Zelenka, Petr

Petr Zelenka (21. 8. 1967) graduated in scriptwriting and dramaturgy from the Film Faculty of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague. He made his debut as a director in 1993 with a film about punks, Visací zámek. In 1997, he premiered his most highly awarded film, the episodic film Buttonmakers, which won the prestigious Czech Lion for Best Screenplay, Direction and Film. The popular film Loners (2000) was also based on Zelenka’s script. He made his debut in the theatre with translations of the plays by Michael Frayn. He has introduced himself as an author and, for the first time, as theatre director with the play Tales of Common Insanity, which won the prestigious award of the Alfréd Radok Foundation in 2001.

For more information, contact Jitka Sloupová
Aura-Pont Literary and Theatre Agency
For a complete list of Petr Zelenka´s plays , click here.

Translated plays:
Příběhy obyčejného šílenství / Tales of Common Insanity - English

Příběhy obyčejného šílenství / Opowieści o zwyczajnym szaleństwie - Polish

Příběhy obyčejného šílenství / Hétköznapi őrültségeink - Hungarian

Příběhy obyčejného šílenství / Slučaji zauradnovo sumasšestvija - Russian

Příběhy obyčejného šílenství / Príbehy obyčajného šialenstva - Slovakian

Příběhy obyčejného šílenství / Les Petites Histoires de la Folie Quotidienne - French

Příběhy obyčejného šílenství / Historietas de locura ordinaria - Spanish

PŘÍBĚHY OBYČEJNÉHO ŠÍLENSTVÍ / TALES OF COMMON INSANITY
7 women, 8 men

The story of thirty-five-year-old Peter, who is trying to master the world around him; to win back his girlfriend Jana, who left him because of his “abnormality”; to survive visits to his parents that are never free of his mother’s fussy and interfering worries about others; not to go mad due to the crazy methods of satisfaction of his friend Midge; to get used to his strange neighbours who require people with their eyes “on the surface of their faces”; to accept the fact that his boss likes little boys; to get used to the blanket in his room coming to life… In the end there is only one solution: to pack oneself up in a box and send oneself off somewhere very far away.
A witty reflection on our times, including a reference to the recent past and its still active influence. The text also plays with references to the sphere of “artistic creativity”, in inverted commas, as his neighbour is a composer of elevator music; his father was once, in the Communist era, a weekly newsreel commentator and now brings this up in public as a curiosity; and one of Midge's girlfriends, although a cleaner, loves ballet.
The action is kept going by the constant effort to find and maintain a real relationship; whether in the case of the younger ones (Peter and his circle), or of their parents. Both the theme and the form of the play relate to the original script-writing profession of the author – the scenes follow one another as in film sequences.

The virtue of Zelenka’s text is its economy and its aphoristically formulated lines in which more is hinted at than spoon-fed… one recognises here the art of film editing and concise characteristics of the characters.
Radmila Hrdinová: Zelenkovi sympaticky šílení hrdinové poprvé v divadle, Právo, 4.12.2001

The stories are not an ordinary version of his film and basically go beyond it in theme. … The hypersensitivity with which Zelenka examines and comically makes use of human anomalies is reminiscent of the self-ironic obsessiveness of Woody Allen. The ability to stand at an analytical distance from sexuality and its influence on the unbearable absurdity of our lives is not compromised by a Kundera-like observation of man. Nevertheless, in spite of all these distancing affinities Zelenka’s poetic of embarrassment is unmistakeably his own.
Richard Erml: Je nám tady spolu tak nějak divně, Mladá fronta Dnes, 18.12.2001