In order of presentation
Pavel Drábek, University of Hull
“Spirit, fine spirit, Ile free thee”: Shakespeare’s Spaces of Freedom on the Czech Stage
Keynote Speech
“Thought is free!” shouts the clown Stephano in Shakespeare’s magical play The Tempest. This is doubly true where he says that: in the theatre. Despite a troubled history of official and unofficial taboos, political and social oppression, censorship and surveillance, Czech theatre has created, honoured and cultivated the stage as a space of freedom allowing artists and their audiences to cherish and occasionally give vent to hopes and ambitions – intimate, individual, cultural, political. However, how does one freely do that when the circumstances dictate political agendas, self-protective ambiguities, aesthetic or institutional self-justifications, pure entertainment or pure art? Combining theatre theory (particularly of the Prague School) and the history of Czech productions of Shakespeare, this paper explores ways in which historic productions created indeterminate spaces of possibilities, alternatives and, occasionally, explicit statements.
Barbora Příhodová, Villanova University
“Scenography as an affective journey: Jana Preková’s approaches to staging King Lear “
Session 1
In his book, Shakespeare Performance Studies (2014), W. B. Worthen notices that “Shakespeare performance sometimes seems to evoke a specific and relatively narrow sense of genre: performance that depends on, exists to reproduce, [and] is defined by the determining algorithm of Shakespeare’s writing.” (2) The ways Jana Preková, one of the leading contemporary Czech scenographers, has approached the Bard’s plays goes well beyond this understanding of stage interpretation. By devising surreal evocative environments interwoven from multiple layers of associated meanings, the scenographer has claimed her right to treat the texts as dynamic structures open to production, rather than reproduction. While doing so, she has reconsidered the role of the scenographer within the creative process of staging, and put into effect her specific reading of the play. Taking her approaches to staging Shakespeare’s King Lear as an example, this paper will analyze Preková’s scenographic processes while situating her practice within the genealogy of Czech theater design.
Jana Preková, Janáček Academy of Music and Performing Arts
“This razor is honing on veins!”
Session 1
In my paper, I will explain my scenic approach to staging Shakespeare’s plays. I will particularly focus on productions Hamlet (1994/2000), Solingen – the coup de grâce (adaptation of Hamlet, 2004), and King Lear (2013), that I worked on with the director Jan Nebesky. Presenting my costumes and cooperating on set for the productions, I will address the topics of my collaboration with the director, possibilities of interpretation, and re-presentation. I will describe the process of experimentation with blending of visual and dramatic principles, the use of visual, musical performance, which comes into existence in real time and site, with dramatic situation, which cooperate with dramatic time and space. I will try to define manner of dialog with a spectator, doubt the existence of borders between presentation and participation.
Zuzana Koblišková, University of Hull
“Ladislav Vychodil’s Approach to Designing Stages for Shakespeare in Slovak, Czech, Canadian and Norwegian Theatres”
Session 2
Ladislav Vychodil is a well-known stage designer and there is no need to introduce him within the context of Czech and Slovak stage design. There are several catalogues, monographs, numerous studies and articles concerning various aspects of his work. The aim of this paper is to present the most significant approaches Vychodil used for designing stages for Shakespeare plays and to compare these designs with others, perhaps more typical of Vychodil’s aesthetic practice. My paper will therefore ask the following questions: (i) what demands do Shakespeare’s plays make on the designer? and (ii) how does Vychodil, in particular, respond to these requirements?
Vychodil designed stages for twenty-eight Shakespeare productions, plus an additional five stages for operas, and one ballet produced on Shakespearean motifs. Three of these Shakespeare stages were outside Czech and Slovak theatres (in Canada and Norway); sixteen were for Czech theatres, and ten for Slovak theatres.
Vychodil’s most productive collaboration among the Shakespeare productions was with the Czech director Alois Hajda who engaged him to create stage designs for seven of them. Alois Hajda had a specific direction style, which was based on Brechtian principles. Vychodil’s stages for Hajda’s productions of Shakespeare were thus rooted in his earlier collaboration with Alfred Radok—who led him towards a more functional stage, as opposed to Vychodil’s signature ‘lyrical poetics’ or his characteristic use of “a basic image stemming from a fundamental production concept.” The main objective of my study is thus to present an outline of the variation of Vychodil’s style within the scope of Shakespeare productions by means of comparison and descriptive analyses of his stage designs and surviving production photographs of his work with Alois Hajda, juxtaposed against productions with a fundamentally different aesthetic—such as his realistic stages for The Merry Wives of Windsor 1954 (reprised 1958) or Hamlet 1950 in the Slovak National Theatre, or his picturesque Symbolist stages for Twelfth Night or What You Will 1962 in the Slovak National Theatre, or The Comedy of Errors 1984 at Concordia University, Montreal.
Šárka Havlíčková Kysová, Masaryk University
“Verdi’s Macbeth and Otello in Brno on the Verge of the Velvet Revolution: Between Stage Metaphor and Stage Realism”
Session 2
Ladislav Vychodil, an outstanding Czechoslovak scenographer, together with Josef Jelínek, renowned costume designer, significantly contributed to the productions of two Shakespearean operas in Brno State Theatre in the 80’s of the 20th century: Macbeth (1987) and Otello (1989) by Giuseppe Verdi. In cooperation with the well-known director Václav Věžník, younger co-worker of renowned operatic director Miloš Wasserbauer, Vychodil and Jelínek created remarkable scenography for the operatic productions. Both operas, staged in the final years of the declining Communist regime in Czechoslovakia just before the Velvet Revolution, are remembered until today. In my paper, I provide the analysis of both productions. For the purpose of my analysis, I put emphasis on the interference between the stage metaphor and the stage realism since I perceive it as the crucial point in the process of creating scenography of both productions. I also focus on Verdi’s and Boito’s approach to the key concepts and motives in the original plays by William Shakespeare, as these key concepts are ingeniously incorporated into both operatic adaptations. The scenography of both operatic productions by Vychodil and Jelínek and the pioneering approach to the key concepts in the operas strongly contributed to the success of both productions in Brno.
Chris Berchild, Indiana State University
“Designing the Bohemian Coast: Twentieth Century Czech Appropriations of Shakespearean Space and Place”
Session 3
When Shakespeare was originally penning his plays, the associated concepts of space and place in dramatic performance existed largely for practical dramaturgical purposes, creating a rather open sense of scenography. Whether the action of the play was set in Romeo and Juliet’s Verona, Hamlet’s Elsinore, or the famed oxymoronic location of The Winter’s Tale, many of these locations simply served as a vehicle for plot and character development for a period audience, as Shakespeare clearly set the action of his plays within a unmistakably Elizabethan context. However, throughout the twentieth century and the history of the Czechoslovak state, many Czech scenographers and directors blazed new international trails by using the varied dramatic locations of Shakespeare in new and innovative ways, creating a clear and public commentary on the political, social, and artistic status of Czechoslovakia within a Eastern/Central European—and later a Soviet—context. This was especially true in a post-Brechtian era where the multiple aspects of performance—and not just the dramatic text—became a canvas for engaging commentary.
In this paper, I intend to engage in a historical and semiotic analysis of specific Shakespearean performances (predominantly performed in Prague) and their inventive scenographic approaches to space and place. The scenographic work of designers František Tröster and Josef Svoboda will be the main focus of this study as their work spans the historical era from the first Czechoslovak republic through the Velvet Revolution. Their manipulation and appropriation of Shakespearean space and place to examine and comment upon Czech society was exceptional and became a model for political theatre internationally. I will focus mainly on a semiotic analysis of Tröster and Svoboda’s scenographic approaches to Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, and Julius Caesar in order to posit a vital link between Shakespeare’s dramaturgy and the developing nation-state of Czechoslovakia.
Jana Wild, Academy of Performing Arts Bratislava
“From creating spaces to invoking images (Hamlet in Slovakia, 1950 to 2004)”
Session 3
The paper will reflect upon staging Hamlet in Slovakia. Starting with a short overview of spatial solutions for Hamlet from 1950, it will focus mainly on the production staged in the Ruthenian theatre Divadlo Alexandra Duchnoviča in Prešov, East Slovakia, 2004. Its scenographer, Vladimír Čáp, and director, Rastislav Ballek, staged the unusual Q1 version in the Ruthenian language (!) as a series of pictures based upon sophisticated visual principles deriving from Spanish and Dutch Golden Age paintings. Thus, they invited the audience to read Hamlet as a contemplation on a highly performative society.
Christian M. Billing, University of Hull
“Josef Svoboda’s Designs for Shakespeare, 1952-1991: Working Methods, Overarching Principles and Scenographic Effects”
Invited Lecture
Between 1952 and 1991, Josef Svoboda designed fifteen productions of plays written by William Shakespeare. These were performed internationally and to significant critical acclaim in Czech, Hungarian, Italian, German and Flemish translations. Svoboda’s Shakespearean oeuvre is notable in particular for his repeated designs of Hamlet, Twelfth Night and Macbeth; but with significant stand-alone designs also of The Merry Wives of Windsor, The Merchant of Venice, As You Like It, A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Henry V.
My invited lecture focuses on Svoboda’s working methods and preparatory experimentations, particularly in model box environments, as well as on the development of clear sets of aesthetic principles in relation to Shakespearean scenography for comedy and tragedy.
Using a selection of production photographs, as well as many hitherto unseen documents of Svoboda’s experimentation in maquette form, working drawings and artist’s renderings, this lecture will map out Svoboda’s developing sophistication of architectonic and organic facets of Shakespearean scenographic design, before considering his late move back towards stage purity and minimalism.
Vlasta Koubská, Academy of Performing Arts, Prague
“From scenic architecture to abstract vision (Tröster´s Winter´s Tales 1935, 1965)
Session 4
The paper reflects stage designs of František Tröster for Shakespeare´s productions during thirty years of his artistic life. I explain his new methods of scenographic creation and show the changing of his view and understanding of dramatic space. The paper is focused on political circumstances which influenced different forms in Tröster´s stage designs. The main objective of my study is Troster´s effort to express non-material values of Shakespeare´s plays by unconventional way. Many of Tröster´s stage designs can be admired at the ‘Shakespeare in Prague’ Imagining the Bard in the Heart of Europe exhibition in Columbus Museum of Art.
Cat Fergusson Baugh, University of Hull
Title to be announced
Session 4
Jules Deering, Queen Mary University of London
“A Bloody, Declivitous Place – Malina’s Othello at Zlín”
Session 5
My research into the theatrical output of Jaroslav Malina has previously focused on the period dominated by his use of Action Scenography. This paper analyses a later, and somewhat inimitable design for a production of Othello at the Municipal Theatre of Zlín in 2000. One of some 30 productions that he designed for this stage (including its previous incarnation as the Workers’ Theatre) between 1983 and 2004, this post-revolution design represents the pinnacle of Malina’s Big Synthesis—a culmination of practices that focused upon visual metaphor, spatial exploration, and functional set design, that placed text and thematic referencing to the fore. Although this design contains many of Malina’s familiar components – extensive use of fabric, elevated structures, and surfaces derived from his paintings, this set shows a distillation and precision rarely found in his early work, nor that immediately preceding it. With specific reference to Martin Hilský’s translation as well as the original text, I will be demonstrating how Malina’s almost entirely static and declivitous set provides both a fluid, multi-layered, metaphorical surface, and functional, physically challenging environment, shared equally by both text and cast.
Dan Matthews, The Ohio State University
“A Technical and Contextual Analysis of Scenography through Sculptural Reproduction: Hofman and Tröster’s Hamlets”
Session 5
Vlastislav Hofman’s Hamlet at the National Theatre in 1926 and František Tröster’s Hamlet at the Vinohrady Theatre in 1941 are undeniably different interpretations of one of Shakespeare’s superlative plays. They are notable as works that illustrate a slight change in aesthetic for the designers, with Hofman moving away from his roots in Czech Cubism and Tröster showing his mastery of staging while letting the scenery take on an ethereal, minimal quality. My research has focused on recreating the sets to scale in a format that can be viewed in a gallery setting. Through the process of gathering production photos and copies of renderings it became apparent that what was intended in the earlier and arguably more interesting renderings was sometimes quite different than what ended up on stage. The inevitability of budget and time constraints, facilitation of scene changes, and, in Hofman’s case, structural impossibilities likely required some compromise, as is the nature of Theatre. I made the decision to recreate the sets as rendered, not as built, to be complementary to the initial ideas of Hofman and Tröster.
This paper seeks to frame each example in its historical context, give an account of the transition from initial rendered ideas to what ended up on the stage, and document the process of constructing the models with a focus on permanence and attracting the interest of gallerygoers while staying true to the Scenographer’s work.
Dennis Christilles, University of Kansas
“Jaroslav Malina and the Winds of Change: Observations on Two Productions on the Cusp of the Velvet Revolution”
Session 6
During the winter of 1988-89 I had the opportunity to experience several productions designed by Jaroslav Malina. My notes from these productions became the basis of my dissertation on the work of Malina and “action design.” Malina’s unique and personal approach to scenography can be seen in two of these productions—Shakespeare’s Richard II and Love’s Labour’s Lost.
That winter nearly 30 years ago was an important time for then Czechoslovakia. As visitors, we had no way of knowing the monumental changes that were about to occur. Many of the political undercurrents of the time could be perceived in retrospect through the work of Malina and his collaborators. This paper presents a description and analysis of the two productions and some observations on their importance during that time.
