Drama Revue 4/2002
Summary

J. F. Veltrusky: Apothecary and Mastičkář

The seller of the spices with which the holy women meant to anoint Christ's body is the first secular character to appear in the religious drama of Easter. He is a distinctively borderline figure, straddling the frontier between the represented world and the world of the performance itself, as well as that between the sacred domain of liturgical celebration and the profane world of the marketplace. This borderline position marks the Apothecary's role from its earliest surviving occurrence in the Latin Ludus Paschalis of Vich (c. 1100), through its multifarious incarnations in a wide range of plays composed in Latin, in a vernacular tongue or in a mixture of Latin and a vernacular. Sometimes his role is very brief and plain, sometimes he is the protagonist of a long and elaborate episode. As a merchant or vendor, the Apothecary belongs to the secular world, and this aspect of his role is often emphasized by the introduction of down-to-earth or positively scurrilous elements. But his role generally also contains elements that transcend the secular realm and link him to the sacred sphere to which the holy women who are his customers belong. Many versions hint that he is something other than an ordinary apothecary and several expressly endow him with uncanny powers of some sort. It is mainly the bilingual drama of Central Europe, Czech-Latin as well as German-Latin, that bring this transcendent aspect to the fore, not directly but by way of parodistic distortion. Here a wide range of means is used to evoke the traditional image of Christ as the unequalled healer, so as to draw a burlesque analogy between the quack Apothecary who is the protagonist of the episode and Christ himself, who is the protagonist of the play of which the episode forms a part.
The process reaches its highest pitch in the fragmentary play from Bohemia known as Mastičkář, where in a double parody that mocks the miraculous resuscitations worked by Jesus in the course of his ministry as well as his own resurrection, the eponymous Apothecary performs an extremely scatological resuscitation of a boy named Isaac. Though the scene contains many elements which to a modern eye give it a distinctly blasphemous air, in the context of the medieval tradition of risus paschalis it appears as a means of provoking the sort of carnival laughter which was an indispensable component of communal celebration and festivity in general. The same tradition underlies the burlesque and frequently obscene, even if less outrageously irreverent, comedy that characterizes the Apothecary in many of the vernacular and bilingual plays.

J. Černý: 1955 (Czech Theatre and the Society in 1955)

The chapter begins with analyses of new Czech plays which were wrongfully appreciated as ciritical against the reality of that time. It is Daněk's Umění odejít (The Art of Leaving), Jariš's Inteligenti (Intelligents), Stehlík's Vysoké letní nebe (High Summer Sky) and Zářijové noci (The Nights of September) by Pavel Kohout. The political reality didn't change in the year before the 20th congress of KSSS: the dissolution of kulaks goes on, the hunt for agent-walkers and chase against emigrants increases. There begins the building of the blocks of Cold War. Though the repertoire of theatres has been extending, there is still the total blockade of modern world drama. Significant break is the presentation of Topol's Půlnoční vítr (Midnight Wind) in Burian's Theatre, which together with the staging of the Vojna (War), returns to the idea (emblem) of D 34. Some Soviet plays present Soviet reality in satirical deformations. The level is freshly rippled the tour of French Theatre National Populaire (TNP) with Cid, Don Juan and Ruy Blas. In positive way there functions the stopping of the campaigne against "director's formalism" and introducing of Werich's Divadlo satiry (Theatre of Satire) in the hall U Nováků. In autumn opera ensamble of National Theatre with staging of Kašlík's Dalibor and Hrdlička's Little Mermaid went for three-weeks sucessful tour to Moscow. In the very end of the year there was premiere od Radok's staging of East-German political play Ďábelský kruh (Devil's Ring). Imaginative power of Radok's performance returned Czech theatre to the European context and announced that way the entrance of Czech theatre workshops of 60th.

Z. Hořínek: Metaphor and a Metonymy in Recent Theatre Context

The study follows the functioning of methaphoric and metonymic principle in nowadays Czech theatre, particularly in the work of directors Petr Lébl and Vladimír Morávek. Through the particular demonstrations and analyses it concludes: a) The action on the stage realized in two levels - in the level of story and in the level of imagination. The action is organized according to the causal-chronological regularities of plot and sujet, superstructure of scenic tropics springs from objective meanings of dramatic text or it forms from subjective images of the stage-managers on the base of associations. b) At the scenic tropics there is not possible so strict and detailed classification as with the literary tropics. It deals with the great quantity of theatre means of expression. The bearer of picture function could be anything - the stage character, sound and music, stage and costume, style. c) Scenic metonymy functions in the space between the abbreviation and amplification, which applies in the same measure in the level of the meaning and expression. Metonymy in this conception aims from individual to general, from the direct portrayal to the model, parable, mythus. d) Some kind of the metatrope is simultaneity as practical expression of the dialectics of centripetal and centrifugal forces. The confrontation of time and space makes constructs conspicuous and forceful connections between the past and present, between topical character and general validity. Uneven modernization brings with it also unevenness of style, style syncretism. It gathers from many various sources, high and low, reachly it uses intertext correspondence, allusions, loans, citations. The citations, it is the method and symptom. Symptom of postmodern, that makeshift world which lives on credit.

H. Hložková: Children's Studio and Vladimír Morávek

In her essay the author deals with the developement of individual amateur theatre group which was founded as small (children's) stage of Divadlo na provázku in Brno and during its 20-years existence it had been changing its image under the leading personality of Zdeněk Pospíšil (1975-1980), Peter Scherhaufer and Petr Oslzlý (1982-1989) and Vladimír Morávek (1989-1995) and describes how these directors changed the art conception of studio.
The bigger part of study is dedicated to the director's personality of Vladimír Morávek, who in the framework of Dětské studio at Divadlo Na provázku in 1989 started his professional career. It comments the work of these days top director, in the context of revolutionary political and social changes in Czechoslovakia and in the framework of the team group of Dětského (Children's) and later neDětského (Non-children's) studio. It concentrates in Morávek's creative effort to change the amateur group into professional company and particularly the course of foundation of artistic signature, which is characteristic for the director till now.