SAD 1/2013

Summary 1/2013

The first issue of this year is dominated by the full summary and results of the annual critical survey which forms the basis for the Alfréd Radok Awards (q.v.). Miroslav Petříček’s essay “In Search of a Different Reason” is accompanied by a translation of excerpts from the works of Michel de Montaigne which launches a new cycle of annotated translations of “our distant contemporaries” titled “Sceptics and Subverts”. The section “…Good Pařízek with Germans” contains Pavlína Pacáková’s review of an adaptation of Céline’s Church (written by Jan Horák, directed by J. Horák and Michal Pěchouček)and dominated by the actor Karel Dobrý (“Céline in Pictures”). Vojtěch Varyš writes on Kleist’s The Broken Jug staged at the Schauspielhaus Düsseldorf by Dušan D. Pařízek (“Pařízek on a Construction Site”) and under the title “Scenic Symbol and Abstraction” Zuzana Augustová looks back at two productions presented at last year’s Prague Festival of German Language Theatre: Fassbinder’s The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant (directed by Petr Kuśej, Rezidentztheater München) and Kleist’s The Broken Jug (directed by Matthias Hartmann, Burgtheater Wien). In the section “Recycling of an Alternative” Jana Bohutínská writes (“Theatre of Imperfection”) on the basis of Vojta Švejda, Jan Kalivoda and Tomáš Procházka’s production Super-Natural about the personally interconnected groups Warriot Ideal and Handa Gote research&development, and Veronika Štefanová (“Remarkably More Circus than New Circus”) introduces a Canadian company of new circus origins, 7 doigts de la main, and their production Séquence 8. The Slovak section “Pagans until the Funeral” contains reviews of the two productions most highly praised in the DOSKY critics awards: Pagans by the Ukrainian author Anna Yablonskaya, staged at the Slovak National Theatre by Marián Amsler (Ulmanová: “God as a Personified Incomprehensibility”) and Seven Days to the Funeral, a dramatization of Ján Rozner’s autobiographical novel directed by Martin Ľubomir Vajdička at the Slovak Chamber Theatre (Ferusová: “Reconstruction of One Life Story”). The section “Drama and National Bolshevism” contains František Hlavsa’s essay “The Blind Clairvoyance or Drama” and Pavel Trenský’s study “From Sankya to Bastards” in which the author introduces Zahar Prilepin’s novel Sankya and reviews its theatre adaptation Bastards/Otmorozki directed by Kirill Serebrennikov. In the section “The Reality of Courage” Andreia Rádai’s essay “Summons of Reality” considers the reactions of Hungarian theatre to a growing cultural and political conservatism and Karel Král reflects on the inclination of Hungarian theatre to realism and traditional dramaturgy on the basis of five productions presented at the POSzT Festival (“Each Man is Klasszikus… in Pécs”). An interview with the Hungarian playwright István Tasnádi entitled “Work in Progress and the Loss of Courage” introduces the play of the issue, which is his drama Cyber Cyrano. The issue closes with a Comedy Mix, this time consisting of Michał Walczak’s feuilleton Is Kamil Threatened by Alcoholism?, a letter from a reader expressing his critical opinion of three productions of the drama company of the National Theatre in Prague, the traditional “Kaleidoscope of Brief News from around the World” and The contents of the 2012 volume of SAD magazine. Lucie Lomová’s comic strip “Shooting Star” continues with the next instalment entitled After Fun, the Funeral.

The Alfréd Radok Awards
A total of 78 critics took part in this year’s annual survey organized by the Svět a divadlo magazine. Individual awards presented by the Alfréd Radok Awards Foundation are decided by simple sums of votes. The most awards – four in total – went to the Dejvické divadlo of Prague. Besides the Best Theatre of the Year Award it also gained awards in the category for the Best Newly Staged Czech Play of the Year which went to Miroslav Krobot for the drama Brian combining motifs from Winnie-the-Pooh with a history of the Rolling Stones and the destiny of Brian Jones, who lived and found a tragic death in a house which had formerly belonged to A. A. Milne himself. Two further awards went to the Dejvické divadlo for their dramatization of Irwine Welsh’s stories, A Blockage in the System, prepared by Daniel Majling and directed by Michal Vajdička – it became the Production of the Year and Ivan Trojan’s performance in the role of God won him Actor of the Year 2012. The Best Actress is Ivana Hloužková, although paradoxically she won the award for her performance as a male character, that of an eccentric photographer Miroslav Tichý in a production of the Husa na provázku Theatre of Brno (directed by Anna Petrželková). The award for the Best Set Design went jointly to Petr Forman and Andrea Sodomková for the set design for the opera Čarokraj (Enchantia) at the National Theatre of Prague. The vote for Best Music of the Year 2012 went to Miloš Orson Štědroň’s composition for the production Theatre Gočár, also written by him and directed by Jan Nebeský. The actor and director Braňo Holiček was declared Talent of the Year, particularly for the productions The Massacre in Paris and Political Cabaret or Take This Shit! (he also wrote the latter). For most of the voters the Best Experience by a Foreign Theatre was The Spanish Fly directed by Herbert Fritsch and performed by Volksbühne Berlin, presented at last year’s Prague Festival of German Language Theatre. After several years the so-called Stars on the Willow Tree Award was once again presented this year. The award is given to a production and related “performance” which gained an extraordinarily high number of votes although they should not be included in the survey of the year: although Tomáš Vůjtek’s play With Hope and without It had its première at the Chamber Scene Arena last year it was originally staged two years ago, and thus could not be included in the category of the Best Newly Staged Czech Play.