Drama Revue 3/2004
Summary

V. Just: The Contribution towards Experanto Language or Dramatic Non-persons of Václav Havel

One of the spiritual god-fathers of dramatic and essayistic work of Václav Havel, the philosopher Josef Šafaoík, defined the truth as "the personal guarantee". The term and its content (eventually its absence) became essential topic of Havel's drama. It points at its technique too. The language, spoken by Havel's characters, is typical impersonalized language of "experts", so called "experanto". It becomes acceptable alibi for the dramatic persons. They can always escape to it from the responsibility. Expert - as he was already defined by Ortega y Gasset, Vilem Flusser, Václav Bilohradský and other thinkers - knows only the language of ready-made answers, not the language of questions. But only the language of questions is the language of truth. The language "experanto" is in opposite to the language of anonymous, programmed apparatuses, which floats from mouth to mouth. It itself, not the man, becomes the main impetus and hero of Havel's plays. It is expression of the loss of identity of Havel's characters, symbolized already in The Garden Party by condemnation of personal name of the character as allegedly too simplifying reality.

M. Boeoová: The Solidarity with Ferdinand Vanik

In the year 1977 Václav Havel was sentenced in a lawsuit with the members of VONS to four years unconditional. In Europe the surge of solidarity and protests was begun asking for his discharge. In the year 1982 the association A.I.D.A. held a night of solidarity called the Night for Václav Havel, during an international theatre festival in Avignon. A lot of authors who had written texts with the motive of the figure Ferdinand Vanik participated that night. These plays were produced and shown in the setting of the stage with the title Vanik is looking for his author. It lasted all night. Arthur Miller, Stéphan Meldegg, Ariene Mnouchkine, Samuel Beckett, Elie Wiesel, Pavel Kohout, Claude Confortes, Michael Viala, Karel Kryl, Jaroslav Hutka and others partaked the whole program to support Václav Havel.

K. Procházková: Ladislav Smoeek Unknown - the Work of L. Smoeek in 1950's

The playwright and director Ladislav Smoeek is known especially as the co-founder (1965) and one of the decisive creators of Drama Club Theatre in Prague. His artistic personality had been already distinctly shaped during the studies at DAMU in Prague and in the first engagements in Benešov and The Theatre of Julius Fueík in Brno during the 1950's. Smoeek's general topics - the man as a part of nature and in the same time the nature in the man - manifested themselves already in his early prosaic works and also in the topics and solvings of his stagings. It could fully developed during the work in the Theatre of Julius Fueík in Brno in 1957-1960. There Smoeek put on stage in his time very appreciated productions, e.g. The Nightingale and The Labyrinth of the Heart (both by František Pavlíeek), Goldoni's The Chioggian Squabbles, The Diary of Ann Frank by F. Goodrich and A. Hackett. Those Smoeek's stagings surpassed by minute work with the actors and creative composition of detailed elements of reality, revealing use of the sound and the film picture. We can result from the historical materials that Smoeek's art of theatre directing and his individual artistic point of view at the world, as we know it today, had been fully created, as at every original artistic personality, already in the time of the beginning of his career.

R. Vašek: The Creation and the First Presentation of Prokofjev's Ballet Romeo and Juliet

The ballet productions of the story of Romeo a Juliet can be monitored from the 18th century. The most significant one is the ballet by Sergei Prokofjev. In the study there is the work inserted into the context of Prokofjev's ballet works, we can follow the process of its creation till the first night in Leningrad in 1940. The centre of the text is the reconstruction of the world premiere of this ballet which was realized at Divadlo Na hradbách in Brno on 30th December 2004. The interception of the world premiere props itself upon the period critical echo and memories of the eye-witnesses. The contemporary reviewers focused their attention at analysis of Prokofjev's composition and psychologically-elaborated performance of Zora Štemberová as Julia. In the end there is evaluated the significance of Prokofjev's Romeo and Juliet in Czech ballet dramaturgy.

I. S3awinska: The Theory of Reality and the Symbol of Theatre

The authoress dedicates the study to the relation of purposely conceived reality and symbols of drama and theatre. The term "the theory of reality" is understood as the primary premises and the conception of the man, time and space which are put by the creators into the theatre work and which are consecutively abated through the semiotic analyses. She uses both inductive and deductive methods and in the first part of the study she thinks over the primary premises and puts the question if today the creation of authentic tragedy and religious drama is possible. In the second part the conception of reality in the contemporaneous theatre, especially at non-traditional or alternative groups, is analysed through the used signs.

J. Got: Virtuosity and the Cult of the Actor at Polish Theatre of 19th century

The prominent Polish historian Jerzy Got dedicates his study to the dominant position of the actor in the whole structure of theatre performance. In ten chapters he follows the process, how the primary position of the actors in contemporary performances was subsequently growing up and he argues that both actors and viewers took part in this process. Its initiation was started in the period of romanticism and culminated in 1860-80 in Warsaw. The author denotes how the actors still more aspired to flashy characters and melodramatic effects, as there were still bigger number of applauses, encores, and growing of the material and financial appreciation of theatre stars, so the virtuous star was at last taken by the audience as the only value of the theatre - and all the other elements, especially drama text, were conformed to the star position.