Drama Revue 1/2006
Summary

V. Just: Theatricality of the Political Pleading of Horáková and Company as Theatre Show

There is universal awareness about the fact that the pleading with democratic Czech politic Milada Horáková and the other twelve accused in May-June 1950 was "staged". Communist totalitarian power squared accounts with the political opponents of "defeated reaction" by judicial murder and for the first time in history - and in the history of Stalinist pleadings - executed woman and mother for political opinions. Hardly anybody tried to think the matter to the end and describe all the nine-days long pleading as real theatre show. The show had its dramaturgy, direction, scenography - and the last but not the least - actors. Those on the side of repressive power tried to display "real", "experienced" "realistic" performance, those on the side of the accused - each one with other extant and other way - tried rather to show "alienated" performance; the aim was to retail about his or her dramatic person as about somebody else and in such a way show the person in "alienation effect" to the viewers in the hall or outside. To subject the person to the ciriticism of the viewers. In the rare case there was subjected also the showing itself. Now, there is the unique possibility for such theatre "reading of the pleading" through the newly disclosed 5,5 hour long film record of the pleading...

L. W. Soule: Tumbling Tricks: Presentation Structure and The Taming of the Shrew

Professor Lesley Wade Soule in her essay examines as an example Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew and traces the way theatre performance looked like in 1590. She studies the role of the actors in the final shape of the theatre performance (and also of the play itself) and analyses the means typical of performance of an Elizabethan comedy: addressing of the audience, emphasizing of the actors over the text and plot, similarities to the employment of traditional means used in premodern ritual and popular performances. At the same time, however, the essay deals with the way the audience perceived the performance and in what ways the Elizabethan point of perception of The Taming of the Shrew differs from the contemporary view.

O. G. Schindler: "Here the Well-known Lazzi". Text Type "script" as "dialectic" Medium of the Collective Memory and the Process of its "playing out and discharging". (Case Passalisco, Koln 1760)

The author of the study concerns on manuscript of play Passalisco, inscribed on April, 23rd 1760 in Koln by the actor Carl Richter, born in Vienna and in that time the member of "Olomouc theatre company" of Joseph Franz von Hadwich. The improvised burlesque was inscribed in the form of brief script for the use of theatre company on the base of the older tradition and the actual performing. The analyse of the script as the text type which allowed for the the well-known practice of performing, the memory of the actors and knowledge of improvised parts of play ("Lazzi") which was mentioned only in references, brought us a line of information about the history of the reception of the show. The function of Richter's inscription of the text was to restore the form of the play which was presented in that time, but in theatre practice the script as the text type could show itself also contradictory and allowed haphazard additions and alternations of the text. The process grinding "playing out" of the text led to the more and more strong trivilisation, which can be seen in reconstructions staged in these days.

Z. Hořínek: Notes towards the Stage Directions

The study theoretically deals with the problem of so called stage directions. It follows the function of the notes and stage directons and their different validity from the literal and theatre point of view. It impeaches the very terminology and common differentiation of "main" and "collateral" text. The analyse of the topic leads to these conclusions: 1) utterances and notes directions are differently formulated, 2) the notes are author's directions, 3) the form and function of the directions is historically changeable and connected with the theatre convention of particular era, 4) the function and binding of directions differs according to the literal (reader's) and theatre conception of the dramatic text, 5) the notes or directions are not only technical matter, but they are in deep and complex relation to the overall forming and sense of drama, 6) for the staging of older plays in other theatre context the abrupt or missing notes are compensated by stage directions, 7) the director's book is elongation of author's text no matter if it agrees or controverts, 8) in modern or post-modern theatre where the role of directorship came more important, there are crossed or directly cleared away the borders between the utterance and the notes (directions), the texts mix together in both directions, and there rise the complicated dialectics of the author's and director's notes, 9) especially in epic forms of drama and theatre the form leads to the functional making public of those notes, 10) the criteria of the staging results are less connected with the author's images and more with the efficiency of the performance here and now.

L. Vodička: Czech Drama 1969-1989 (I)

The essay is theatrically-historical survey of the events, the main socio-cultural and political tendencies of the development and creative activities of the most significant personalities of Czech drama in the era of so called normalization. After this entering chapter the line in the next issues of this year Drama Revue will be followed by main genre and theatre types of Czech dramatic creativity in those years.