Czech Theatre - 2005/06 and 2006/07 Seasons

According to the most recent statistics, the Czech Republic boasts 180 theatres and permanent theatre companies/ensembles: 51 are repertory theatres with their own ensembles (13 have more than one ensemble). These theatres are subsidized on a standing basis either from municipal and regional budgets (45 theatres) or from the State budget (3 theatres and 3 school theatres). Additionally, 41 permanent theatres without their own ensemble are financed from municipal budgets. In 2006 2.6 milliard Czech crowns (i.e. almost 100 million Euros) were spent in support of theatres and theatre activities.

The expenditure on culture from the State budget remains inadequate - in 2006 a mere 0.5%. A priority of cultural policy is to enact by law State support of culture on the same scale as in other EU countries, i.e. 1% of the State budget, together with the establishment of a multi-source system of theatre financing. However, in the period under review the implementation of such a policy was somewhat difficult; this may have been due to the fact that in the past two-year period four ministers were in turn appointed heads of the Ministry of Culture.

No sweeping changes occurred in the theatre, more particularly in the network of theatres with permanent ensembles. Occasionally, in some towns companies and/or theatres were amalgamated, e.g. the puppet theatre Lampion with the Theatre of Central Bohemia Kladno - some experts see in such administrative mergers of formerly independent puppet theatres with drama theatres a threat to permanent professional puppet theatres, which in the past guaranteed the high professional and artistic qualities of the Czech puppet theatre. New independent drama, dance or gestural companies emerged - while in many instances they add diversity and liveliness to the existing theatre network, their existence also has some undesirable consequences. The members of such companies are for the most part graduates from drama academies or young people, who set up a company of their peers. For them there is no chance of professional growth. Although for the most part after a few years they exhaust their inventiveness, they continue to struggle on the brink of existence.

There is a growing number of commercial theatres, chiefly in Prague. In the Spring 2007 these theatres, which put on musicals, light drama or soap opera, joined with much ado the discussion about the system of subsidies granted by the Prague City Council and questioned the validity of the system. Some of these theatres actually demanded subsidies. Although they reached a compromise with the City Council, it will be necessary to define clear rules for the system of subsidies.

The most significant reconstruction of a theatre building was the reconstruction of the Brno Reduta, probably one the oldest theatre buildings in Central Europe. Reduta, which belongs to the Brno National Theatre, reopened in October 2005. October 2006 saw the re-opening of the last, and largest, theatre badly damaged by the 2002 floods - the Music Theatre in Prague-Karlín.

A great deal of criticism accompanied the transformation of the building U Hybernů in Prague (originally a Gothic church, rebuilt in the Early-Baroque style as the monastic church of the Irish Franciscans - Hibernians, about 1800 shortly a theatre, then the Customs Office and finally exhibition rooms) into the Hybernia Musical Theatre, which opened in November 2006. Some parts of the building were actually sacrificied for the sake of the transformation.

Although in the last two seasons several young directors scored major successes, the dominant position of the older generation remained unchanged. In the 1990s directors from that generation took the Czech theatre by storm - their work shared one feature: they refused sober naturalism, the insipid "television" style and proclaimed the need of a clearly defined style, playfulness, stylized acting and free postmodern handling of the dramatic text. These principles are for the most part seen in their work until now.

Jan Antonín Pitínský (*1955) is one of the few Czech theatre directors not working with a single company - he makes his way from one drama theatre to another, beginning with the Prague National Theatre and ending with Moravian regional or semi-amateur theatres. A typical trait of his work is the frequent use of associative montage, visualization of people's state of mind, sensitive handling of the musical component and movement on the stage, a feeling for the rhythm of gestures. Among his productions which in the last two seasons were most favourably received by the critics (Alfréd Radok Award, Award of Divadelní noviny /Theatre Journal) is Jaroslav Vrchlický's and Zdeněk Fibich's melodrama Hyppodameia's Death/Smrt Hypodamie (2006, Municipal Theatre Zlín), a dramatization of the stories by Božena Němcová, one of the classics of the Czech National Revival, Crazy Bára/Divá Bára (2007, Slovak Theatre Uherské Hradiště) and a dramatization of Goethe's novel Elective Affinities/Die Wahlverwandtschaften (2007, Dejvice Theatre, Prague).

Vladimír Morávek (* 1965), whose chief characteristic as director are spectacular productions full of striking effects, has been since the 2005/2006 season artistic director of the Brno theatre Husa na provázku (Goose on the String). He produced The Brothers Karamazov/Resurrection, final part of his remarkable stage tetralogy of Dostoievski dramatizations in 2006. He called the whole tetralogy Hundred Years of the Cobra/Sto roků kobry. He later combined the four fully independent parts into one eleven-hour production - Shedding the Skin (Bestiary According to Dostoievsky)/Svlékání kůže(Bestiář podle Dostojevského). Morávek's other productions in the two years under review (Uhde's and Štědroň's Ballad for a Bandit/Balada pro banditu, 2005, and the musical A Very Blue Bird/Velice Modrý pták, based on Maeterlinck,(2006) are most unlikely to hold a significant place in the context of his work.

Jan Nebeský (* 1953), who is fond of metaphysical texts and of Nordic drama, is the author of interesting productions, which reviewers often find insufficiently communicative. His production of Ibsen's Wild Duck at the Divadlo v Dlouhé (Theatre in Dlouhá Street) emphasized the ironic aspects of the play. It also attracted attention because for the role of Hedwiga he cast one of the oldest actresses of the company, Jaroslava Pokorná; this role earned her the Alfred Radok Award for the best actress in 2005. Other interesting Nebeský's productions were Etty Hillsenum, author Lenka Lagronová, in 2006 at the Divadlo Na Zábradlí (Theatre on the Balustrade) and in the same year Jandl's Humanists/Die Humanisten at the Comedy Theatre (Divadlo Komedie) .

The forte of Michal Dočekal(* 1965), since 2002 in charge of the Prague National Theatre's drama company, is his ability to make classical plays accessible to the public and to bring them closer to the present. In the past two years classical plays predominated in his work (e.g. Shaw's Pygmalion, 2005; Shakespeare's Richard III, 2006; Gogol's The Inspector General/Revizor, 2006). His productions, though in good taste and carefully prepared, did not contribute anything remarkable or new to the Czech drama theatre. This is, on the whole, true of the drama repertoire of the National Theatre. It was to some extent enlivened by the premiére of Stoppard's Rock'n'Roll (director Ivan Rajmont, 2007). The production itself was not particularly interesting, its chief attraction the live performance of the group Plastic People of the Universe, whose persecution in the 1970s stood at the birth of the Charter 77 and, actually, stimulated Stoppard to write Rock'n'Roll.

An original and controversial figure in the drama theatre is the director and playwright Jiří Pokorný (1967). With great discern he reveals the very essence of plays - and then he often totally displaces the meaning and message of the play he produces. This feature was unmistakable in his most interesting productions in the two years under consideration, both at the Theatre on the Balustrade: Chekhov's Platonov (2005) and Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida (2006).

The critics voted the Divadlo v Dlouhé (Theatre in Dlouhá Street) Theatre of the Year 2005. The productions of its two directors, Hana Burešová and Jan Borna, display a similar light-hearted approach, an emphasis on musicality, detachment and humour. With his production of the drama-musical The Mouse from the Belly/Myška z bříška (2006) Borna confirmed his reputation of a director with a remarkable feeling for productions intended "for children and their adults". Hana Burešová directed at Dlouhá the very successful dramatization of Pratchett's Masquerade/Maškaráda (2006) and in the same year Seneca's Phaedra, pure, simple, yet with a very strong message. Reviewers praised her two productions at the Municipal Theatre in Brno: Calderon de la Barca's Devotion to the Cross/La Devoción de la Cruz (2005) and Dmitri Mereshkovski's Death of Paul I (2007).

The Prague Dejvické divadlo (Dejvicke Theatre) was voted Theatre of the Year 2006. Its productions, which accentuate the director's work with the actors, were appreciated by audiences and critics alike: Petr Zelenka's Teremin

(director Petr Zelenka, 2005), Hamlet (Miroslav Krobot, 2006), the theatre team's Black Hole/Černá díra (director Jiří Havelka, 2006) etc.

Another theatre with several successful seasons is the Prague Divadlo Komedie (Comedy Theatre), which focuses mainly on contemporary Czech, Austrian and German plays. Most remarkable and by reviewers highly appreciated examples of stage minimalism were two productions by the theatre's director Dušan Pařízek (* 1971): Bernhard's The World-Fixer/Der Weltverbesserer (2006) and a dramatization of Kafka's Trial/Prozess (September 2007).

Several young directors attracted attention with interesting productions: David Jařáb (*1971) and his staging of Fassbinder's Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant/Die bitteren Tränen der Petra von Kant (Comedy Theatre); Martin Čičvák (* 1975) with Sophocles' Antigone at the Brno National Theatre (2006); Jan Mikulášek (*1978) with Chekhov's Three Sisters at the Divadlo Petra Bezruče (Theatre of Petr Bezruč) in Ostrava; Ivan Krejčí (*1966) with Chekhov's Seagull at the Ostrava theatre Arena.

Unmistakable talents are two directors, who work under a single pseudonym SKUTR - Lukáš Trpišovský (*1979) and Martin Kukučka (*1979). Typical features of their productions ( Understand, 2005, Kiss the Blackbirds' arse/Polib prdel kosům, 2006, The Mourners/Plačky, 2007) are light design, an unusual use of projections and sound, an inclination towards gestural and "physical" theatre.

2005 brought to the foreground a new trend - the political theatre, which wants to speak about contemporary political developments, the state of political culture and democracy in the Czech Republic and our recent history. In his project Persecution.cz/Persekuce.cz, enacted from the Autumn 2005 to the Spring 2006 in an abandoned factory, Miroslav Bambušek (*1975) presented 6 productions or stage readings. The common theme of the entire project was injustice in History and preservation of historical memory. The goal was to unmask the causes, motives and consequences of human suffering, inflicted on both the Czechs and Germans by the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia, the transfer of Germans in 1945 and, finally, by the Communist regime. In consequence of the scandals and misconduct in Czech politics the almost forgotten genre of political satire returned to the Czech stage. The liveliest reception went to Iva Volánková-Klestilová's trilogy My Homeland/Má vlast (voted Play of the Year 2005), first produced at the Theatre in Dlouhá Street as stage readings and only a little later at the Divadlo Rokoko (Rococo Theatre, 2006) .

The past two seasons were fairly favourable for Czech plays. At the 2006 festival of contemporary European plays - Neue Stücke aus Europa - in Wiesbaden, Morávek's production of David Drábek's Aquabelles/Akvabely met with a very good reception. There is considerable interest in Petr Zelenka's plays both at home and abroad. 2007 saw the return of two playwrights of the older generation - Milan Uhde's play A Miracle in the Black House/Zázrak v černém domě, awarded the Divadelní noviny Prize, was produced by the Theatre on the Balustrade, while Václav Havel, after a pause of twenty years, wrote a new play - Leaving/Odcházení, which will be produced in the next season in Prague.

Notwithstanding some partial successes of the Czech drama theatre, it remains somewhat isolated; perhaps because most productions are intended primarily, or almost solely, for local audiences, they don't aim at highly professional qualities of both the directors and actors. Moreover, as one of the rare countries in Central and Western Europe the Czech Republic doesn't have a representative in the Union of European Theatres. There is no systematic publicity for the Czech theatre abroad, there is no regular showcase of the best Czech productions and plays. In consequence there is very little interest in the Czech theatre in other countries and an absence of feedback and stimuli from abroad. The result is a somewhat provincial theatre, with many directors not even striving for qualities that bear comparison with the best European productions.

Compared with the drama theatre, Czech opera is more open to the world - some of the outstanding productions in recent years were the result of cooperation with foreign artists. One of the best was Mozart's La clemenza di Tito staged at the Estates Theatre (belonging to the Prague National Theatre) by the German couple Ursel Herrmann and Karl-Ernst Herrmann in the Autumn 2006. Critics voted this opera Production of the Year 2006 in an opinion poll of the Alfred Radok Award; for his simple stage design, yet for the production of key significance, Karl-Ernst Herrmann was awarded the Alfred Radok Prize for scenography, while the two leading singers, Kate Aldrich and Johannes Chum, won awards for their interpretation.

Another production of the Prague National Theatre worth mentioninvg is the staging of Claudio Monteverdi's Orfeo (2007) by Jiří Heřman (*1975), one of the most interesting young opera directors. In the Spring 2007 he replaced Jiří Nekvasil as head of the National Theatre's opera company. (Jiří Heřman came to the National Theatre with its new director Ondřej Černý, who was appointed in April 2007. His predecessor, Daniel Dvořák, recalled from his post in the Autumn 2006 on the suspicion of bad management was barely a year later appointed, beginning with the 2006/2007 season, director of the Brno National Theatre).

Jiří Heřman also won approval of the reviewers for the first Czech production of Benjamin Britten's opera-miracle play Curlew River (the Czech title Řeka Sumida) in the unusual space of a former church. In this coproduction of the Prague National Theatre and of the festival Autumn Strings (2005) Heřman resorted to sophisticated lighting and stylized movement to create an impressive ritual performance.

One of the best productions of the second Prague opera house, the State Opera Prague, was Leonard Bernstein's Candide (2006, staged by Michal and Šimon Cabanovi) and Francis Poulenc's Les Mamelles de Tirésias and La voix humaine (2007, director P.L.Pizzi).

Of the eight permanent opera companies outside Prague we find the highest standards (both in the repertoire and production) at the Moravian-Silesian National Theatre in Ostrava. Critics appreciated more particularly the production of Mozart's Cosi fan tutte (2006, directed by Carmen Or and Luděk Golat), while they welcomed as a genuine discovery the staging of Franco Alfana's Cyrano de Bergerac (2007, director Achim Thorwald).

Primarily thanks to the director Ondřej Havelka, the Brno National Theatre put on the most original - and much acclaimed by the reviewers - production of Smetana's Bartered Bride (2007) in the last ten years.

Other opera productions worth mentioning are Alexander von Zemlinsky's The Chalk Circle/Der Kreidekreis, at the Theatre of Southern Bohemia in České Budějovice (2007, director Martin Pacek) and the fascinating opera by Philip Glass and Rudolf Wurlitzer, based on Franz Kafka's story In the Penal Colony/Die Strafkolonie. In May 2006 this opera was performed as the closing part of the project Persecution.cz at La Fabrica in Prague-Holešovice (director Miroslav Bambušek).

In the period under review the most interesting ballet productions could be seen at the Brno National Theatre, which won several important awards. The Rite of Spring (choreographer and director Libor Vaculík) was awarded the Divadelní noviny Prize for the 2005/2006 season, while the production of Ballads (choreography Hana Litterová) with Zuzana Lapčíková's original music (stylized Moravian folk music) was awarded the same prize for the 2006/2007 season.

Besides rather interesting productions (Romeo and Juliet, Solo for Three Dancers) The Prague National Theatre also put on some less convincing performances (Requiem, choreography Petr Zuska; Goldilocks/Zlatovláska, choreography Jan Kodet). Reviewers highly appreciated Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet (2006) in Youri Vámos' choreography, an attempt at a topical interpretation. An original performance, inspired by the music of Vysocki, Brel and Kryl, was the Solo for Three Dancers (2007) in the choreography of Petr Zuska.

The Theatre of J.K.Tyl in Plzeň pays systematic attention to new original ballets. One of the theatre's most succesful productions was Zbyněk Matějů's Garden/Zahrada (2006), intended for children, which used elements of the black theatre (director Jiří Středa, choreographer Alena Pešková).

While Petr Zuska, Libor Vaculík and Hana Litterová are the leading figures among choreographers working with ballet ensembles in permanent theatres, the most appreciated artists in the independent dance and gestural theatre are Viliam Dočolomanský, Ioana Mona Popovici, Petra Hauerová, Kristýna Lhotáková, Jaro Viňarski, Jan Kodet, Dora Hoštová, Lenka Bartůňková, Linnea Happonen. An important event in this area is the founding of the first permanent company of independent contemporary dance DOT 504, headed by Lenka Ottová. The company focuses on the training of choreographers and dance instructors.

The most successful ensemble, which won international acclaim, is the theatre studio Farma v jeskyni (Farm in the Cave). Its declared goal: "to articulate with the body, what cannot be put in words or expressed by any other medium". In the productions of this studio, founded by Viliam Dočolomanský (*1975), everything is expressed by the body - emotions, archetypal situations, ethnic roots, national characteristics. Dočolomanský's great advantage as director and choreographer is his feeling for music, rhythm and timing, his highly professional training of the whole ensemble and predilection for topics, which focus on significant ideas. The production Sclavi was awarded the Alfred Radok Prize for the best production in 2005. In 2006 it won the Total Theatre Award of the British Total Theatre Magazine, as well as the Fringe First Award of the daily The Scotsman and of the Fringe Society at the Fringe Festival Edinburgh. Another production of the company is The Waiting-Room, a scenic composition based on the memory of a place - the railway station Žilina - Záriečie: during the second world war Slovak Jews were sent to concentation camps from that station. The Waiting-Room is overflowing with strong emotions, expressed by very suggestive dancing; at the same time the waiting-room is a symbolic place, where people have to cope with their loneliness, with their past and with themselves.

The Czech puppet theatre maintains its good professional qualities and reputation that go back for the most part to the 1960s and 1970s. In recent years we notice an increasing tendency towards a mingling of genres. The established permanent puppet theatres and companies (Drak /Dragon/ in Hradec Králové, Naivní divadlo /Naive Theatre/from Liberec, Alfa in Plzeň, Divadlo Loutek /Puppet Theatre/ from Ostrava, Radost /Joy/ in Brno, Minor in Prague) have in their repertoire chiefly drama performances with only a limited participation of puppets, while the alternative puppet theatres often work with elements of the gestual and subject theatre. The theatre Buchty a loutky (Cakes and Puppets), one of  our best unorthodox puppet theatres, its stage language often playful, but on occasion drastically cynical, stages in the past two seasons a story about the ancient world of the East, Tibet - Secret of the Red Cauldron/Tibet - tajemství červeného kotlíku (director Radek Beran, 2006) and a play based on Arthurian Romances, Arthur/Artuš (director Marek Bečka, 2007). The artist and puppeteer Hana Voříšková presented a series of endearing puppet miniatures: Minicircus/Minicirkus,The House of Nuts/Oříšková chaloupka and A Greenland Fairy Tale/Grónská pohádka. The theatre Minor put on an experimental play about the Czech duke Brunswick/Bruncvík (director Jan Jirků, 2006), very well received by the reviewers. However, one the greatest successes of the Czech puppet theatre during the period under review were the two production of the Alfa theatre from Plzeň. A pupet version of The Three Musketeers/Tři mušketýři (director Tomáš Dvořák, 2006) won many awards at festivals both at home and abroad, was awarded the Erik Prize for the best puppet production in the 2005/2006 season and was voted Production of the 2005/2006 season in the Divadelní noviny survey.

The story of the Musketeers as enacted by the Alfa theatre is very simple and just as understandable as the language spoken on the stage - a sort of esperanto with universal baby talk,a few generally familiar English, French and, above all, "international" words and many interjections. The production has everything we should expect in an adaptation of The Three Musketeers and in a puppet performance: excitement, humour, humorous situations, fierce duels - and highly professional and lively work with puppets.

The Erik Prize for the best puppet production in the 2006/2007 season once more went to the theatre Alfa, this time for the staging of Bloody Knee/Krvavé koleno (director Petr Vodička, 2007), fairy tales for adults by the Czech playwright Arnošt Goldflam. Serious topics are presented with black humour, often bordering on cruelty. The combination of actors and puppets is fully functional, it helps create a lively atmosphere, appreciated by critics, adult audiences and older children alike.

The two awarded Alfa productions exemply the qualities of good theatre, which are unfortunately in recent years often absent from the Czech theatre: a good idea, a light touch, humour, consistent unity of style and of direction and, last but not least, highly professional qualities.

Author: Kamila Černá, *1960, writes about the theatre, editor of the magazine Czech Theatre; graduated in theatre and film science, Arts Faculty, Charles University, Prague. Works at the Prague Theatre Institute. Programme director of the international festival The Theatre, held every year in Plzeň. The author consulted the following: Radmila HRDINOVÁ, graduated in theatre and music sciences, Arts Faculty, Charles University, Prague, one of the editors of the culture dpt., responsible esp. for the performing arts at the daily Právo; Jana NÁVRATOVÁ, graduated in theatre science, Arts Faculty, Charles University, Prague. Now at the Prague Theatre Institute, editor-in-chief of the magazine Taneční zona (Dance Zone); Roman VAŠEK, graduated in theatre science, works at the Prague Theatre Institute, ballet specialist.