Drama Revue 2/2006
Summary

V. Schmarc: The Medieval Play Ointment Seller - Implacable Quarrel Between the Head and Bottom?

The study focuses on the relationship of the profane and religious discourse in Czech medieval play Mastičkář (Ointment Seller). The aim of the study is to loosen the assumed discrepancy of the two discourses and to analyze how these two seemingly contradictory discourses support and explain each other.
Struggle of faith and flesh seems to be irreconcilable but considered upon the background of the medieval laughter culture, we can notice that in specific times of the year (e. g. Eastern) both of them co-existed in mutual tolerance. From this point of view, medieval Ointment Seller seems to be folk and burlesque explanation of the feast of resurrection, a gloss to the New Testament that simplifies its message for the context of everyday life and presents it via a common language of medieval folk culture. In this culture the borders of the so-called high (religion) and low (flesh) disappear.
The Ointment Seller is very specific connection of different levels: religious level, level of everyday life, and the level of clown laughter. Its function is not to create tensions between them; they coexist in almighty world of medieval laughter and burlesque. The study analysis representation of distinct levels both at the sphere of protagonists and motives.

M. Jacková: Arnold Engel and His Three Tragedies for the Closing Festival of the School Year at Jesuit College

The school year at Jesuit college used to be connected with festive presenting of prizes for the best students. The typical part of that celebration was the staging of drama written by the professor of the highest class who also rehearsed the play with the chosen students. They were called rhetorics. The evidence that similar celebrations were taken at least sometimes also in Czech province were three plays from fifties of 17th century probably written by Arnold Engel: Tragoedia Protasius Arimae rex ..., Tragoedia Calliopius Martyr and Laurentius Iustinianus... Those texts are very extensive and very important role was played by music and stage effects according to unusual amount of stage notices. The connection of those plays with the end of the school year demonstrate not only the data on the title page but mostly the prologues and epilogues which set each of them in the frame of the celebration and those texts had nothing common with the content of the play. EngelŐs plays as a very precious document not only show how the celebrations in the Jesuit colleges in Czech region were organized. They introduce also some of few Jesuit dramas which originated in Czech province which had been probably written with the aim to overstep the frames of usual school production and form legitimate drama.

E. Stehlíková: Alfréd Radok´s Opening of the Springs

The so called Second Touring Program of Laterna Magica (1960) was crowned by the staging of The Opening of the Springs, Bohuslav Martinů´s famous cantata based on the lyrics written by the poet Miroslav Bureš. The age-old regional ritual concerning the traditional annual custom of cleaning of springs was turned by Alfréd Radok into a magnificent picture of mystery of life. The Program was damned by the political authorities and called political sabotage that has nothing in common with the spirit of socialism. The Opening of the Springs was condemned to be destroyed. Fortunatelly, the precious film, which formed an inseparable component of the performance, was saved. It permitted the restoration of The Opening of the Springs in 1966 and its reconstruction in 2003. In her attempt to find the original form of RadokŐs performance the author of this study compares the different versions of scenarios with the preserved photos and with the reconstruction made by RadokŐs former collaborators.

L. Vodička - P. Janoušek: Czech Drama 1969-1989 (II).

Czech drama in the time 1969-1989, i.e. so called normalization. This part of study deals with dramatic works which were rid of direct contact with Czech stage (i.e. samizdat drama) and the creative work of the authors living in exile. Samizdat drama originated in the beginning of seventies when the most pronounced dramatic authors were banned in Czechoslovakia. Those ones distributed their works in unofficial way Czech readers received those texts through the copies, exile press and books, exceptionally through audio recordings or unlegal - flat theatre (e.g. Havel´s Audience). The authors living in exile wrote only few dramas, they mostly transformed their creativity to the other literary genres (prose, tv or film script). Although there originated some dramas in Czech language, the most translated and presented on the stage were plays of Pavel Kohout.