artistic continuity. Their idea about the future orientation of the theatre was clear from the beginning to return to the original programmatic vision of the inohern klub in a new context and with a radically rejuvenated company. Jaroslav Vostr, one of the founders of the theatre, had formulated the vision as the possibilities of man disclosed by the means of the actor. The new leadership of the inohern klub achieved its first convincing success at the end of 2000, with a production of a play Le retour au dsert by the French dramatist BernardMarie Kolt s whose work had been only sporadically performed in the Czech lands up to that time. The considerably rejuvenated company with the star of the theatre Petr Nron (Adrian) at its head, strengthened by the Slovak actress Emlia

Bernard-Marie Kolts, Le retour au dsert / inohern klub,


Praha 2000 / Directed by Roman Polk / Set design Jn Zavarsk Costumes Jana Zboilov >Photo Yvona Odrazilov

Vryov (Matylda) and the outstanding Bra Hrznov (Maame Queuleu), demonstrated a quality of teamwork not seen for a long time. The actors (most of them performing together for the first time) became trump cards and a key element of the discreet direction of Roman Polk. Through the acting and a special almost eccentric though not unnatural rhythm of speech, they were jointly successful in opening up the situation of a play full of provocative tension and inexplicable nervousness. The terse atmosphere of the individual scenes, soaked in the orient and a foetid hardened narrow-mindedness, a certain unspoken quality of behaviour and sudden reversals in the moods of the characters, arousing curiosity and at the same time making indeterminate; everything is concrete, but at the same time full of mystery. It is gripping to follow how an essentially abstract problem (for what in the Czech lands can parallel the French trauma over the war in Algeria?) can, thanks to a lively and dynamic rendering of the characters, suddenly become a gripping starting-point for multi-faceted conflicts of characters, mentality and temperament, sometimes ironic, sometimes judged with tragic seriousness. Thanks again to the performances and a clear directorial concept, there was a successful revival last year of the centuryold comedy by Vclav tech, Registered Estate . In this production the director Ladislav Smoek set out with the actors on an expedition into a Czech past which could be an apology for our contemporary age; that is, research into particular

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Vclav tech, Registered Estate


inohern klub, Praha 2001 / Directed by Ladislav Smoek / Set design Karel Glogr Costumes Jana Zboilov
>Photo Yvona Odrazilov

humorous stereotypes in the thinking and behaviour of the Czech bourgeois. Along with the author he uncovered primarily the mechanism of tactics in business, politics and Czech public life in general. Ladislav Smoek added his own flavour to the plays language, which as it was already contained unusually topical moments for todays Czech Republic, which finds itself again in a period of naive democratic capitalism. The impression of playing with burning contemporary issues in period costume is almost perfect. The main character is the estate agent Fistr (Pavel Kikinuk) who has political ambitions to become mayor of a district of Prague. His office offers a special service under the rubric registered estate: matchmaking. One prime source of comedy is Fistrs incredible eloquence, which he uses to convince anyone whether in business or politics that things are other than in reality they seem: a bog is a lake, a ruined house is an estate in perfect order, and his own advantage the common good. Also in the amorous entanglement, involving Fistrs daughter (Veronika ilkov), an impoverished nobleman (Matj Dadk), a rich widow (Dana ern) and eventually Fistr himself, a desire for a suitable wedding is linked with political and sexual affinities in a cascade of breakneck but irresistible comic situations. In the interpretation of the present actors, acting originating in the unscrupulous humour of farce has an intellectual birds eye view, and not even in the most daring scenes (the amorous relationship between Fistrs daughter and the widow) does it lose nobility. Joe Ortons black comedy Entertaining Mr. Sloane was produced last year by the inohern klub, again under the direction of Ladislav Smoek. Ortons play presents repulsive

characters and their behaviour on the level of coarse laughter and grotesque. However, the production does not make play so much with the comic elements of Ortons play, nor does it accentuate them. Smoek stages his Sloane factually, almost realistically. And only in a few precisely timed moments does the action break into brutal farce; for example, when in the course of a row Sloane (Michal Zelenka) tears out Kaths (Lenka Skopalov) false teeth and throws them into the fire; Ed pulls them out, still hot, and thrusts them back into his sisters mouth. To the director, it is not even about people who are, according to Orton, profoundly bad but irresistibly ridiculous. He is much more interested in the banality and embarrassment of contemporary life, in which in the end everything is possible and believable. Lying and pretending are a normal way of living. Brutal murder is masked as an accident. Cynical deals and distasteful sexual involvements cross with kindred relationships, perceived as a normal standard. Mr Sloane once again entertains the public at the inohern klub, thanks primarily to the perfect acting teamwork of the quartet of protagonists. Meanwhile, the latest distinctive trump card of the actors is the production of a play by the contemporary Irish dramatist Martin McDonagh, The Lonesome West, an absurd grotesque about a feud between two brothers in the Irish countryside, where the local priest can do no more to stop the moral apathy than to comment sarcastically. The direction by the young actor Ondej Sokol leads the actors in an exceptionally sensitive way, with them strengthening the black humour of the play and skilfully avoiding stylisation and descriptive naturalism. The contrast between the first comically inclined half and the second, with its powerfully tragic subtext, gives an appropriate

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tension and riveting inner rhythm to the production. The grotesque gradually becomes a morality played on a knifes edge. Beneath the superficial Irish blarney whereby the country folk from Connemara indulge in vulgarisms, and mingle infantile babbling with apposite bonmots, intellectual turns of phrase and management expressions is concealed a hopeless callousness derived from generations of emotionally deprived village folk. From bizarre stories and spiteful skirmishes about chips, brandy, statues of saints or a stove, gradually emerges a metaphorical subtext, a precisely constructed play and its production. In the character of the Welsh priest Michal Pavlata creates a sensitive, non-moralising portrait of a clergyman who, face to face with the brutality of his flock, doubts himself rather than God. In the character of Girleen, Ladislava Nrgeov links the thoughtlessness of youth and an unfeminine crudeness and briskness with great inner energy and some sort of paradoxical purity. Marek Taclk plays the younger, more naive and direct of the two brothers. His Valene throws himself into everything headfirst, his cunning and tricks are robust and primitive. He is more practical, even his amorality is more pragmatic, maybe more comic. Jaromr Dulava creates the role of the older of the brothers Connor in a much more refined way he acts in the

Joe Orton, Entertaining Mr. Sloane / inohern klub, Praha 2001 / Directed by Ladislav Smoek Set design Karel Glogr / Costumes Jana Zboilov >Photo Yvona Odrazilov

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Martin McDonagh, The Lonesome West / inohern klub, Praha 2001 Directed by Ondej Sokol / Set design Adam Pitra Costumes Katarna Holl >Photo Yvona Odrazilov

theatres experimenting with theatrical form and technical means. Its premise is simple: only man i. e., the actor can tell on stage of the complications and paradoxes of the human soul and human heart in the best, most exact and comprehensible way.
With the use of the articles by Jan Kol, Marie Reslov and Jitka Sloupov compiled by Marie Reslov.

Bernard-Marie Kolts: Le retour au dsert, translated by Kateina Lukeov and Daniel Uherek, director Roman Polk, set design Jn Zavarsk, costumes Jana Zboilov, music Petr Skoumal, inohern klub, premire 11. 12. 2000 Vclav tech: Registered Estate, adapted and directed by Ladislav Smoek, set design Karel Glogr, costumes Jana Zboilov, inohern klub, premire 27. 3. 2001 Joe Orton: Entertaining Mr. Sloane, translated by Dana Hbov, director Ladislav Smoek, set design Karel Glogr, costumes Jana Zboilov, inohern klub, premire 23. 10. 2001 Martin McDonagh: The Lonesome West, translated and directed by Ondej Sokol, set design Adam Pitra, costume design Katarna Holl, inohern klub, premire 8. 3. 2002

fratricidal war with a cool cynicism and disdain which are in their results much more insidious than the coarse attacks of the younger of the brothers. From time to time Dulava as it were commentates on himself, so as to unsettle us still more in our critical judgement of the character, and immediately in some gag or gesture of pure brutality lets us look openly into it again. inohern klub has, through the most conservative, traditional method that is through the actor and his art clearly come closer to the tragi-grotesque spirit of the contemporary time than other Bohemian and Moravian

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Dejvice Dejvice Theatre Theatre


Jan Kerbr

and Still an Inspiration


Fiodor Michailovich Dostoievsky, Brothers Karamazov / Dejvick divadlo, Praha 2000
Directed by Luk Hlavica / Set design Jan Tobola / Costumes Ivana Brdkov >Photo archives

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DEJVICE THEATRE IN CELEBRATION AND STILL AN INSPIRATION

The small hall of the Dejvice Theatre (named after a district of Prague) now houses the second theatre company whose work crowns the stages decade of existence in its 10th anniversary. The first chapter of the history of the Dejvice Theatre was written by graduates from the Department for Alternative Theatre of the Drama Faculty of the Academy of Performing Arts (KALD DAMU) led by their professor, the director Jan Borna. Five years ago this attractive group, whose work was crowned by Sestra zkost (Sister Anxiety), a montage based by J. A. Pitnsk on texts by Jan ep and Jakub Deml, moved to the Theatre in Dlouh Street. The company which took over from the original group was also drawn from a single generation, similarly graduates of KALD DAMU. Their professor also accompanied them to the theatre, but in Miroslav Krobots case under much more provocative circumstances, since this experienced director

abandoned the stage of officially the most prestigious theatre in the country, the National Theatre in Prague. Moreover, the first production by the new company at the Dejvice Theatre was their school graduation work, Robert Patricks Kennedys Children (played here under the title , mil Buddho! [Oh My Dear Buddha!]) in which, for practice this did not in any way detract from the artistic level of the work the actors played different roles at different performances. Higher artistic demands and requirement of a more varied team to interpret various roles made the company to change. Some of the women chose for a while maternity leave in preference to an artistic life, whilst the male side was strengthened by older colleagues (Martin Myika and Igor Chmela, who deserted from the National Theatre, Ivan Trojan and Luk Hlavica from the second most prestigious Prague stage [the Vinohrady Theatre], and David Novotn from esk Budjovice). The company was

Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol, Government Inspector / Dejvick divadlo, Praha 1998 / Directed by Sergej Fedotov / Set design Barbora Lhotkov
Costumes Petra tetinov >Photo Martin pelda

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Dejvice Theatre in Celebration and Still an Inspiration

Miroslav Krobot, Ivan Alexandrovich Goncharov, Oblomov / Dejvick divadlo, Praha 2000 / Directed by Miroslav Krobot
Set design Martin Chocholouek >Photo archives

also supplemented by younger fellow-students from DAMU: Lenka Krobotov, Jaroslav Plesl and Pavel imk, whilst actors from the original company looked for work elsewhere. It was not long before the Dejvice Theatre began to be spoken about with respect as a Russian theatre in Prague, thanks to the significant proportion of Russian classics in the repertoire. If we look at the companys repertoire more closely, we find that this consists of only three titles; however, their success has made a significant contribution to the profile of the theatre as far as the Prague public is concerned. These are great themes in the context of Russian culture and world culture in general: Gogols Government Inspector, directed by Serge Fedotov from Omsk (a Russian director with successes in the Czech Republic) and two dramatisations of major classic novels, Dostojevskys Brothers Karamazov directed by Luk Hlavica and Goncharovs Oblomov, with which the artistic director Miroslav Krobot triumphed both as adapter and director. Chekhovs Three Sisters dominates the coming dramaturgical plan. The backbone of the repertoire is additionally strengthened by modern English drama: Joe Ortons Loot (guest-directed by Michal Lang) and Howard Barkers Claw (directed by Luk Hlavica); a dramatisation of Marquzs tale Unbelievable and a Wistful Story about Erendira and her Cruel Grandmother (Miroslav Krobot); and one Shakespeare, Twelfth Night or What You Will (Miroslav Krobot). They have also performed Edgar

Allan Poe (Tranquilising Method), Carlo Gozzi (The Green Bird), and experimentally as a work growing through rehearsals My Life with Dogs was created under the young British theatre director Alex Byrne. The new play Tales of Common Insanity by the well-known screen-writer Petr Zelenka has been a sensation with audiences in recent months. The acting team has stabilised. In the case of Ivan Trojan, last year rewarded with the Thalia Prize for his performance in the role of Oblomov, one can speak of one of the triumphs of Czech acting. The Dejvice crowd is also happy to welcome interesting guests: the Prague-based Russian actress Lilian Malkina appeared in Marquzs tale, director Michal Lang cast National Theatre actor Alois vehlk in Loot, whilst the wellknown actors Nina Divkov, Ji Bartoka and the young Linda Rybov put the final touches to Zelenkas new work. The rawness, verve and maturing of individual actors came to the surface notably in titles such as Kennedys Children, Claw and My Life with Dogs. In other productions it aimed towards exact typisation with a very subtle balancing of expressive nuances in the service of the whole. Novotns Shakespearean Sir Toby and Trojans Karamazov pre were remarkable examples of precise characterisation. In the last two to three years the theatre has begun to gain general renown, and the productions of Oblomov and Tales of Common Insanity judging by the queues at the box office and the sold-out houses have become cult objects. The patient building of an honest,

Dejvice

Dejvice Theatre

Dejvice inTheatre Celebration and Still an Inspiration


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DEJVICE THEATRE IN CELEBRATION AND STILL AN INSPIRATION

Miroslav Krobot, Ivan Alexandrovich Goncharov, Oblomov / Dejvick divadlo, Praha 2000 / Directed by Miroslav Krobot
Set design Martin Chocholouek >Photo archives

non-strident image of actors theatre has begun to pay off and many speak of the Dejvice Theatre as a second inohern klub (Drama Club). What was it that aroused so much interest in Krobots production of Goncharovs Oblomov? Nikita Michalkovs film with Oleg Tabakov in the title role was already a signal that there is a much more strongly inspirational basis in the archetype of the character, somewhat undervalued by literary history, than merely an exact description of the passivity and cultivated laziness of an indecisive good fellow. If the venerable film opus of official Soviet creative enthusiasm is now called into question, this contemporary Czech production finds itself in a society in which orientation towards results

i. e. material success predominates. Oblomovs ambiguous mission meets with an enthusiastic reception. If we compare Krobots version with the famous film, the attitudes taken by the characters and their behaviour patterns are less polarised. Oblomov and Stolz (Ivan Trojan and Martin Myika) are not shown to be fundamental antitheses. Oblomovs passivity makes Stolz sincerely unhappy; Myikas slightly maudlin tone of voice contrasts a little with his activity and maybe indicates its unheroic mycelium. In the title role, Ivan Trojan is a type for whom such striking activity and dynamic in work with actors media only slightly lets off steam in his creation. His Oblomov gives the impression more of a wise, relaxed man at rest (to be

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truthful, at rest after several years of doing nothing). Krobots dramatisation puts the main accent on the rather sad love story between Oblomov and Olga (Lenka Krobotov); the faltering tempo of the riveting scene of timid confession chills the audience in their seats. The passive hero is however unable to share with his loved one her idea about how to fill life. The perfectly rounded shape, interpreting Gonarov in a somewhat Chekhovian way, skilfully combines the stories of the eight characters preserved by the adapter of the novel, and allows others to triumph in addition to the interpreters mentioned above: David Novotn and guest actor Ji Machek as Oblomovs more or less parasitical friends, Igor Chmela as the servant with a bizarrely dark, melancholic naturalness, Jana Holcov as a convincingly naive maid and Denisa Nov in the part of Agaphia, representing the watchful, quiet and patiently practical female principle. The remarkably worked-out sparkling relationship between characters and the tempo of the splendidly built composition of Oblomov also triumphed at the International Festival DIVADLO (THEATRE) in Pilsen in 2001.

Tales of Common Insanity introduced Petr Zelenka to the Dejvice Theatre. This young but recognised film director brought a fresh breeze of poetics to Czech cinema in his Buttoners, and as screen-writer for Ondeks Loners. He directed his own play with the Dejvice performers. In a simplified way, we could characterise its hard-to-grasp genre as tragicomically playful, with strikingly shocking points made within stories; one can also trace there Zelenkas favourite writer, Kurt Vonnegut jr. The portrayal of the characters in the writers theatrical work is made more precise by its classification in the Czech context. Petr (Ivan Trojan) wants to win back Jana (Klra Melkov), who has left him. His friend Midge (Martin Myika), a nonstandard sexual visionary, recommends amorous magic, boiling Janas hair in milk and so on. However, in the dark Petr becomes confused and scalps Janas aunt. There has been a lack of understanding between Petrs parents (Nina Divkov and Miroslav Krobot in his acting debut) for a long time; maybe it never existed. Mama is a passionate blood donor under the

Petr Zelenka, Tales of Common Insanity / Dejvick divadlo, Praha 2001 Directed by Petr Zelenka / Set design Martin Dejwitz / Costumes Jaroslava Pecharov >Photo Hubert Hesoun

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Dejvice Theatre in Celebration and Still an Inspiration

impression that her valuable body fluid is going to help Chechnya; papa used to be a news reel commentator during the 1970s period of Communist normalisation, leading to his voice becoming well-known and somewhat profaned. However, after a meeting with the eccentric sculptor Sylvie (Lenka Krobotov), his stock begins to rise as a bizarre entertainer at private parties. Petr does not live with his parents, and his new neighbours Alice and Ji (Zdenka Volencov and Ji Bartoka) need a voyeur if they are to have meaningful sexual contact. They begin to keep Petr. His friend Midge, who has intimate associations alternately with a vacuum cleaner, a wash basin and shop dummies, believes in miracles, for the dummy Eva (Linda Rybov) comes to life in his domestic set-up. However, she leaves Midge because his reaction to this marvel is full of old-fashioned pathos. The production navigates the unbearable lightness of oddity with impressive vigour. The poetic quality of the dialogues, in which I include the use of the ghastly news programmes of the 1970s, is weighed down from time to time by a politicising overcleverness which is not one of the strengths of the script (reflections on the relationship between working in dissent and sexual attractiveness somewhat tie down in his role the convincing Ji Bartoka). The compositional treatment of some details has a somewhat one-off effect for example, the brief appearance of Petrs paedophile boss with his bizarre confession. The biggest stars of the production are Ivan Trojan

and Miroslav Krobot. Trojans creation relies on a perfect handling of acting techniques, and with a disarming obviousness alternates the figure of an intelligent sceptic with a sexual sluggard and, from time to time, a tolerant though rundown ageing youth. In his attempt to overcome the routine of life the character balances on the edge of existential hysteria. Miroslav Krobot excels in a subtle study of an oddball papa on whose unexaminable inner world is imprinted a strange professional experience, cohabitation with bizarre family members and a tender relationship with bottled beer. His sorrowful appearance and carelessly cadenced utterances draw the audience into the Fathers secret. Zelenkas play and production revolve with some detachment around burning issues of contemporary life. However, it sensitively and precisely touches on many pains, frustrations and ungrasped characteristics still arising at the turn of the millennium.

Miroslav Krobot, Ivan Alexandrovich Goncharov: Oblomov, translated by Prokop Voskovec, directed by Miroslav Krobot, set design Martin Chocholouek, music Matj Kroupa a Pavel Rejholec, Dejvice Theatre, premire 1. 12. 2000 Petr Zelenka: Tales of Common Insanity, directed by Petr Zelenka, set design Martin Dejwitz, costumes Jaroslava Pecharov, choreography Klra Lidov, Dejvice Theatre, premire 16. 11. 2001

Petr Zelenka, Tales of Common Insanity / Dejvick divadlo, Praha 2001 Directed by Petr Zelenka / Set design Martin Dejwitz / Costumes Jaroslava Pecharov >Photo Hubert Hesoun

Dejvice

Theatre
U s t o l u
Josef Mlejnek

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THEATRE U STOLU

It would not be exaggerating to say that the Theatre U stolu (At the Table) is an exceptional phenomenon in contemporary Czech theatre. The theatres roots go back to before the democratic revolution of November 1989. It originated nearly a year earlier, on the initiative of the actor Frantiek Derfler, who with his colleague Jan Vlask and others wanted to present the work of original thinkers whose ideas could reach readers only in spoken form; throughout the years of Communist normalisation (1968-1989), not a single original work of philosophy was published. A reading of texts by the silenced philosopher Josef afak entitled Identity Card was to be premiered in the Brno club Na elepce in the spring of 1989. The performance was cancelled because of censorship, and was eventually held in a private apartment. The first unauthorised performance took place in the Prague club Trojick on 3 May 1989. The

following year Derfler managed to stage a reading from Vclav Havels Letters to Olga, but for the next seven years the Theatre U stolu, apart from a few sporadic reprises, remained virtually silent. However, in a society coming to terms on the one hand with the legacy of Communism, and on the other assimilating the often precipitous impulses from what we call the free world, it soon became urgent and necessary to preserve or renew the importance of the spoken word. When the Theatre U stolu inaugurated its regular activity roughly five years ago, it was not entirely accidental that afaks Identity Card was shown again in a revived premiere. In the course of a few more seasons its creators succeeded in staging almost a dozen independent stage productions. In the critics questionnaire set every year by the journal Svt a divadlo (World and Theatre), the Theatre U stolu reached

second place in the category Theatre of the Year 2001. In German-speaking countries they have a great tradition of presenting not only evenings at which the authors themselves read from their books, but also works of literature and philosophy delivered by leading personalities of the theatrical world. On stage there is usually only a table, chair, lamp, book and the reader, who through his or her delivery succeeds in holding the attention of a crowded hall for more than two hours. If we overlook the essential glass of mineral water, the reader dispenses with props and everything relies on his or her art and voice. Partially, but only in one sense partially, the Theatre U stolu brings something similar to the Czech environment through its service to literature. Through its form it installs itself in the theatrical space ever more markedly. And as far as the meaning of its activity is concerned, one could find and name even deeper connotations than the

Jaroslav Durych, The Divine Rainbow / Divadlo U stolu, Brno 2001 / Directed by Frantiek Derfler / Set design Milivoj Husk Costumes Bohumila Matalov >Photo Pavel Nesvadba And God Said - A Concert of Stories from the Old Testament for Narrator and Percussion / Divadlo U stolu, Brno 2001 / Directed by
Frantiek Derfler / Set design Milivoj Husk >Photo Pavel Nesvadba

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Fjodor Michailovich Dostojevsky, Dream of a Foolish Man


Divadlo U stolu, Brno 2001 / Directed by Frantiek Derfler Set design Milivoj Husk >Photo archives

faithful relationship and open approach of the reader to great literary works and the effort to elevate an uninstructed public. In the 1920s the theologian Romano Guardini, after one of his Easter journeys to the uneducated south, complained that we would-be modern people had completely lost the ability to watch in a direct and living way. He was captivated by the simple visual concentration and by the special way people actively participated through observation in liturgical ceremonies. At the very end of the twentieth century the Czech poet Ivan Divi, recently returned from the Provenal south, complained in his typically indignant way that we modern people had similarly critically lost the ability for concentrated listening. He was enthused by poetic competition between villages in the distance, whose participants sitting by the fire in the evening sang their original versified compositions across the hills a practice far from being only a folkloric tradition. The theologian and the poet were fascinated as well as by the ability to understand the living language of

imagery, by direct participation in a particular educational process, following which the guilty aftertaste of emptiness does not remain in the human soul as it does when it is merely shed around. How does the Theatre U stolu connect with this? Certainly through its archetypal title, which evokes times long ago in the countryside when the wider family gathered at the table on the evening before Sunday in a different way than during the rest of the week. It creates a ceremonial special occasion, such as happens with an intimate family reading of the Holy Scriptures, but also with secular books of wisdom. Moreover, the Theatre U stolu at least partially renews in us the blocked-up abilities of watching and listening for which Guardini and Divi grieved. But primarily it works on us through perceptive and impenetrable wisdoms which are not only in images but also behind them. Pilgrim on Earth could be considered to be the peak, so far, of the staged readings at the Theatre U stolu. The delivery of excerpts from the prose and

the diary of Jan ep, a Czech writer with a Catholic orientation, and the figures, faces and silhouettes of the readers (Ladislav Lakom and Frantiek Derfler) were permeated with the luminous spacial magic of a Malevich square in the middle of the stage, which not only reflected light but at the most effective moments seemed to emanate it itself. Everything brought to mind the personality of Jan ep and his destiny as a man, poet and thinker and as a witness to Christ in all three roles. Not only during the ep evening but during other creations by the Theatre U stolu, the audience becomes aware of the essential role played by the cellar stage of the Brno House of the Lords of Fanal: the brick walls and vaulting not only create an atmosphere of long ago, but also evoke a spirit of unadulterated expectancy. In the case of And God Said A Concert of Stories from the Old Testament for Narrator and Percussion what attracted most were the scenic marvels of the artist Milivoj Husk everything being evoked and brought to life during readings from the Old Testament by a variously floodlit

Bedich Bridel, In this Light I Am Darkening / Divadlo U stolu, Brno 2001 / Directed by Frantiek Derfler / Set design Milivoj Husk / Music Dan Dlouh / Choreography Martin Svobodnk
>Photo archives

heap of brushwood! The minimalist music by Dan Dlouh did not illustrate or form a background to the sacred texts, as has happened at similar occasions, but with great invention created their rootstock to the same degree as the human voice. The concert is of course the reading itself. In the case of the original interpretation of the poetic meditation by Bedich Bridel In this Light I Am Darkening , Martin Svobodnks expressive dance representing mans discovery of himself, the faltering search for space and the finding of the point of balance, corresponded with the melodious undulation of the lines by the Baroque poet. It is the landmark utterances of the Old Testament Preacher and excerpts from the Book of Job that we recollect more than terrifying images of ruin and desolation during the reading of Bridels texts. Husks set also indirectly polemicises with the simplified understanding of the Baroque and

emphasises its Biblical roots. A glass vessel with limpid water stands in the foreground as a mark of Divine simplicity, next to it a globe as an attribute of Divine power and a triangular pyramid, a symbol of the inner Divine life in the Trinity. The actor Igor Bare introduced himself in an adaptation of Dostojevskys Dream of a Foolish Man. The place of action of the performance again had an almost archetypal simplicity: a table, chair and bed, in the background a rectangular picture which operated most suggestively at the moments when a starry sky shone on it during the twilight passages of visionary monologues. However, an adaptation of Jaroslav Durychs Divine Rainbow showed it was possible to go further. Derfler and Husks stage creations gradually tended towards a consistently theatrical shape which flowed from a deep understanding of the texts and from an intuitive
Bedich Bridel, In this Light I Am Darkening
Divadlo U stolu, Brno 2001 / Directed by Frantiek Derfler / Set design Milivoj Husk Music Dan Dlouh / Choreography Martin Svobodnk >Photo archives

recognition of what stage shape best corresponded. The Divine Rainbow was therefore in essence a legitimate theatrical performance which for that matter did not deny could not deny its genealogy. The setting: on the wall in the background the dim indication of a cross, on the floor windblown leaves, in the foreground a bed, chair and table on which Woman gradually sets a candle, bread and a jug of water. In the background a bell and above an opening in the ground two boards at right angles, alongside a coffin, or rather a chest. Man is played by Ladislav Lakom, Woman by Ela Lehock. Both have lived through wartime and postwar catastrophe. By a crucial accident they meet on a farm in the middle of an abandoned, plundered village, gradually open up one to another, and leave themselves at the mercy of the other. Here too the rule of maximum expression through minimum means, typical of every preceding production by the Theatre U stolu, remained valid. The Theatre U stolu does not dazzle with politically adventurous experiments, but refers to the natural world which becomes ever more despairingly less evident. Together with the theatre we can peer into the blocked-up depths not only of humanity. The Theatre U stolu in its present form would certainly be far less expressive were it not for the cooperation of two artists: the actor and director Frantiek Derfler and the painter Milivoj Husk. The latter proved his exceptional ability for spacial theatrical vision twenty years ago with his images for the street theatre adaptation of Comeniuss Labyrinth of the World and Paradise of the Heart by the Theatre on a String. Based on what the two of them have so far created and on what they are planning, their invention has plainly not reached the end of its powers.

Theatre
U s t o l u

The Revival of

Opera

in the

Czech
Radmila Hrdinov

Lands

Leo Janek, Fate / Nrodn divadlo, Praha 2002 / Conducted by Ji Blohlvek Directed by Robert Wilson / Set and light design Robert Wilson / Costumes Jacques Reynand >Photo Oldich Pernica

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THE REVIVAL OF OPERA IN THE CZECH LANDS

The art of opera, above all the staging of opera, is going through an apparent revival in the Czech lands. As well as opera directors from abroad who have been working here over the last year as guest directors, possibly all the most important Czech directors of the younger and middle generation from the straight theatre have tried their hand (some of them repeatedly) at directing opera, resulting in a striking impact on the theatrical quality of opera productions. The first two years of the new millennium also brought, for opera houses in the Czech Republic, a successful climax to a tendency initiated in previous seasons. The management of the opera at the National Theatre completed its efforts to acquire international personalities in opera direction for productions of Czech classics. This is how the production of Smetanas Devils Wall (premiere 20. 12. 2001) came about, directed by the English director David Pountney. Pountney has wide experience in the Czech repertoire (Smetana, Dvok, Janek and Martin) and during the previous season at the State Opera directed (with his assistant Nicola Raab) Bohuslav Martins operatic debut The Soldier and the Dancer. His interpretation of Smetanas opera focused more on the intimate story of the emotional deprivation of an ageing man than on the details of Czech life, arousing antagonistic reactions but categorically enriching the domestic opera scene with a production marked by the clear imprint of a directors signature and opinion. The same can be said of a guest production by a legendary personality of international theatre, the American Robert Wilson, who directed Janeks opera Osud (Fate) at the National Theatre. Osud is an opera rarely played in the Czech Republic because of its difficult libretto, and is consequently little known. Wilson adapted Janek to his own poetic of highly stylised visual

theatre, which somewhat overcame the problem of the realistic handling of a not very consistent story, but which only loosely corresponded with Janeks music. In the last few years the National Theatre has striven for the modernisation of the theatrical shape of opera productions by extending invitations to theatre directors of the younger generation (Petr Lbl, Vladimr Morvek, J. A. Pitnsk, Jana Kaliov, Hana Bureov). J. A. Pitnsks second production (following Wagners Tristan und Isolde) was Smetanas Dalibor. Pitnsk brought it up to date, but unfortunately the production, sketchy in style and logic, aroused numerous negative responses in the audience and informed public, although it could not be denied that it was an attempt to take a new view of the traditionally heroically conceived theme of this Czech national opera. Amongst the successes of this season at the Prague National Theatre was the Alfrd Radok Award for best production of the year to Alban Bergs Wozzeck directed by David Radok, which originated as a co-production with Gteborg in Sweden. The State Opera in Prague continued in the dramaturgical line followed by the artistic leadership since 1996. This has been mainly in the staging of 20th century operas (in past seasons Benjamin Britten, Philip Glass, E. F. Burian and others) and the inclusion of original works. Two operas by foreign composers had their premieres this season at the State Opera in Prague: Joseph Merrick dit Elephant Man by the French composer Laurent Petitgirard (7. 2. 2002) and Circus Terra by the Norwegian composer Trygve Madsen (16. 5. 2002). Petitgirards opera, based on the theme popularised in David Lynchs film The Elephant Man, brought to the Prague stage a melodic retro-opera linked in its musical expression to the line of French music linked with the names of Saint-Sans, Faur, Debussy and Ravel. Madsens opera-musical, on the other hand, is from the musical point of view no more than a craftily constructed compilation, its libretto likewise a highly confused anecdote characterised by pseudo-philosophical passages on the theme of human freedom. Both productions, but especially the second, raised the question as to whether the leadership of the State Opera is not striving after world premieres at any cost, without regard to the quality of the works staged. The production of the Petitgirard opera was the climax of the French cycle at the State opera, in the context of which the State Opera had already presented Giacomo Meyerbeers Robert le Diable and Paul Dukass Ariane et Barbebleue. A more meaningful quality, especially from the point of view of the music and singing, came with the premiere of the opera Hamlet by the French composer Ambroise Thomas (21. 3. 2002) which opened a cycle based on themes of Shakespeares plays. A similarly interesting initiative was the comparative cycle of which the first project was the production of two operas on the theme of Don Juan Giuseppe Gazzanigas Don Giovanni and Mozarts opera of the same name (13. 12. 2001). Antonio Vivaldis Orlando Furioso (18. 10. 2001) likewise represented a worthwhile attempt to

Leo Janek, Fate / Nrodn divadlo, Praha 2002 / Conducted by Ji Blohlvek / Directed by Robert Wilson / Set and light design Robert Wilson Costumes Jacques Reynaud >Photo Oldich Pernica

The Revival of in the

Directed by Robert Wilson / Set and light design Robert Wilson / Costumes Jacques Reynaud >Photo Oldich Pernica

Bedich Smetana, Devils Wall / Nrodn divadlo, Praha 2002 / Conducted by Ji Blohlvek Directed by David Pountney / Set design and costumes Johan Engels >Photo Hana Smejkalov

Opera Czech Lands


Leo Janek, Fate / Nrodn divadlo, Praha 2002 / Conducted by Ji Blohlvek

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THE REVIVAL OF OPERA IN THE CZECH LANDS

Thomas Ambroise, Hamlet / Sttn opera, Praha 2002 / Conducted by Ji Mikula Directed by Dieter Kaegi / Set design and costumes Stefanie Pasterkamp >Photo Frantiek Ortmann

bring baroque opera to the contemporary public. The State Opera made space for young composers and their previously unperformed operas with the cycle Pounding on the Iron Curtain, in which the operas The Knight and Death and Jelizaweta Bam by Vladimr Wimmer, The Divine Comedy by Martin Kumk, Venomous Love by Otmar Mcha and Wir spielen Frieden by the German composer Jrn Arnecke (in coproduction with the Musikakademie Rheinsberg) received oneoff performances. Even here doubts were raised over the quality of some of the works. A more interesting stimulus in the field of original work was brought by the Opera Studio of the Music Faculty of the Academy of Performing Arts (HAMU) in Prague by the introduction of two original works by young authors the operas The Fool and the Nun by Michal Nejtek and The Girl and Death by Marek Ivanovi. The production gained added value not only for the quality of the two works, but also because of the direction by the young graduate of HAMU Ji Heman. He likewise made his debut on the professional stage in the J. K. Tyl Theatre in Pilsen with the opera Samson et Dalila by Camille Saint-Sans which belongs, as far as the stylistic finesse and emotional relationship to the musical language of a work is concerned, to the most remarkable operatic initiatives of the last season. The Pilsen Opera continued in its pioneering

dramaturgy of Czech compositions (Fibichs rka , Foersters Simpleton) with the staging of Otakar Ostrils opera Kunalas Eyes. The problematic direction by Ji Pokorn and insensitive encroachments into the musical structure of the work (conductor and present head of the Opera Petr Kofro) considerably devalued the merit of this initiative. During the same season the Opera of the National Theatre in Brno maintained in general the high musical level of productions and tendency to interesting dramaturgy. After Janeks Makropulous Case with Gabriela Beakov in the leading role at the end of the preceding season, this year there followed a concert performance of Janeks rka. In May, a festival took place in the Brno National Theatre which presented the work of the Brno native, the composer Erich Wolfgang Korngold (1897-1957). The festival reached a climax with the premiere of Korngolds opera Die tote Stadt (in coproduction with the Badisches Theatre in Karlsruhe, Germany) in a remarkable production both from the point of view of music and staging (premiere 10. 5. 2002). The National Theatre of Moravia and Silesia in Ostrava continued with a constantly interesting standard of dramaturgy and staging. The repertoire of Janek operas expanded already last season with his early work The Beginning of a Romance (also staged at the Janek Festival in Hukvaldy in July 2001) and this season with Ka Kabanov (December 2001). It became one of the few out-of-Prague opera houses to risk presenting Borodins opera Prince Igor (February 2002), thanks to a high-quality cast of singers strengthened by voices from the countries of the former Soviet Union and an excellent chorus. Of the other opera houses, the F. X. alda Theatre in Liberec presented an attractive dramaturgy (Orffs Die Kluge , Massenets Werther, Giordanos Andra Chnier) and a high level of staging (especially under the direction of Anton Nekovar), as did the Moravian Theatre in Olomouc (Brittens Albert Herring) and the Theatre of South Bohemia in esk Budjovice (Mozarts Zaida). The festival Opera 2001 organised by the Union of Music Theatre in the National Theatre in Prague was devoted to opera in the Czech Republic, aimed mainly at staging tendencies; so was the Smetana Festival in Litomyl, which apart from some great productions in recent years has revived the historic chateau theatre (a period interpretation of Jacopo Peris Euridice); the Janek Festival in Hukvaldy; and the summer opera festivals in Kutn Hora and Loket.

Antonio Vivaldi, Orlando Furioso / Sttn opera, Praha 2001 / Conducted by Ji Kotou / Directed by Gilbert Blin / Set design Gilbert Blin Costumes Josef Jelnek / Choreography Zuzana Dostlov >Photo Frantiek Ortmann Paul Ducas, Ariane et Barbe-bleue / Sttn opera, Praha 2001 / Conducted by Vincent Monteil / Directed by Paul-Emile Fourny Set design and costumes Daniela Villaret >Photo Frantiek Ortmann

of Oper

The Revival

in the

Czech Lands

in Bohemia

Puppets

Nina Malkov

P u p p e t s in Bohemia
PUPPETS IN BOHEMIA

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At the present time, the statutory puppet theatres (those with their own building and, above all, a grant from the local authority) are meeting serious competition for audiences from independent professional groups and the numerous and, as far as inventiveness is concerned, ever-more assertive amateur companies (Stpek from Pilsen, mukai from Turnov and Cko from Svitavy). Professional puppet companies have held their ground most successfully in the field of stage design. Their designers have not surrendered the will to experiment and incorporate the live actor in a natural way into a daring solution of the stage space. The technique of shadow theatre has reappeared (most recently in the successful Svitr by the independent group Theatre Le); work with light, projection and multi-purpose mobile stages has been fostered (the most daring realisations have been linked with the name of Petr Matsek for example, the design for the production of Nosegay at the Naive Theatre in Liberec, or the production, resolved on a similar principle, of The Three Gold Hairs of Grandad Knowall, designed by Marek Zkosteleck for DRAK Theatre). New non-traditional spaces were sought whether a wide variety of street theatre or the use of non-theatrical buildings like Bouda-La Barraque by the company Volire Dromesco and the brothers Forman, or another sanctuary for this theatrical partnership for the project Crimson Sails a cargo ship. A number of puppet productions have taken place in a circus big top (for example, the circus musical Pinnochio), in which the Theatre DRAK took part as well as the production of independent groups Studio dell arte, and Continuo Theatres Circus Vitae). The theatrical activity of the Mal divadlo (Little Theatre) from esk Budjovice takes place in the gardens of chateaux and castles. Puppet theatre has stepped out of dimmed halls and come right out to its audiences in the most charmingly varied spaces, where the audiences are treated to theatrical tricks and dodges often inspired by the magic of old theatrical productions. As far as the dramaturgy is concerned, apart from wellknown authors (Frantiek Pavlek, Milan Pavlk, Iva Peinov the most frequently performed author on Czech and international puppet stages Pavel Polk and Ji Steda), new names have appeared (Blanka Lukov, Vlasta picnerov,

Svitr / Divadlo Le, 2000 / Directed by Pavla Dombrovsk Music Ludk Vmola / Puppets Eva Krsensk / Set design Jana Francov
>Photo archives

A Plague on Both Your Houses! / Drak, Hradec Krlov 2001 Directed by Josef Krofta / Set design and puppets Irena Marekov Music Ji Vyohld >Photo Josef Ptek

the young and talented Klra Peinov, Ren Levnsk). The dramaturgy whilst not neglecting the child audience has expanded into a repertoire for adult audiences (very strikingly in the musically coloured repertoire of the Brno Divadlo Radost [Theatre Joy], most remarkably in the production in the Alfa Theatre in Pilsen of the provocative play by Iva Peinov Gee Whiz, Dogheads! touching on the Czech national character). The well-known Spejbl and Hurvnek Theatre regularly plays for adults (Hurvneks Excursion into the XXIst century). For several years in succession, inspiring puppet productions have found their way into the big theatre festivals such as the International Festival THEATRE held in Pilsen and the Hradec Krlov Festival Theatre European Regions, whilst traditional Czech puppet festivals such as

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P u p p e t s in Bohemia

PUPPETS IN BOHEMIA

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Gilgamesh I and II / Buchty a loutky, 2001 / Conception and music Tom Prochzka / Set design and puppets Renata Pavlkov
>Photo Pavel Matela

A Plague on Both Your Houses! / Drak, Hradec Krlov 2001 Directed by Josef Krofta / Set design and puppets Irena Marekov Music Ji Vyohld >Photo Josef Ptek

Mateinka in Liberec or Skupas Pilsen, the new festivals such as the international Spectaculum interesse (from 1995) in Ostrava and the World Festival of Puppet Art (from 1996) in Prague have opened themselves to independent groups and companies from home and abroad which use the media of puppet theatre in wider connections of theatrical work. An example is the very successful production How I Lost Myself (directed by Jan Borna at the Divadlo v Dlouh [Theatre in Dlouh Street]) linking straight drama and puppet appearances in a story by Ludvk Akenazy with popular period songs from the Golden Sixties. The professional puppet theatres resort to international participation for the realisation of major projects for youth or adult audiences. One example is the Czech-Japanese coproduction variation on Shakespeares Romeo and Juliet, which under the title A Plague on Both Your Houses! was presented by DRAK Theatre in Hradec Krlov, directed by Josef Krofta. In difficult conditions, and after ten years of courageously defending its position, the ambitious independent group Buchty a loutky (Buns and Puppets) and Continuo Theatre, base of their repertoire primarily on an adult audience. Buchty a loutky, as they show in their most recent productions Gilgamesh I and II, tend rather towards intimate performances, whilst Continuo inclines towards street theatre in the widest sense of the word. Other productions by independent groups are a challenge and an inspiration for professional puppet

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P u p p e t s in Bohemia
PUPPETS IN BOHEMIA >Photos Jaroslav Prokop

Gilgamesh I and II / Buchty a loutky, 2001 / Conception and music Tom Prochzka / Set design and puppets Renata Pavlkov

theatres: the already mentioned Theatre of the Forman Brothers, the Kvelb Theatre from esk Budjovice, established three years ago and orienting also towards street production, the attractive one-man show by the South Bohemian puppeteer Vtzslav Mark. An exceptional phenomenon in this spectrum is the visual theatre by the sculptor and painter Petr Nikl bringing to the Czech puppet theatre an unanticipated form of dadaist-surrealist production, both in his own performances of Nest of Dreams in the Prague Rudolfinum Gallery and in joint projects with Jana Svobodov and the husband and wife musicians, the Havels, for the Prague stage of the Archa Theatre In the Mirror, Behind the Mirror, Shabby Dreams. Since 1991 the Czech professional puppet theatre has had an annual confrontation, Flight over the Puppet Nest, with the most striking productions from amateur companies. Since 1997 it has awarded the ERIK Prize for the best production of the year; in 2001 it went to the young company DNO from Hradec Krlov for Variations on the Famous Theme of Cyrano.

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The Alfrd Radok Awards 2001


Production of the Year 2001

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Awarded 26. 4. 2002 in the National Theatre in Prague, based on the voting of Czech theatre critics in the journal Svt a divadlo (World and Theatre):

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Alban Berg: Wozzeck, directed by David Radok, conductor Elgar Howarth, co-production of the National Theatre in Prague and the Gteborg Opera

Best Actress of the Year 2001


Marie Mlkov Madeleine (Carrire: La Terasse, directed by Ji Pokorn, Divadlo Na zbradl [Theatre on the Balustrade])

Best Actor of the Year 2001


David Pracha Faustus (Marlowe: The Tragical History of Dr Faustus, directed by Michal Doekal, Divadlo Komedie [Comedy Theatre])

Theatre of the Year 2001


Klicperovo divadlo [Klicpera Theatre], Hradec Krlov

Play of the Year 2001 (award made to the first production)


Petr Zelenka: Pbhy obyejnho lenstv ([Tales of Common Insanity], directed by Petr Zelenka, Dejvick divadlo [Dejvice Theatre])

Scenography of the Year 2001


Petr Matsek set (The Tragical History of Dr Faustus, directed by Michal Doekal, Divadlo Komedie [Comedy Theatre])

Music of the Year 2001


Petr Ulrych (Ulrych Moa: Koloava, directed by Stanislav Moa, Mstsk divadlo [Municipal Theatre] Brno)

Talent of the Year 2001


Miroslav Krobot actor

Alfrd Radok Award for an original play (chosen in anonymous competition), awarded by an expert jury
1st Prize not awarded 2nd Prize - Miroslav Bambuek: Psek [Sand] Roman Olekk: Neha [Tenderness] Iva Volnkov: Stsnni [Depressed] 3rd Prize not awarded

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Finalists in the Competition for the Alfrd Radok Award 2001


Miroslav Bambuek: Psek (Sand)
3 women, 4 men, The fates of a typical Czech married couple Richard and Jaru, of the American millionairess Claudia, and of the war criminal from Yugoslavia Mr. Ratko and his son Marko intertwine on a beach in the Canary Isles. The play is inspired by cool drama and at the same time lays heavy emphasis on atmosphere and symbols of the elements sea and sand. The text embraces motifs of caricature and satire, of open violence and of eroticism. The moves of the complicated action are Mr. Ratko and Marko, who gradually murder Jaru, Richard and Claudia, until eventually they themselves seek death and oblivion in the waves of the sea. The play exists in a Czech and in a Czech-English-Serbian version. (2nd Prize) connivance of his own daughter, with whom he is sleeping. Hugo eventually kills his sister, exhumes his mother, and chops off his own hand, and from these three types of meat prepares a meal for his father (both corpses are hanging from a tree in the background). At the end in a fit of madness (a progressive disease from Africa) he challenges his father to kill him. The author uses very utilitarian language and a style on the border of coolness and the drama of Jean Genet. Amongst the merits of the play are a well-established atmosphere around Hugos progressive madness.

Jaroslava Justov: Na tenkm ledu (On Thin Ice)

2 women, 4 men A detective play with a touch of psychology. Kamil Marek has an amorous relationship with Helena, his brothers wife. Helena dies and it turns out she has been murdered. The Jakub Fabel: Nebe, peklo, rj investigation is completed by the psychological reflections of (Heaven, Hell, Paradise) Kamil Marek. Eventually it turns out that the murderer was Kamils wife Marta. In the closing monologue Kamil Marek 1 woman, 1 man comes to the opinion that he really killed Helena and he will The leader of an unnamed political party enters a public forever as a punishment live with his wife, the real offender. convenience and discovers he has no money on him. This is obviously not going to satisfy the attendant, who decides she will not allow the politician to leave the cubicle. The situation Marcel Kabt: Plovouc podlahy is sharpened by the fact that the party leader is travelling to the (Floating Floors) party congress, where he is standing again for leadership. This conversational comedy is founded on an encounter between 3 women, 3 men the voice of the people and a politician somewhat removed Eva, just sixty, discovers in the course of her birthday that from reality. The author has a command of both genre and style everything she has been striving for all her life at the price of as well as of surprise, when at the end the attendant leaves to personal compromises and compromises with the political check the chairmans jacket where allegedly he has some regime is collapsing. A symbol of her striving is the luxurious change, and returns to find the locked cubicle empty. apartment which she has tried to hang on to for her son Jirka. He, however, has his own family and almost hates Eva for her compromises. In order to hold on to the apartment, a long time Petr Cholt: Hugo ago she renounced her husband, an emigrant, and became involved with the opportunist Dr. Janeek. She recapitulates her life and only once takes the opportunity to answer 2 women, 2 men, chorus The play takes place in a French gipsy ghetto to which Hugo otherwise than at that time. In the end she loses the returns from Africa, to find his white step-father and sister. He apartment and a new tenant appears, her former husband. An ascertains that his father killed his mother with the mute almost traditional conversation piece.

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Finalists in the Competition for the Alfrd Radok Award 2001


Roman Olekk: Neha (Tenderness)
2 women, 3 men In a deserted, clearly post-apocalyptic landscape lives a family of parents and children. It seems they are the last people in the world. Everything civilisation achieved has disappeared and they live a primitive way of life. One day, things from the past begin to appear on the tree where the children play: a saucepan, a comb, a mirror and a book. The tree is a variation of the Tree of Knowledge, because it is through the book that the children realise their parents know how to lie (when they try to hide from them that they know how to read, in order to protect themselves from memories of the past). This first sin leads eventually to murder when the children kill the Old Man, who came from nowhere and their father. Only the mother remains with the children who, settled on their favourite branch, plan in quite an adult way their common future, counting especially on maintaining the family nd line and thus mankind. A model absurd play. (2 Prize) honoured gags and procedures of the selected genre such as are the most varied confusions, errors, slips of the tongue and spoonerisms. There even appear small satirical motifs, of course in the intentions of the somewhat communal spirit of the text as a whole.

Oldich Vlek:

Jeruzalm, miesto o kter se bojuje (Jerusalem, the City for which one Fights)
10 women , 22 men A historical play reminiscent in its structure of the historical drama of the Czech National Revival. The main line of action describes the efforts of the ascetic and preacher Mil to build a house called Jerusalem for the correction of fallen women in the heart of the centre of all sin and fornication Prague at the end of the 14th century. Mils effort is suspicious and he runs into difficulties not only with the representatives of the state authorities but even his subordinate. Mil builds his house, but thanks to intrigues and to human nature tending more towards sin than to humility and asceticism, the whole project eventually goes bankrupt. The second line of action is taken up by the fate of Bra, Mils relation, who is sent to him from the country but who mysteriously gets lost. It turns out that Bra is now the Princess, the most sought-after and at the same time most devious of the prostitutes, who holds firmly to her aim money.

Zdenk Palusga: Csaovna Rzi


(Empress Rzi)
6 women, 6 men An apocryphal comedy in a light conversational tone from the time of Maria Theresas reign. A relatively simple but skilfully constructed plot, with the help of which the author demonstrates principles of power and delight at the imperial court. Apart from showing The Lord of the World in a dressing-gown it also develops a side-plot about the possible illegitimate child Carlo Goldoni.

Iva Volnkov: Stsnni (Depressed)


5 women, 7 men A poetic, even dreamlike drama which takes place on the staircase of a house, a house which remembers. The play does not have an unambiguous story or plot, it is rather a sequence of scenes memories of the past and present inhabitants of the house on whose staircase not only the memories but also the guilts and hopes push to the surface. Lines are repeated like refrains in the play (often with different speakers), motifs interpenetrate, emphasis is laid on atmosphere and poetic language. The emphasis on the womans angle is clear, and characteristic for Volnkov. (2nd Prize)

Richard Slanina: U jsem vm kal ten fr?


(Have I Told You This Joke Already?)
7 women, 13 men A farce, even crazy comedy, set in a hospital to which the Bridegroom is brought dressed ready for the wedding ceremony, to be equipped with the consequences of too boisterous a stag night. The author skilfully makes use of time-

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Czech Theatres in 2001: Basic Statistical Data


In the Czech Republic last year, there were 52 repertory theatres with their own companies of various types in operation (14 of these were multi-ensembles, the basic model being the coexistence of opera, drama and ballet companies) that had regular funding allocated from local budgets (43 theatres) and from federal budget (9 theatres). Another 36 standing stages without their own companies were also financed from public resources (local budgets). A total of 184 theatres and subjects dedicated to the performing arts (57 of these without their own company, and 36 without their own stage) were regularly and systematically active in the theatre life in the Czech Republic during the year 2001. 221 theatre stages were in operation, offering a capacity of 58,306 seats. A total of 8,432 people were employed in all of these subjects of which 3,566 were artistic. 1,976 titles were in the repertoire, and 2,353 productions were produced (of which 733 were premires). In total, 221 new Czech titles were produced. 23,950 performances took place in the Czech Republic, attracting over 6 million visitors (the average percent of visitors was 81). Czech theatre ensembles played 861 performances abroad. Almost 2 billion crowns were granted from the public sources to support theatrical activities.

The Transformation of Prague Theatres


The City of Prague has decided to launch a process of transformation of the Prague theatre network, whose form, tradition and continuity is for the most part determined by repertory theatres managed, operated and financed directly by the city. Before initiating this process they asked the Theatre Institute in Prague to make an analysis of the conditions of transformation. Comprehensive material emerged detailing the historical development of Prague theatre and the development of its legal and organisational order. It provided basic statistical information and a description of existing kinds and regimes of public funding of theatres, including the development of grant systems. This analysis defined the Prague theatre network as a cultural service to the public. It designed a basic concept for the capital citys theatre policy, including its aims, principles, values and priorities. It also prepared the basis of a new grant system as the precondition of successful transformation. The analysis derives from a comparison of theatre systems abroad, including their management and funding. It devotes itself exhaustively to all the legal and economic aspects of transformation and finally proposes concrete measures for a first step to be taken for three theatres: the inohern klub Praha (Drama Club Prague), Divadlo Archa (Archa Theatre) and Divadlo Semafor (Semafor Theatre). The Divadlo Komedie (Comedy Theatre) will be added to these during the first year. One fundamental change is that of legal subjectivity: the theatres will cease to be beneficiaries of the city (a relic of socialist legislation) and become not-for-profit organisations or limited liability companies. The initiation of the transformation is an open process which will be evaluated after two seasons and modified as necessary.

New Books from the Theatre Institute


Dalibor Tureek: The Unity Full of Contradictions (The German-language
contexts of drama of the National Revival)
Edice esk divadlo, Divadeln stav (Theatre Institute), Prague 2001 The relationship of the Czech literary and theatrical revival to German-language drama and theatre is an accepted historical fact. However, for a long time after World War II the theme remained on the fringe of research primarily for ideological reasons. Dalibor Tureek, Professor of Czech Literature at the University of South Bohemia in esk Budjovice, has engaged himself in the history of the Czech literary revival, in the course of which he has concentrated on Czech-German and Czech-Austrian cultural relationships. His comparatist monograph focuses on the relationship between the Czech dramatic revival and popular dramatic production in the German language at the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries. It derives from reception aesthetics stimuli, and concentrates on conventional production of that time, whose influence previously, from the normative point of view in aesthetics, was mainly directed at the high genres and undervalued in literary history. The author follows the Czech reception of popular authors of the Viennese folk theatre (Raimund, Nestroy) and in particular the German theatre (Kotzebue, Raupach). He analyses the domestic transformation of typical genres (plays about social mobility, local farces, sentimental drama) and in particular the difference in their reception in Vienna and in Prague. For example, guest productions of Raimund in Prague enable a comparison between Prague and Viennese receptions of his performances. The difference between them shows the specific nature both of Prague German theatre and of Czech theatre in its formative stages. The author does not see the typical texts of the conventional dramas he analyses as static, once-for-all aesthetically-defined objects, but examines them in all their dynamic inconsistency, showing how antithetical cultural models meet in them. He thus succeeds in newly showing the essence and value of such cultural phenomena in

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New Books from the Theatre Institute


Czech culture as subjective Romanticism and Biedermeier, represented above all by the phenomenon of J. K. Tyl. In many cases his work brings a new angle on the period followed, even a considerable amount of new information about essential cultural and historical issues such as the relationship between Biedermeier and Romanticism, between drama in the theatre and drama in books, between low and high theatre production; but of course, first place is given to the issue today once more highly topical of Czech-German coexistence.

Visegrad Drama 1 Weddings


The book is a result of the collaboration of four theatre institutes from four Central European countries. The idea of a joint edition of Visegrad drama began at meeting of theatre institute and museum staff from the Visegrad countries. They agreed one institution would promote and publish one volume of this edition annualy, finally resulting in four books with 16 dramas from the Visegrad Four. The common language would be English. The first volume of Visegrad drama contains four plays from the turn of the nineteenth century to the1920s. They are related by an important event in human life a wedding. The book contains the Czech (or more precisely Moravian) play Marya by the Mrtk brothers, the Polish drama The Wedding by Stanislaw Wyspianski, the Slovak play Snowdrifts by Vladimr Hurban Vladimrov and the Hungarian play The Glass Slipper by Ferenc Molnr. The most famous Czech classical play Marya (1894) by Alois and Vilm Mrtk is presented here for the first time in the English translation by Barbara Day. As a commentary on the play and its modern meanings the essay Interpreting Marya by Jan Grossman, one of the leading figures of Czech theatre of the 20th century, is attached.

Miroslav ulc: Chronicle of Czech Operetta


This book gives a detailed picture of the development of operetta and operetta theatres in Bohemia and Moravia from their beginnings in the 1860s to the start of the 1960s. Part of the book is a comprehensive Calendar, putting together an overview of operetta events, especially information about nearly all operetta premieres in Czech theatres (data, production teams, chief roles and where possible press reports).

Internet Pages on the Theme of Theatre


Over the last year several Czech internet pages on a theatrical theme have been made accessible in an English version. The first, a new version of The Information Centre of Czech Theatre on the Internet (http://www.theatre.cz), run by the Czech Theatre Institute, was launched in spring of last year. Its task is to provide basic information on Czech theatre. The visitor to the pages can acquire a brief overview of the history of Czech theatre (under the rubric History). Treated in detail are the 1990s and some specific phenomenon (theatre of the hearing impaired, theatre for children and youth, puppet journals). The section News and Information provides topical information about activities in the Czech theatre world, international programmes in preparation (a Canadian season, the Visegrad drama project, the Prague Quadrennial) and so on. Also available are the latest numbers of the journal Czech Theatre in PDF format. Some practical pages consist of the theatre address book (c. 1800 contacts to theatres and their permanent staff, theatre festivals, institutions, schools, agencies and journals), regularly updated, together with a database of theatre references (Links) and programmes of the Czech theatres. The internet Presentation of the Theatre Institute (http://institute.theatre.cz) has also been available from March of this year. The pages provide, apart from the characteristics of individual departments, their work, services and projects, information about books published by the Theatre Institute in English, contacts to individual employees and an on-line catalogue of the library of the Theatre Institute (more than 110,000 volumes) and a Czech theatre bibliography (more than 77,000 references). One of the departments of the Theatre Institute is the bookshop Prospero (the only specialist theatre bookshop in the Czech Republic), which in its internet bookshop (http://www. divadlo. cz/prospero), available also in an English version, offers everything published in Czech on the theatre. It also arranges the purchase and sale of books to foreign customers. Around 1,800 titles are at present on offer. Newly available are also the English versions of two theatre journals: Divadeln revue (http://www.divadlo.cz/revue/english) and Loutk (http://www.divadlo.cz/loutkar/english). Both of them provide, as well as basic information and contacts to the editor, detailed English resums of individual numbers Divadeln revue from 2001, Loutk from number 5/1999.

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Cultural Exchange: Czech Republic and Canada


In a bold attempt to present Czech theatre abroad, the Theatre Institute has embarked on the largest cultural exchange project with several festival organizers and presenters from the Czech Republic and Canada. During the Six Stages Festival in Toronto in February 2001, a small group of individuals from the Czech performing arts field, including Ondej ern (Theatre Institute in Prague), Ondej Hrab (Archa Theatre), Tatjana Langkov (Konfrontace Festival of New Dance) and Pavla Petrov (Ministry of Culture Library and Performing Arts), had the opportunity to witness projects from the contemporary Canadian performing arts scene. Over the course of the year, the organizers began selecting Canadian theatre, dance and multimedia projects to present in Prague during the Canadian Season in Prague in the fall 2002. Venues used for the Season include the Archa Theatre, the State Opera, the Duncan Centre and the festival site of the Four + Four Days in Motion, the annual festival known for hosting its activities in non-theatre spaces. In 2003, the reciprocal project Czech Season in Canada will take place in Canada, where Canadian presenters will have the opportunity of presenting their selection of contemporary Czech artists. Canadian presenters have already selected some Czech productions, and already scheduled to perform are The Collector by SM.Art Productions with David Matsek and Linda Rybov, the dance creation Venus with a Rubiks Cube by young Czech dancer/choreographer Kristna Lhotkov and musician Ladislav Soukup, and the Naive Theatre of Liberec with their puppet theatre productions of Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves and When Little Jacob Was Visiting Markyta. Other productions are still being considered for a Canadian tour. More information will be available in the next issue of Czech Theatre Magazine. You can find complete information about the Canadian Season in Prague on the website www.kanadska-sezona.cz.

Tanen zna (Dance Zone)


Tanen zna a review of contemporary dance which has for more than five years devoted itself to trends in contemporary dance, physical theatre and transverse genres began this year to be published in two languages: Czech and English. This has made it easier for it to communicate with foreign devotees, and they with it. The journal comes out quarterly and publishes reflections about dance, written from many points of view in different fields, genres and history, as well as reviews of the youngest, budding generation of choreographers. Tanen zna reflects dance as an expression of symbolic thinking and emphasises the spirituality present even under a contemporary deposit of naturalism and abstraction. NV

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