Drama Revue 3/2001
Summary

Z. Hořínek: Critical Paradox

The essay about the problems, contradictions and paradoxes of the profession of critic.
1) Criticism and creation: Criticism is not art, but the beginning of the criticism consists in the art work itself. The artist is the first critic. Critical (review) activity receives its right place and its right sense only in wide connexion with critical thinking as one of its possible (and maybe temporal) forms.
2) Positive and negative criticism: The criticism discloses the failures, but its final aim is to discover the values.
3) Critical naivety: critical judgment requires analysis and interpretation, but the starting point and the object is the experience of art. Good theatre critic must be a good spectator.
4) Critical subjectivity and objectivity: The demand of objectivity is both ethical and noetical in the same line. If the critic is not able to "overcome" his or her determination, opinions, images and prejudices during the experiencing the work of art, he or she can "use it". That neccessitates the demand od self-reflection - the reflection of his or her own critical point of view.

J. Černý: 1953 (Czech Theatre and Society in 1953)

After the liberalisation excesses of 1952 there comes (after the execution of Slansky) calming down and the return to the previous status quo. The aim is not to push through the bourgeois opinions under the veil of the fight against "Slansky's cause". The Ministry publishes detail directives how to work and think, the Czech drama goes on in its propaganda (V. Cach: Mostecká stávka - Strike in Most, I. Prachao: Zlaté srdce - Golden Heart, J.Drda: Romance o Oldoichovi a Boženi - The Romance about Oldoich and Božena). But the strait-jacket is slowly breaking: Hungarian village drama Koest ohnim (Baptism by Fire) looks at the village in other way than conform Czechs. First play by till that time prohibited Karel Eapek Matka (Mother) returns to the repertoire. Stalin's and Gottwald's deaths bring another hard anxiety into the unstable ideological atmosphere. Stehlík's play Nositelé oádu (Prize-winners) presented in that time raises enthusiasm in the auditorium of Divadlo Es. armády by its invectives. Hard economical impact of radical currency reform on the population and following assumption of power by unknown apparatchik Antonín Novotný, formed entirely new situation. The regime leaves the enforcement of the esthetical norms of Stalin and Nejedlý, but it doesn't release strict censorship of thinking and political opinions which are on the contrary newly institucionalized into the apparate of HSTD. Apolitical cabaret nad musical comedy are permitted and slow extending of theatre repertoire by till that time prohibited old Czech authors and classic western plays is allowed.

I. Osolsobě: The (not merely) Theatrological Structuralism of Jiří Veltruský

The seminal contribution of Jiří Veltruský (1919-1994) to the foundations of the structuralist theory of theatre and especialy drama is quite well known and internationally recognized. What is not so well known, at least in theatre circles, are his political writings written during two years before and several decades after 1948, the year of his immediate escape from Stalinized Czechoslovakia, and published, mostly in France, under his pen name Paul Barton. What is, however, completely unknown, even to those who happen to be acquainted with either of the two halves of his work, is the identity of Jiří Veltruský and Paul Barton. Surprising as it may seem, Veltruský's political, economic and sociological writings are governed by the very same methodological and analytical or, in a word, structuralist principles, as his explorations in the domain of esthetics, theatrology and literary criticism. This can be demonstrated by comparing Veltruský's early papers, written before his exile, as a student under the influence of Otokar Zich and Jan Mukařovský, with one of his greatest political works, his monumental, strictly scientific - although not sine ira et studio - Le Régime concentrationnaire en Russie, 1931 - 1957, Paris: Plon, 1959. Ironically, this work was written just when Jan Mukařovský, the originator of the methodology used by Veltruský found himself driven by political pressure to abandon structuralism, stigmatised at the time as an agency of Trotskyism, and to denounce his own work, after sincerely (??) adopting the official Marxist orthodoxy, at a time when Jiří Veltruský's best friends were either in exile, or imprisoned, or even executed.

S. Świontek: The Possibilities of the Use of Various Research Methods in Dramatics (The Perspectives and the Borders)

The study is a survey of some methodical approaches of the last ten years that can be quite interesting for theatrology. In brief and substantial way that deals with anthropology, sociology, semiology and structuralism, deconstructionism, cognitivism, chaology, genetic athropology and the questions of theatre history.The author negatively estimates the tendencies to autonomous understanding both of the theatre and the theatrology where he finds the cause of their sensible methodological falling behind the other arts disciplines. The study results in the appeal to bigger openess of the theatrology to the inter-discipline acesses and inspirations.

J. Patočková: Otomar Krejča: Art Theatre and Politics

Revised and amplified study presented at Symposium Le théatre d'art au XXeme siecle (organized by Académie expérimentale des théatres and Institut d'Etudes théatrales in Paris 1997) is dedicated to the director Otomar Krejča (1921). Krejea's theatre biography reaches more than sixty years, and although it was interrupted by outer power interventions, it is extraordinary in its organicity and inner continuity based on the theatre as art which is devoted to its own true and doesn't subordinates to political or market reglementation.
Krejča is the theatre creator for whom it is neccessary since his young years to think theoretically about his own work. It is visible that since the beginning of his career he put himself the questions of sense, mission and ethics of theatre activity. The answers for these questions modificates the developement of Krejča's art work in more and more concentrated resolution of the relation among drama - actor - directing (the centre of the theatre is always the actor) and stage - auditorium. The study follows and demonstrates in examples the most important points of his work in relation with political press since the beginning of 1950, his chiefhood of National Thetre Drama Departement, foundation of little Divadlo za branou and its dissolution, leaving for abroad and return to Prague theatre community after 1989. Although his efforts to emancipate theatre work from political pressure has ended by multiple liquidation of his workshop, he has never stepped aside for his conception of art theatre which is the way of creative sophistication and elaboration, open concept which hasn't lost power till now.