J.A. Pitínský - Becoming a Czech Classic on All Stages - Marie Reslová

Jan Antonín Pitínský Boming a Czech Classic – on All Czech Stages

- Kamila Černá, Marie Reslová, Jan Kerbr

Jan Antonín Pitínský is currently one of the most sought after Czech directors, and has regularly been a guest director in theatres of various types (from part amateur stages to the National Theatre). He is capable of surprisingly transforming his own directorial vision and conforming to the given genre, space and acting abilities of the company with whom he is currently working. In this issue, we are including reviews of his two latest productions recently staged in Prague: the first for the largest stage in the country – the historic National Theatre –and the second at the smaller “chamber space” at the Dejvické Theatre.

The Bells are based on the tradition of realistic rural drama, but through its grotesque, aberrant optics the play accurately illustrates the trend of the subjective, “lyricizing” drama that has recently appeared over the last fifteen years. The Bells linguistically, formally, and thematically strike up an evidently precise kinship with Pitínský´s own texts from the end of the 80´s and early 90´s (Mother, The Girl’s Room).

The story of The Bells is set in the rural Czech countryside during the third year of World War One. Women have replaced men in the work force. Words like “drought” or “barrenness” picturesquely characterize the village that also suffers from a shortage of love. The nasty shell of self-government and traditional order is broken when soldiers appear in the village and try to carry off church bells and use the bronze to make new military weapons. At that moment, images of the apocalypse emerge. The tempest of the liberated lands transforms the women into a pack of Bacchanalians and young village Peterka becomes an arsonist.

The plot of the story in comparison to the conventional dramatic logic crumbles paradoxically several times; the characters themselves, more so than their conversations, characterize a metaphorical language that becomes stylised into an artificial dialect. It is a text that has been created for a stage experiment.

Pitínský has clearly tried to locate a key to the production that would unleash Šrámek´s parable from its realistic surroundings. He has concentrated perhaps too much on the inner symbols of the abstract picture. On Jan Hubínek´s rusty brown stage, the dry soil and its cottages are transformed into some kind of underground “dens”, foreshadowing the degradation of humanity. The expressive dialect, a somewhat hysterically loud tension from the first moment of the production, soon becomes monotonous and insubstantial. Kateřína Štefková´s costume designs alone is an implication of the production style, which, with a grotesque depreciation, was inspired by the style of art nouveau and its themes of that particular period that Šrámek inwardly based his texts upon. The National Theatre is not counting on a huge success with Šrámek´s The Bells; of course, the extraction of modern Czech dramatic text from a grave of oblivion definitely has its own particular style.

National Theatre Prague (Národní divadlo Praha) – Fráňa Šrámek: The Bells (Zvony) – direction – J.A. Pitínský, design – Jan Hubínek, costumes – Kateřina Štefková, premiere June 15, 2006. More details: www.narodnidivadlo.cz