Drama Revue 4/2003
Summary

Z. Hořínek: Paradoxes of a Play

The basic paradox - the theatre is and is not a play. If the play in its very sense depends on strict keeping of the rules, the theatrical convention has been changing during the history and these changes are the precondition for the liveliness of the art of theatre.
The play in theatre is related to the plays based on mimetic (or imitative) principle. The result of this fact is also its cognitive function. The theatre fulfills this function in the best way if it doesn't try to obliterate the border between the real reality of the life and the artificial reality of the play, if it admits the base of open and free play of art.
Inspirated by Kant the theorists of the play stress the "without-interest", non-interested character of the play (interesseloses Wohlfallen). "The without interest" character of the play not only doesn't deprive it of the sense but vice versa - it strictly amplifies it. The play without the moral and legal consequences can go into extreme, it can be unscrupulous and cruel. Fictitiuous wounds don't ache, fictitiuous bullets don't kill. It allows the theatre to experiment with a person in a play. In this sense we can speak about art experiments of psychological (Strindberg), sociological (Brecht, Dürrenmatt) and noetical (Pirandello) character.
Autonomy and non-interest of a play doesn't mean dispensablesness and non-seriousness. If the theatre is not to serve anything else, any practical interest, it can function by its basic playliness, by the taking part of the viewers on the fictional situations of the play and the exceeding of it into the sphere of real life. This practical "without interest" aims to the higher kind of concern. The theatre as a play reaches the transcedence through immanence. .
The principle of a play can serve as the most vivid practical expression of this paradox. It suggests the authenticity (confrontation of the play and the play in a play) and in the same time it reveals itself as a play. It makes publicly known and emphasizes the tension between the illusion and disillusion, it actualizes the artificiality of the reality of the art, it makes the theatre the subject of the theatre. So the play in a play becomes the self-manifestation and the self-reflexion of the play.

J. Černý: Czech Theatre and the Society in 1946

The year 1946 in Czech theatre was the revision of the haste revolutionary decisions of 1945. It was enabled by the situation that after the elections the national socialist dr. Jaroslav Stránský became the leader of the ministry of culture and education. He was quite sucessfull in sabotage of the communist projects. He was holding back the publication of the theatre law, he shifted backward Jindřich Honzl in National Theatre and re-engaged Václav Talich and engaged Saša Machov, he gave back the Chamber Theatre to the town, he refused to nationalize Burian's theatre D and to keep in life the bancrupted Větrník. He was able sucessfully to resist the attempts of the minister of information Václav Kopecký to form censorship of dramaturgy in the theatres. So the theatrical life was developing in economically hard but relatively democratic conditions and that's why there arose many ordinary theatre goods but also extraordinary pieces of art, e.g. the productions in Great Opera House (A.Radok, J.Svoboda, V.Kašlík) and the Theatre at Vinohrady (J.Frejka, J.Pleskot). The study follows also other sucessful steps of the new Realistic Theatre, the fumbeling of the Theatre of Satire and the return of Jan Werich (and Jiří Voskovec) to the stage in American conversation comedy. It describes also the first signals of the committed communist theatre in Zlín where came the theatre company of Zdeněk Míka from Prague Theatre of Young Pioneers.

M. Lukeš: Overdose of Renaissance

The marxist oriented theatre studies worshipped the alleged progressive materialistic and optimistic nature of renaissance, and so, the very concept proliferated both in time and place, Shakespeare being considered the epitome of it. This must be reconsidered: the Elizabethan drama, including Shakespeare, was of course strongly inspired by modern Italian novels and novelettes, but at the same time, the structure of it remained largely medieval. Amongst Shakespeare's tragedies, the only one which comes close to the classical - or rather "modern" - ideal, is Romeo and Juliet. The professional theatre, however, remained almost untouched by renaissance innovations, and the only genre which was really up-to-date was the Stuart court masque: Inigo Jones' laboratory of modern scenography, and, at the same time, extreme example of the union of arts and politics, which is also of renaissance nature and origin.

G. Carrai - O. G. Schindler: All the Emperor's Glory Is Nothing Else Than Comedy (Italian and Other Comedians during the Coronation Celabrations in Prague 1627)

The core of the study is the description of theatrical productions in Prague in November 1627 where were crowned Czech kings Ferdinand II., his wife Eleonor Gonzago of Mantova and the follower of the throne Ferdinand III.. The theatre productions continued till May 1628. The information about them spring from the printed news, from the reports of present deputies of other courts and especially from the letters of two sisters of Ferdinand III., Marie Ann and Cäcilie Renata to their brother Leopold Wilhelm to Vienna. Through the Court of Matova there was invited to Prague the Italien group Comici Fedeli playing commedia dell'arte lead by G. B. Andreini. According to the wish of Empress the Italian architect Giovanni Pieroni (born 1586) was the scenographer who was well-known by his cooperation in working out of fortification of the City of Prague and at the buildings of Duke Wallenstein etc. Pieroni produced the decoration for more events and arranged also the order of the auditorium in the space of Prague Castle. During the celebrations there were also playing the English actors (in German) and Jesuits.

P. Christov: The Condemnation of Banquet - the most ambitious morality of French Middle Age

The text draws near to the Czech environment one of the best-known dramatical texts of French Middle Age, the morality The Condemnation of Banquet (La Condamnation du Banquet) which was published in 1507 and its author was the doctor and lawyer at the Court of Louis XII. Nicholas de la Chesnay. The dramatical text in verse (6000 octosyllabs) is the celebration of the dietetic restrained life and condemns the sinful waste and overeating. The Supper and Banquet invited for supper and banquet alegorical feasters (Voracity, Dainty, Taste.) and they let them attack by the group of diseases (Gout, Colic, Urinary Calculus.) and they were accused and convicted during the trial lead by Lady Experience with the assistance of curing means (Tablet, Clyster. ) nad medicine authorities (Avicena, Averoes) by the feasters who stayed alive.
The text itself is very well made-up, it contains many poetic and rhetorical figures, it sensibly works with the word-play, puns, with differently long verses, it mixes French with Latin. There appear some principles usual in genres of comic theatre (sottie, farce), in the same time it keeps its didactical mission and presents to us the example which is worth to follow. The Condemnation of Banquet is the solitery in the genre of morality. There is not any other text of the same quality, but it is unambiguously morality with all its atributes, which in the same time overruns it and makes it up. Nevertheless it is not the beginning of a new line, it has no followers. The study is completed by the author's first Czech translation of the full text of the morality.