METAPHOR AND IRONY 2 - Divadlo.cz

METAPHOR AND IRONY 2 

FRANTIŠEK TRÖSTER AND CONTEMPORARY CZECH THEATRE DESIGN

František Tröster: Winter’s Tale, William Shakespeare; 1965

Bowling Green State University's Fine Arts Center Gallery 

August 23-September 17, 2004 

University of Toledo's Studio Theatre Gallery 

September 27-October 24, 2004 

Ohio State University's Hopkins Hall Gallery, 

Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee Theatre Research Institute 

and Gladys Keller Snowden Gallery 

November 8-December 17, 2004 

Marion Koogler McNay Art Museum's Tobin Gallery 

and the University of the Incarnate Word's Semmes Gallery 

February 1-April 1, 2005 

Ohio State University-Lima's 

Martha W. Farmer Theatre for the Performing Arts Gallery 

November 10-December 10, 2005 

Curators Helena Albertová and Joe Brandesky

Contents 

5 František Tröster and Contemporary Czech Theatre Design 

7 Modernism to Imagism 

13 Authority, Playfulness, Metaphor and Irony 

21 Images and Designers’ Biographies 

64 ... and some other contemporary productions ... 

67 Work in the Exhibition

František Tröster and Contemporary 

Czech Theatre Design 

The first Metaphor and Irony exhibit (2000-01) was specifically developed to 

provide an overview of theatre design in the Czech Republic. It spanned the 

years 1920 to 1999, exemplifying modernist trends and the adjustments 

necessitated by political changes in this central European country. The success 

of that exhibit lay partially in our effort to be inclusive while focusing on the 

best examples of Czech theatre designers. Metaphor and Irony 2 offers us the 

opportunity to bring viewers the work of František Tröster, the most 

influential of the mid-twentieth century Czech designers. His designs and the 

influence of his work are evident in the careers of his students, several of 

whom are among the contemporary designers included in this exhibit. The 

path that brought us to this mingled historical and contemporary exhibition 

bears some explanation. 

Following our pattern from the first exhibit, the final items for inclusion in 

this one were selected from the Czech National Section of the 2003 Prague 

Quadrennial. As luck would have it, Metaphor and Irony co-curator Helena 

Albertová began working with the Architect for the Prague Quadrennial, 

Martin Tröster. The latter revealed that a number of his father's designs were 

still in storage; Helena asked for and was given access to these designs. This 

was the way František Tröster's works came to be included in this exhibit - not 

through archival discoveries, though these efforts had been made, but rather 

because of a “happy accident.” 

Our first working title for this exhibit was Metaphor and Irony 2: 

Contemporary Czech Design. We now addressed the question of uniting Tröster's 

historically important designs with our announced theme of “contemporary 

Czech design.” We had already determined that an inclusive formula defining 

contemporary designer as one who is currently productive would work best 

for us. This allowed the combination of older, middle and younger generations 

of designers in the same exhibit. Fortunately, the answer to our question was 

simple and self-evident since the connections between Tröster's work and that 

of Czech contemporary designers were multiple and varied. Several of the 

older generation of designers had been Tröster's students. Some of them 

eventually taught the next generations of designers and still others gained 

their education indirectly, from their exposure to the work of those who had 

been in Tröster's circle. This “inherited” tradition has had an influence on those 

who carry it forward as well as those who would prefer to find new ways, 

cutting ties with the past. In one way or another, the works of all the 

contemporary Czech designers included in this exhibit have a relationship 

with the work of František Tröster. 

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The result is a broad range of items by active Czech designers. Their work 

can be seen on the stages of their country, in Europe and at other international 

destinations. An addition to Metaphor and Irony 2 is our attempt to provide 

context for the designs by revealing examples of praxis. In as many cases as 

possible, designs are accompanied by production photos as well as realized 

costumes and puppets, allowing viewers the opportunity to contemplate the 

connections and disconnections between the designer's impulses and their 

concrete referents, and between the development of Tröster's design legacy 

and the formation of new Czech design aesthetics. 

Joe Brandesky, Co-Curator 

Professor of Theatre 

The Ohio State University at Lima 

František Tröster: Julius Caesar, William Shakespeare; 1936 

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Modernism to Imagism 

Metaphor And Irony 2, when coupled with its predecessor, Metaphor And Irony, 

provides a complete view of Czech theatre design. Beginning with the work of 

František Tröster in 1936, and ending with productions completed as recently 

as 2003, this exhibit encompasses the visual art of the Czech Theatre from 

Modernism to Imagism. 

These 67 years were a remarkable time in the theatre in the Czech 

Republic - a time of great contrasts and ironies - a phrase that encapsulates the 

history of this vibrant and creative people from the WW I Armistice that 

created the modern state of Czechoslovakia out of the rubble of the 

Austro-Hungarian Empire; to its imprisonment - first under the Nazis in 1938 

and later behind the Iron Curtain in 1945; to the Velvet Revolution of 1989; to 

the split of the country into the two independent states of Slovakia and the 

Czech Republic in 1993; to the referendum taken in June of 2003 affirming the 

desire of the citizens of the Czech Republic to join the European Union; and 

finally, to membership in the EU on 1 May 2004. 

František Tröster: Julius Caesar, William Shakespeare; 1936 

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A turbulent history, survived always by the unique Czech national 

consciousness composed equally of the grotesque and ridiculous, Franz Kafka 

and Soldier Schweik, metaphor and irony. And it is in the theatre that this 

consciousness is most evident for theatre has always been at the center of 

Czech life. It was the Czech citizens who donated the money to build the first 

National Theatre in Prague in 1881 and then again in 1883 after the first 

building burned. It was in the theatres that Czechs could hear the truth 

spoken during the time of the Socialist repression. It was the theatre students 

who were at the forefront of the early demonstrations of the Velvet 

Revolution. It was in the theatres that the pivotal meetings of Civic Forum 

were held; and it was Václav Havel, a playwright, who was elected as President 

of the new Czech Republic. 

This exhibit provides us with insight into the major artistic movements, 

Modernism, Scenography, Action Design, and Imagism; that have shaped this 

theatre. 

MODERNISM 

Beginning with the early work of František Tröster, in the 1930's and 1940's 

Modernism, particularly Cubism and Surrealism, entered into contemporary 

Czech theatre design. Tröster's work established the basis for contemporary 

Czech stage design, and his influence is still felt today. (In many ways Tröster 

is the equivalent of Robert Edmond Jones in the United States.) Sadly, the 

decade from approximately 1945-1955 was a dark one for Tröster and the 

Czech theatre as the Communists harshly imposed the principles of Socialist 

Realism - an artistic theory which officially denounced any production 

techniques that were not naturalistic or socially optimistic. 

SCENOGRAPHY 

However, following the official denunciation of Stalin by Khrushchev at the 

XXth Party Congress in 1956, a new style of visual thinking became possible, 

and the pressure that had built up for 10 years in the artistic community burst 

out into a new creative flowering characterized by an abstract, kinetic, and 

metaphoric style of stage design known as Scenography. Originally developed 

by Tröster as an expansion of Modernism, Scenography incorporated the 

latest technological advances into stage design. This non-literal and evocative 

approach to stage design and production became almost a secret language 

that challenged audiences to see expanded possibilities in life beyond simple 

creature comforts. The ideas and techniques of Scenography were augmented, 

expanded and popularized world-wide by Josef Svoboda and Ladislav 

Vychodil at the National Theatre complexes in Prague and Bratislava, 

respectively. Theatrical design and production reached a high artistic level, 

and from 1958 to 1963 the work of Tröster, Svoboda, and Vychodil garnered 

the highest awards in international competitions in Brussels and Sáo Paulo. 

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But these new creative impulses were not strong enough to withstand the 

brutal crushing of the Dubček government and the Prague Spring in August 

1968 by the armies of the Warsaw Pact. The re-imposition of hard line 

Communist rule threatened to stamp out all the artistic gains that had been 

achieved, and cultural restrictions again became strict and severe. Four factors, 

however, made it possible for some of the creative freedoms to be preserved 

in the theatre. 

First, the cultural authorities focused most of their energy on re-imposing 

cultural restrictions on radio, television, and print publication. Theatre was 

censored, to be sure, but established scripts and the classics could always be 

approved for production. In reality, many productions of these scripts were 

structured by the artists and viewed by the audience as subtle protests against 

the status quo. Second, the large state supported National Theatre complexes 

in Prague and Bratislava, viewed as official cultural monuments by the 

authorities, came under the closest scrutiny and had the tightest controls 

re-imposed. Third, the smaller experimental theatres, while still under state 

control and subsidy were allowed to continue. Their work was officially 

tolerated and the artists learned over time how they could communicate the 

truth to their audiences through abstract, sly, non-verbal, and metaphoric 

means. These theatres attracted the best directors, designers, and actors of the 

František Tröster: Wozzeck, Alban Berg; 1959 

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new generation and were the source of bold theatrical experiments. Fourth, 

the ability to do this kind of work in the avant-garde theatres was made 

possible by the fact that the re-imposition of strict cultural restrictions did not 

re-impose the rules of Socialist Realism on theatre design. 

ACTION DESIGN 

Ironically the “Period of Normalization” that was supposed to stamp out all 

revolutionary activity in the country after 1968 inadvertently sowed the seeds 

for one of the most remarkable revolutions in theatre production and design. 

The secret language hinted at in the Scenographic style began to transform 

itself in the experimental theatres throughout the country into a complex 

theatrical grammar that allowed theatre artists, in silent agreement with their 

audiences, to talk truthfully about present day life in their country. Lead by 

the bold departures of Jaroslav Malina, this new generation of designers, 

represented in this exhibit by Helena Anýžová, Jan Dušek, Petr Matásek, Marie 

Franková, Marta Roszkopfová, Ivo Žídek, and later, Jana Zbořilová, Karel 

Glogr, and Dana Hávová, developed and refined new style of theatrical design. 

Known as Action Design, it became the visual partner of the best productions 

in the Czech theatres from approximately 1965 to 1990. Action Design existed 

on two levels simultaneously. On the surface it was simple, functional, 

abstract, and seemingly disconnected from the present day reality of life in 

Czechoslovakia. But below the surface existed a complex web of metaphorical 

associations and ironic references that audiences understood and responded 

to as mirrors of their present day concerns. Three production ideas: Author's 

Theatre, Universal Space, and Open Communication were the bases of Action 

Design. 

František Tröster: The Madwoman from Chaillot, Jean Giradoux; 1948 

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In Author's Theatre the designer, director, and the company of performers 

built up a performance through discussion, improvisation, and group 

collaboration that would result in a complete performance scenario written 

down later by a dramaturg. This method of production, made possible by state 

support, extended rehearsal schedules and supported a company concept that 

made long term collaborative relationships possible. This process became so 

popular that its techniques were used as a model by the directors, designers 

and actors for working with established scripts. 

The idea of Universal Space was inclusive and functional, not closed and 

descriptive. This theatrical space provided the requisites for the dramatic and 

physical action for the performer and spoke on an aesthetic plane to the 

audience by evoking specific emotions while simultaneously drawing both 

performer and audience member into the same physical space. This space, the 

artists believed, made Open Communication between audience and stage 

possible. 

Open Communication meant that the exchange between the stage and the 

audience would be honest and direct and would not place any philosophical 

or aesthetic barriers between the production and the audience. Socially, the 

idea meant a tacit agreement on the part of artists and audience that moral 

issues would be discussed as openly as the political situation would permit. In 

many ways the theatre of this time functioned as a weapon against the totalitarian 

regime, and the result was that the truth was spoken, continuously, for 

30 years in the Czech theatre. 

IMAGISM 

And the truth spoken in these theatres, along with other social pressures, finally 

brought down the Socialists. Out of the ensuing upheaval the principles of 

Action Design were more or less discarded. They were seen as being too 

identified with previous opposition to the Socialist regime. A new, eclectic, 

Imagistic style of design, which borrows from any source - television, motion 

pictures, Performance Art, Installation Art, period decoration, kitsch, trash cans, 

advertising, the internet - has emerged in the Czech theatre. This style, most 

closely identified with the work of the new generation - David Marek, Sylva 

Zimula Hanáková, Jan Štěpánek, Petra Štětinová, Egon Tobiáš, Kateřina 

Štefková - has been adopted in subtle ways by the previous generation of 

designers as they too adjust to the new realities of life and art in a media driven 

market economy. In its most extreme form, Imagism is almost the visual 

antithesis of all that came before. Forsaking allusion, metaphor and, sometimes, 

logical narrative; the artists working in “Image Theatre” (an idea also 

evolving in our own theatre) seek to create a dynamic space that fires a series 

of visual shocks at the audience. This style of design, the artists maintain, is 

more in tune with the Post-Postmodern era of the present day. 

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A FINAL THOUGHT 

However, no matter what stylistic name observers like me have pinned on it 

throughout time, Czech stage design from 1936 to 2003 has always adapted 

and changed with the new realities of life in the nation. This exhibit is a record 

of that change. The best theatre design, in any time and culture, is a reflection 

of the social and political dynamics that surround it; and the best theatrical 

designers are astute observers of, and adapt to, the time and culture they live 

in. In a conversation with Jaroslav Malina in 2000 I asked him how his 

philosophy of design had changed over the years. Malina was a student of 

Tröster, a leader in the formation of the aesthetic of Action Design, a teacher 

of the newest generation, and an internationally respected contemporary 

designer. He responded immediately; “I believe now that stage design must 

have fitness for purpose.” Fitness for purpose - speak to your audience - a 

sophisticated philosophy and view of stage design that has always characterized 

the ever-evolving work of the remarkable designers featured in Metaphor 

and Irony 2. 

Del Unruh 

Professor of Theatre and Film 

The University of Kansas 

David Marek: The Artless, Josef B. Foerster; 2001 

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Authority, Playfulness, Metaphor and Irony 

It is appropriate that this essay on modern Czech stage design begins with 

František Tröster, whose centenary will be celebrated this year (2004). Both early 

and later developments of modern Czech stage design meet in Tröster's work. 

František Tröster, architect and urban planner, entered the world of professional 

theatre at the beginning of the 1930s, a time when various currents 

encountered each other and interchanged on the artistic scene in 

Czechoslovakia. He experienced Expressionism in the theatre (the dramatized 

use of angular Cubist morphology), a movement established on the Prague 

stage by the architect Vlastislav Hofman. He absorbed the influences of French 

Surrealism and Russian Constructivism, established by young adherents of the 

interwar avant-garde who from the 1920s founded small, experimental studio 

theatres. “The new synthetic theatre, enriched by the Cubist discovery of structure 

and the Surrealist discovery, not in any way of new ornaments but of new 

worlds, strives not only for the dream, but for its confrontation with reality.” 1 

An interest in collage and film (editing, montage, rhythm, enlargement) was 

something else that linked Tröster with the avant-garde. 

The short period he spent as an urban planner also helped to equip him. In 

Algiers he dealt with the planning of a difficult undulating terrain. He consciously 

made use of this experience in his stage design. “Urban planning also 

has to define space. It has to give order to wild terrain. Of course, not against 

its nature…”. 2 Tröster liked Italian towns, soaked in culture. He found their 

visual aspect dramatic. Later he appreciated sculptural architecture, in whose 

spirit Oscar Niemeyer built the new city of Brazilia at the turn of the 1950s and 

1960s. In spite of his knowledge of so many artistic styles he committed 

himself to none of them, and everything he learned from the “isms” he put to 

the service of the dramatic function. His predecessor Vlastislav Hofman likewise 

gave preference to the dramatic function of stage design. The Expressionist 

style, in itself dramatic, was subordinated to the theatrical effect. He made use 

of it in scene painting and architecture. Tröster went further. He was rationally 

fascinated by the phenomenon of space. “The basis of stage action is space. 

The stage itself is a hollow cube, into which an artificial, dramatic space has to 

be inserted.” 3 He approached dramatic space as someone with the authority of 

a scholar and explorer would approach the universe and nature, subordinate 

to physical laws. The world of theatrical work was for him linked with reality, 

but at the same time he acknowledged its specific exclusivity. 

“From actual elements we composed a new reality which could exist only 

on stage and only on stage could be truthful… Illusion is in essence a slice of 

chaos without concentration and composition - the conscious choice of things, 

how they are put together and linked, is the basis of art.” 4 

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Tröster worked also with other non-material elements of stage design such 

as movement, time, rhythm and light. He conceived light not in any way as a 

mood-maker, but chiefly as an element shaping material on the surface of the 

set and on the architectural forms of the stage. The groundplan of the acting 

space was made rhythmical by a system of angled lines and backcloths. He 

determined the space of the stage by a composition of three-dimensional 

objects, varying in confrontation with the actor's movement. He felt not only 

architecturally but sculpturally. 

“First it is necessary for the director and the designer to find a shared 

attitude towards the subject. Another approach resembles sculptural work. The 

weight of the play is laid bare up to certain firm points which create the future 

skeleton of the dramatic creation.” 5 

This comparison is something of a metaphor, but it applies both vicariously 

and to concrete work. Tröster worked on Shakespeare's Julius Caesar 

(National Theatre Prague, 1936) with the director Jiří Frejka, originally an 

initiator of the small avant-garde theatre of the 1920s. The larger-than-life 

sculptures (a bust of the Emperor and the lower fragment of an equestrian 

statue, one horse's hoof stepping forward) were installed on a massive inclined 

plinth and, in that way, they were presented like “shots” from a worm's eye 

František Tröster: The Inspector General, Nikolai V. Gogol; 1936 

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view (the influence of Soviet film montage). Through this the scenic elements 

gained strength and, as it were, spatially crushed the figures of the actors, 

which seemed diminished and somehow petty in contrast (Tröster did not consider 

this to be a symbol, but an “opinion”). The visual angle of the audience's 

view was likewise adjusted by three rotating slopes on the front of the stage, 

and made it possible for the performers' actions to be viewed from above and 

below. Such a dramatizing deformation of reality is comparable with 

Expressionist abbreviation. “By contrast with “Expressionism” we changed the 

direction of expression. We transferred its vanishing point to the auditorium.” 6 

Another famous production in which Frejka and Tröster shaped space and 

made it more dynamic was Gogol's The Inspector General (National Theatre 

Prague, 1936). The drunken Khlestakov makes his entrance along an angled 

walkway from the depths of the stage and - in rhythm with his drunken gait - 

expressively inclined doors descend in front of him from the grid. The dance of 

the doors ends at the moment when a platform with a couch rises from the 

orchestra pit and Khlestakov throws himself on it. The space played and 

changed in parallel with the performer's action, and in that sense was a 

dynamic action space. 

The fundamental starting point of the time/space programme of the 

production was the directing/design “re-reading” of the subject of the play. 

Tröster considered the director to be the first creator and guarantor of the stage 

interpretation of the drama. The actor was the main user and measure of the 

functionality of the stage, and should not be overshadowed by its expansion. 

After World War II a large part of Tröster's creative activity was concentrated 

on the educational field. In 1946 he played a role in the founding of the 

department of stage design in the Theatre Faculty of the Academy of 

Performing Arts in Prague (DAMU). He was interested in young talent and the 

development of contemporary theatre. There were however certain aspects 

with which he was not satisfied. Although before the war he himself dreamed 

of developing the technical possibilities of stage design, he was a sharp critic of 

the expansion of technique in some contemporary productions (still famous 

today), blaming them for subordinating the acting element to attractive 

scenographic eclecticism. He distanced himself from the work of Josef Svoboda 

who in a technically perfected form continued with his “psycho-plastic” space 

based on Tröster's work. He saw the hope for renewal of the theatre in young 

designers. 

Although he himself worked in large theatres all his life (the National 

Theatre in Prague, the Provincial Theatre in Brno), it was the small theatres, 

founded on the affinity of a creative team, which fulfilled his idea of creative 

workshops. In the 1960s he welcomed the growing spectrum of small stages, 

and wrote of the need to maintain the independence of individual small 

theatres (he named specifically the Divadlo Na zábradlí [Theatre On the 

Balustrade], Činoherní klub [Drama Club] and Studio Y in Liberec). Originality 

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was for him the highest of all values. He conceived it not only as an artistic 

value but also as a mark of personal integrity. His instruction was intensive and 

non-traditional. 

“He would give a lecture which started out from a very simple impulse 

which he then developed and compared with his own experience. It was a 

concentrate of everything embracing art, philosophy and aesthetics.” 7 

As a charismatic and problematic personality, Tröster was for students both 

a scourge and an admired teacher. His requirements of authority and consistency 

in their work were conveyed in an attractive way. “Tröster knew how 

to motivate and engage his students… When for example he required Carmen, 

he sang, slunk along the wall and played a smuggler.” 8 Although no Tröster 

clones emerged from DAMU, his influence as a teacher was incontestable. The 

discovery of the special dynamic qualities of the stage space, the accentuation 

of the dramatic function of stage design, and the need for teamwork were 

handed on by his pupils to their pupils in the same department (first by Albert 

Pražák and Jan Dušek, and after 1989 by Jaroslav Malina and Marie Franková). 

What became known as “action scenography” began to be implemented in 

Czechoslovakia at the turn of the 1960s and 1970s. It was Tröster's pupils who 

were the main bearers of this trend (Jaroslav Malina, Jan Dušek, Miroslav 

Melena). Their method of work was distinct from the architectural and painted 

stage design of the time (Oldřich Šimáček, Zbyněk Kolář, Květoslav Bubeník), 

in which the artists made use of the effectiveness of architectural forms and 

metaphors of visual detail and laid their compositions before the audience like 

a stage picture framed by the proscenium arch. 

Jaroslav Malina: Le Dispute, Pierre de Marivaux; 1999 

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The artist and stage designer Libor Fára is considered a pioneer of action 

scenography. In Alfred Jarry's Ubu roi (Divadlo Na zábradlí, 1964) he made 

dustbins and a collapsible brass bed “perform”. As the collective idea of a generation, 

action scenography was born and grew up in theatres outside Prague, on 

small, studio-type stages (in Brno, the Divadlo Husa na provázku [Goose on a 

String Theatre] - founded 1968, and the HaDivadlo [HaTheatre] - 1974; in Ústí 

nad Labem the Činoherní studio [Drama Studio] - 1972, in Liberec the Studio Y 

- 1963) and even on the larger stages of the more “official” municipal theatres 

(the Divadlo F. X. Šaldy [F. X. Šalda Theatre] in Liberec; the Divadlo Petra Bezruče 

[Petr Bezruč Theatre] in Ostrava; the Divadlo pracujících [Workers' Theatre] in 

Gottwaldov, now Zlín). Like-minded creative teams originated in these places 

(designer Jaroslav Malina and director Karel Kříž; designer Miroslav Melena 

and director Jan Schmid; designer Marta Roszkopfová and director Josef Janík; 

designer Ivo Žídek and director Ivan Rajmont, and so on). 

At the turn of the 1970s and 1980s, when President Husák's “normalisation” 

began to relax just a little, action scenography began to reach Prague. In 1978 

Studio Y from Liberec, led by director Jan Schmid, moved to Prague in its 

entirety. During the 1980s individuals worked as guest directors and designers 

in the small theatres. Some of them even broke through to the stage of the 

National Theatre, among them Jaroslav Malina, Marie Franková and Jan Dušek. 

The young designers of the action scenography movement had no ambitions 

(and usually no opportunities or means) to model the stage architecturally 

or sculpturally. Their starting point was Tröster's legacy: the stage is the 

actor's territory and its changeability is closely linked with the dramatic action. 

Jan Dušek: Noisy Solitude, Bohumil Hrabal, Evald Schorm; 1984 

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However, the author of the scenic element is not the stage technician, but the 

actor himself. The action of the performer has as its result the movement of the 

scene - its change. This change is not only an indication of a change in place 

but also relates to the meaning, and even has an emotional impact. The manipulation 

of an object (part of the set) thus creates a stage metaphor, and the 

“atmosphere” of a particular situation. Most suitable for action scenography are 

simple, easily manipulated objects (rope, boxes, drapery), but could include the 

“more difficult” dustbin or barrel. Suspended ropes could be a forest; knotted 

together, the trunk of a single tree, a net or a gallows (Jan Dušek). Drapery could 

represent the sails of a ship, a tent, the foliage of a tree or the sky (Jaroslav 

Malina). Incessantly living scenery, scenery in movement, scenery in the hands 

of the actor was open to chance and improvisation. 

Otherwise “ordinary” materials, discovered on rubbish heaps or in junk 

shops, were used as much for their practical qualities as for their capacity to 

support aesthetic rationales and period feel. Decoration was foreign to the 

designers of this generation; they were attracted towards the exploration of the 

qualities of various materials and their direct effect. That connected them with 

the influences of European experimental theatres of the time and the visual arts 

generally (the anti-decorative and at the same time visual and emotional “poor 

theatre”, “aesthetic ugliness”, finding aesthetic qualities in corrosion, in 

destroyed and thrown-out objects and so on). However, Czech artists for the 

most part adapted accepted “trends” to their own needs. They lightened the 

rawness and commented with humor (their playfulness was inherited from the 

interwar avant-garde which understood the stage as a space for provocatively 

triggered play), they upset austerity and asceticism (often ironically) by use of 

decorative details. Under a totalitarian regime, “metaphor and irony” became 

weapons and, by a conspiratorial method, a means of communication with an 

audience which came to the theatre to taste at least the atmosphere of freedom. 

Further tendencies of this trend were sought through the use of nontraditional 

space. If designers were working in a traditional proscenium arch 

theatre they tried to take the play into spaces other than the stage itself (the 

foyer, the front of the theatre, etc.) or to furnish the auditorium with atypical 

scenic elements (drapery over-arching the stage, trunks of trees in both the 

stage and the auditorium, etc.). 

Costume, stylised expressively and daringly, was an important element 

of the production. Its metaphorical communicability was underpinned by 

quotation and often heterogeneous to the point of an absurd combination of 

various historical elements and costume styles. This occurred almost 20 years 

before the impact of Post-Modernism was felt in Bohemia. The concept and 

appearance of the set and costumes were closely connected (whether in the 

sense of stylistic unity or contrast). It was not unusual for the set and costumes 

to be designed by the same designer, a link to the past practices of Vlastislav 

Hofman. 

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Jan Štěpánek: Dybbuk, S. Ansky (Solomon Rappoport); 1998 

The end of the 1980s brought a continual oscillation between functionality 

and visual quality that issued in a tide of Post-Modernism. The structured and 

boundless quotation of various styles was divided into operetta/musical 

decoration (sometimes seasoned with irony) and a concentrated synthesis in 

intellectually ambitious projects first at the small, and later the “official”, 

theatres. There was a return to visually effective theatre. The picture appeared 

on the stage again, but this time a three-dimensional, variable picture (not 

unconnected with the Baroque theatre of scenic attraction). New teams were 

formed, new relationships developed between directors and designers. The 

most important directors, establishing themselves in the 1990s, displayed an 

expressive pictorial vision and became in essence the main guarantors of the 

visual appearance of the production. Petr Lébl (director and set designer) with 

Kateřina Štefková, Jan Nebeský with Jana Preková, Michal Dočekal with David 

Marek, J. A. Pitínský with Tomáš Rusín, Zuzana Štefunková and Jan Štěpánek, 

Vladimír Morávek with Martin Chocholoušek and Sylva Zimula Hanáková, 

designed specific worlds full of fantasy and symbols. Some set designers of the 

preceding generation re-evaluated their approaches and graciously accepted its 

effectiveness, beauty and attraction. It was not even so much a question of 

subordination to a period trend as one of concurrent individual development, 

since the changes in their work began to appear even before the onset of 

Post-Modernism and the theatre of scenic pictures. 

After the “velvet revolution” non-conformist artists had the opportunity to 

work on the official stages. In the same way as the interwar avant-garde, they 

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gained experience on both small and large stages. Small theatres obviously did 

not disappear and continued to attract creative and searching designers. 

A number of new little theatres came into existence (in Prague the Spolek 

Kašpar [Kašpar Company], Divadlo v Dlouhé [Theatre in Dlouhá Street], Pražské 

komorní divadlo [Prague Chamber Theatre]), as a rule bringing together the 

younger generation of artists. 

At the present time it seems that the starting point for the designer 

(director) is not the action, but rather the visual expression of the world of the 

play, of the situation, of the dramatic character. “Tröster's vision” is still valid, 

although on other principles and in another form: the set creates the cosmos 

of the drama. 

Marie Zdeňková 

Theatre Institute Prague 

1/ František Tröster, “Poznámky o scéně” (Notes on the Stage), Život (Life), 15, 1936-37, in Scénografie 

(Stage Design), Divadelní ústav (Theatre Institute), Praha 1982, no. 47. 

2/ Vladislav Stanovský, “Divadlo, škola, města (Hovoříme s Františkem Tröstrem)” (Theatre, School, City 

[A Conversation with František Tröster]), Kulturní tvorba (Cultural Creation), 1, 1963, no.7, in Scénografie, 

Divadelní ústav, Praha 1982, no. 47. 



4/ František Tröster quoted in Vladimír Jindra, “Měřeno dneškem” (Measured by Today), Divadlo (Theatre), 15, 

1964, no. 10, in Scénografie, Divadelní ústav, Praha 1982, no. 47. 



6/ František Tröster quoted in Vladimír Jindra, “Měřeno dneškem” (Measured by Today), Divadlo (Theatre), 15, 

1964, no. 10, in Scénografie, Divadelní ústav, Praha 1982, no. 47. 

7/ Magda Svobodová, “František Tröster a jeho okruh (Scénografie v kontextu české kultury)” 

(František Tröster and his Circle [Stage Design in the Context of Czech Culture]), doctoral dissertation, 

UK FF (Arts Faculty of the Charles University), Praha 2002 

8/ Magda Svobodová, “František Tröster a jeho okruh (Scénografie v kontextu české kultury)” 

(František Tröster and his Circle [Stage Design in the Context of Czech Culture]), doctoral dissertation, 

UK FF (Arts Faculty of the Charles University), Praha 2002 

20

Images and Designers’ Biographies

František Tröster 

František Tröster was born in Vrbičany u Roudnice in 1904 and died in Prague in 

1968. He was a set designer, architect, urban planner and teacher. He studied from 

1924-28 at the School of Architecture and Construction in Prague; from 1928-31 

he continued to study architecture at the School of Applied Arts in Prague under 

Professor Pavel Janák (an architect of Czech Cubism). From 1934-38 he taught at 

the School of Arts and Crafts in Bratislava (Slovakia) and from 1939-43 in the 

Central School of Interior Design in Prague, where he was the teacher of Josef 

Svoboda, later a stage designer. He began to teach Stage Design in 1943 at the 

State Conservatoire in Prague. From 1948-68 he was head of the department of 

stage design at the Theatre Faculty of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague. 

As an architect he created installations for exhibitions, often at an international 

level (he shared in the creation of the Czechoslovak Pavilion at EXPO 58 in 

Brussels). At the Biennial of Visual Arts in Sao Paulo in Brazil in 1959 he was 

awarded the Gold Medal in the stage design section for the best foreign stage 

designer. In the 1920s he designed sets for amateur theatres and later worked with 

the Moderní studio in Prague, founded by Jiří Frejka, one of the most important 

Czech theatre directors of the 20 th century. In the 1930s he worked with the 

progressive theatre designer Viktor Šulc in the Slovak National Theatre in 

Bratislava, and in the National Theatre in Prague again with Jiří Frejka, who 

brought the non-traditional approaches of the avant-garde theatres to the official 

stage, and for a long period became Tröster's close collaborator. In 1944 Tröster 

was discriminated against by the Nazi occupiers and forced to work under 

aliases. With Frejka he worked by a method of hyperbolic realism, which arose 

from the realities of the time but transformed them through artistic means, structured 

them anew and emphasised them by a striking abbreviation - hyperbole. 

He concerned himself intensely with the dramatic relationship of space and time. 

In his concept every play had its own space, its own “cosmos”, which went 

beyond the dimensions of the stage and was represented on it by three dimensional 

elements of light and movement (the actor's performance). The components 

of the space dynamically reacted to the movement of the action and the actors' 

performance and transformed themselves in time. After World War II there was a 

particular development in Tröster's work with light. In Armand Salacrou's Les 

nuits de la colere (Nights of Anger, 1947) clashing walls changed their meaning by 

the exchange of design details and the “luminous direction” (viaduct, interior, 

prison). The change of meaning of the originally neutral object will later play an 

important role in what is known as action scenography. In a production of Alban 

Berg's opera Wozzeck (1959) asymmetrically arranged screens became surfaces on 

which were projected images of individual locations having features of 

Expressionist agitation (apartment blocks, a lake, a police station). The walls, when 

illuminated from behind, became transparent and seemed like steamed up glass 

of the dramatic action in a poverty stricken interior. 

22

Don Juan, Molière; 1957 

The Pied Piper, Pavel Bořkovec; 1942 

23

Romeo and Juliet, William Shakespeare; 1938 

Richard III, William Shakespeare; 1940 

24

The Winter’s Tale, William Shakespeare; 1965 

Wozzeck, Alban Berg; 1959 

25

Helena Anýžová 

Helena Anýžová, costume designer, was born in Pilsen in 1936. She has also 

worked in film, and occasionally as an actress. She shared in the work of 

production teams which implemented action scenography processes in the 1970s 

and 1980s. Even if this trend pointed towards a striking - even dominant - share 

for costume in how productions appeared, the concepts of Anýžová's costumes 

always had more of a light and subtle effect, with a slight whiff of sensuality. The 

designer respected the figure of the actor and, for the most part, let the natural 

proportions remain, only slightly adjusting them by the arrangement of fabric, 

detail and accessories. A simple charm, a subtle humor and a playful comedy was 

expressed through these not excessively striking stylized interventions. Her work 

with the set designer Jaroslav Malina was important for her vision of the 

production as a whole, since he laid emphasis on the (contrasting and harmonic) 

interdependence of set and costume. Although the means of expression of her 

personal style did not change in essentials, she expanded and relaxed their range 

(in connection with the tide of Post-Modernism of the time). The designs for 

Mozart's opera Bastien et Bastienne (1999), full of casual coquetry, possessed a 

lightly veiled eroticism and above all a subtle but sophisticated sensitive humor 

and irony. For Emil František Burian's Paris Plays First Fiddle (2002), which used a 

ballad by Francois Villon, Anýžová created costumes which in some cases forsook 

the modesty of a sensual suggestion, and ventured into erotic literalness. 

A graceful Gothic line echoes in the drawing of figures with a hint of movement, 

in the more robust stylization of the masqueraders (“decorated” with phallic 

symbols); however, a sprightly, quackish histrionic quality is also implemented, 

suitably warming up the stone environment of the Gothic castle of Hukvaldy 

(where the production took place). 

26

Paris Plays First Fiddl, Emil F. Burian; 2002 

OPPOSITE: Bastien and Bastienne, Wolfgang A. Mozart; 1999 

27

Jaroslav Malina 

Jaroslav Malina was born in Prague in 1937 and is a set and costume designer, 

a painter, printmaker and teacher. He studied from 1957-61 in the Faculty of 

Education of Charles University in Prague, and from 1961-64 in the department 

of stage design of the Theatre Faculty of the Academy of Performing Arts in 

Prague with Professor František Tröster, later teaching there himself (1990-2000) 

and serving as Rector (1996-1999). In 1991, 1999 and 2003 he was the General 

Commissioner of the Prague Quadrennial. In 1984 he was awarded the Gold 

Medal at the International Triennial of Stage Design in Novy Sad in Serbia, and 

in 2003 received an Honorary Doctorate from Nottingham Trent University in 

Great Britain. He is the author of the expressively fantastic visual stylization of the 

film Magpie in Hand (directed by Juraj Herz, 1982), banned under Communist 

totalitarianism. He also designs the posters for his productions, which in a confrontation 

between the designs and their realization round off a statement about 

the visual appearance of the theme of the play. As a representative of action 

scenography of the 1970s and 1980s he excelled in researching and using the 

special qualities of a variety of materials, integrating them in both set and 

costume designs. He made use especially of moldable and shapable draperies 

with whose help he achieved an imaginative variability of the environment, 

counting on the audience's powers of imagination. He always let himself be 

inspired by the space in which he worked. At first he had his doubts about the 

proscenium arch stage but later incorporated its architecture into the play. He had 

already in his “action” period used elements of painted and pasteboard scenery, 

which by irony and paraphrase upset the stylistic unity and metaphorically drew 

attention to the ambiguity of the world. From the end of the 1980s painted and 

“artificial” elements appears in his work ever more intensely, as does a visual 

concept of composition of the whole picture of the stage (the inspiration of reappraised 

Baroque illusionism). The principle of play, ironic quality and paraphrase 

does not disappear. Some motifs appear in Malina's stage design through the 

whole of his work. For example, the screen/wall: with the patina of life, both disturbed 

and snow-white pure (made of different materials, including his legendary 

use of drapery). The wall in the design for Per Olof Enquist's A Lynx's Hour (2003) 

in itself links the authenticity of the 1970s and the visually aestheticized concept 

of 1990s. The earthy - as it were burdened - structure of the wall, and the 

harmonically effective outlines of a constellation on a blue base associate the two 

basic principles of life - earth and heaven. 

28

A Lynx’s Hour, Per Olov Enquist; 2003 

Bacchae of Euripides, Wole Soyinka; 2003 

OPPOSITE: A Lynx’s Hour, Per Olov Enquist; 2003 

29

The Inspector General, Nikolai V. Gogol; 1999 

Tartuffe, Molière; 1997 

30

Come Nasce Il Sogetto Cinematografico, Cesare Zavattini; 1998 

Good, C. P. Taylor; 2003 

31

Jan Dušek 

Jan Dušek, designer of sets and costumes, was born in Prague in 1942. From 1962 

to 1967 he studied set design with Professor František Tröster in the Theatre 

Faculty of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague. In 1977 he became a teacher 

there and from 1991 has been head of the department of stage design. As a 

representative of action scenography in the 1970s and 1980s he worked with 

authentic materials and “ordinary” objects (doors, boxes, rope, paper) which he 

composed into situation scenarios relying on the action and performers. He 

varied an anti-illusionist concept of theatre, connected with Tröster's dynamized 

performance space, through ascetic economy and a critically humorous and 

unsweetened playfulness which relied on an element of improvisation. In the 

1990s the range of his means of expression expanded, in connection with 

contemporary (Post-Modern) influences. His set designs for Noisy Solitude (1984) 

based on the novel by Bohumil Hrabal (dramatized by Evald Schorm), is related 

by the simple spatial organization of “ordinary” objects to action scenography. His 

set for Shakespeare's Othello (which won the Alfréd Radok Award, 1996) is 

resolved architecturally - the rhythmatization of geometrical shapes recalls the 

clean forms of the Swiss theatre reformer Adolph Appia and some of those of Josef 

Svoboda. His designs for Miloš Štědroň's musical based on Romain Rolland's 

Le Jeu de l'amour et de la mort (The Play on Love, Death and Eternity, 1998) use 

a folk element typical for Dušek. The grouping of the ghostly figures into a 

mise-en-scene in confrontation with the scanty but meaningfully accented 

furnishings of the set (a guillotine like an isolated may pole, executed heads as 

scattered heads of cabbage) together with the assaults of luminous cones 

anticipate in expressive abbreviation the dramatic charge of the production. 

The Magic Hill, based on the novel by Thomas Mann (dramatized by Štěpán 

Otčenášek, 1997), became a challenge for Dušek, in the co-creation of a visually 

conceived world for the production by Jan Antonín Pitínský. The designer 

approached the Post-Modern starting point through a mixture of means of 

expression, but balanced the ebullience of the stage pictures against the promotional 

chill of a flat silhouette of the alpine peaks. 

32

The Play on Love, Death and Eternity, Miloš Štědroň, Romain Rolland; 1998 

33

Master and Margarita, Mikhail Bulgakov; 1999 

Biederman and the Firebugs, Max Frisch; 1990 

34

A Magic Hill, Thomas Mann, Štěpán Očenášek; 1997 

Persians, Aeschylus; 2004 

35

Marie Franková 

Marie Franková, costume designer, was born in Kopidlna in 1944. From 1961-77 

she studied stage design with Professor František Tröster at the Theatre Faculty of 

the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague, where she later taught costume design 

(1990-2000). She also works for television and film. Her cooperation with the set 

designer Jaroslav Malina, for whose sets she designed costumes from the end of 

the 1960s, was suited to her stylistically aggressive view of theatre. With him she 

experienced the era of action scenography (the 1970s and 80s) and the tendency 

towards the designed quality and newly transforming “Mannerism” of the 1990s. 

As a pupil of František Tröster she always had a feeling for costume which was 

primarily sculptural, like a three-dimensional object, capable of functioning as an 

equivalent component of the stage space. She chooses colors in relation to the 

material, shape and dramatic function of the character, expresses through them 

an aggressive belligerence, a passionate accent and various attitudes of humor 

(robust and also intellectual). She applies her clear-cut stylization chiefly in 

originally conceived historical costumes, whose stylized historical attributes are 

combined with fashionable contemporary elements and textile techniques. 

Costumes of majestic proportions for Molière's Don Juan (1988) were created as 

a collection of mourning garments, “royal” and ostentatious, whose solidified 

grandeur left their mark on a harmonized production and its space. The costumes 

for Sophocles' Oedipus (1996), supplemented by tall, almost fantastic heads, turned 

the chorus into majestic statues, supporting the barbaric monumentality of 

Jaroslav Malina's architecturally conceived set. The characters of Gogol's The 

Inspector General (1999) provide examples of the modelling of actors' figures into 

caricatured but still human shapes. The playful and cruelly joking deformations, 

supported by an ironically cheerful combination of colors and the use of flexible 

material, turned the costume into a pictorial anecdote underscored by quaint wigs 

and hats. 

36

Don Juan, Bertolt Brecht; 1988 

The Inspector General, Nikolai V. Gogol; 1999 

OPPOSITE: Oedipus Rex, Sophocles; 1996 

37

Petr Matásek 

Petr Matásek was born in Prague 1944 and is a designer of puppets, sets and 

costumes, as well as a teacher. From 1962-66 he studied stage design for puppetry 

in the Theatre Faculty of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague, where in 1992 

he became a teacher (in the department for alternative and puppet theatre). He 

shared in the revival of modern Czech puppet theatre, beginning in the 1960s and 

fully asserting itself in the 1970s. He did not conceive the stage as a flat picture 

but as a space whose three-dimensional quality is fully used for a play for a puppet 

and a live actor - the puppet-player, who is not a mere hidden string-puller, 

but a partner of the puppet. Apart from the puppet, costume and mask was also 

incorporated into puppet stage design. A central object was asserted as the basic 

scenic element - a neutrally and concretely conceived construction, animated by 

the puppet and the live actor, and by means of their actions capable of variable 

changes. The use of authentic materials and objects, and then the actor's work 

with the object - which is in this case the puppet - links it with the wave of action 

scenography. To make the puppets he used, and still uses, various materials and 

techniques. His favorite material is wood, which with its living essence and 

individual structure has always been a magical material for Matásek. Many of his 

puppets are inspired by the tradition of Czech folk carvers (expressive deep carving) 

and created by the imagination, poetry and humour of the contemporary 

artist, who knows how to print an individual expression on his products. Matásek 

has been working in the field of straight drama since the 1980s and enriched it 

with the resourceful approaches and liberated fantasy of the puppet theatre. More 

recently he has involved himself in the use of non-traditional stages. For 

Christopher Marlowe's Faust he adapted the underground stone hall Gorlice 

(2001), used as a depository for the original Baroque statues from Charles Bridge, 

and equipped this space with simple objects of an almost ritual nature. In 2003 

he created a project called “Bouda” (The Hut - the affectionate term for the first 

purposely built Czech language theatre in the early 19 th century). It was not only 

a design, but also a conceptual initiative serving as a one season alternative stage 

for the National Theatre Company. In a purist toy-brick structure, installed in the 

square behind the Theatre of the Estates, actors and audience experienced the 

performance as though “in the same boat”. 

38

Red Shoes, Hans Christian Andersen; 2003 

OPPOSITE: The Little Mermaid, Hans Christian Andersen; 1988 

39

Marta Roszkopfová 

Marta Roszkopfová was born in Žilina (Slovakia) in 1947 and is a set and costume 

designer as well as a printmaker. She studied from 1968-73 at the High School of 

Performing Arts in Bratislava under Professor Ladislav Vychodil and Professor 

Ludmila Purkyňová and 1973-74 at the Akademii sztuk pieknych in Warsaw 

(under Professor Józef Szajna and Professor Zenobiusz Strzelecki). In 1974 she 

became designer at the Petr Bezruč Theatre in Ostrava, where she still works 

today on a dramaturgically challenging repertoire, while having established herself 

in a number of other theatres. In 1984 and in 1998 she won the Gold Medal 

at the Triennial of Stage Design in Nový Sad in Serbia. Her roughened view of 

world (“cosmos”) drama is not unconnected with the less than idyllic Ostrava 

landscape (an industrial, mining region). The influence of Polish theatre of the 

1960s and 1970s, which linked an expressive vision with an “aesthetic ugliness” 

can be recognized in her work (especially at the beginning). A preference for 

authentic material, the functional liberation of the stage, and an emphasis on the 

visually and metaphorically powerful factors of the costume bring her close to the 

trend of action scenography. Her costumes are filled by robust bodies who, so to 

speak, shape them and overflow them. The morphological aggressiveness of the 

costume (in detail as in color) is visually attractive and emotionally repulsive. 

Roszkopfová puts an everyday element into effect in historical costumes, in contemporary 

costumes again making them special by comic exaggeration. The 

costumes for Accidental Death of an Anarchist by Dario Fo (1989) are everyday, but 

layered on the actors like protective and combative “masks”. In the costumes for 

Shakespeare's Twelfth Night (1999) the designer comes surprisingly to an almost 

provocative sobriety (given the “carnival” nature of the comedy), which is only 

lightly enlivened by stylized detail. In the concept of the set Roszkopfová is more 

sober in color and shape. We are accustomed with her rather neutrally conceived 

sets. However, she knows how to surprise even by plasticity in shape. Her design 

for Ibsen's Peer Gynt (2002) is a forked shape, reminiscent of the stump of a 

centuries' old tree beheaded by lightning. The restless formation of this shape and 

its material concentration in the center of the stage suggests an unwitting echo of 

Expressionism. 

40

Accidental Death of an Anarchist, Dario Fo; 1989 

41

Copenhagen, Michael Frayn; 2000 

Hamlet, William Shakespeare; 1999 

42

Peer Gynt, Henrik Ibsen; 2002 

43

Ivo Žídek 

Ivo Žídek was born in Ostrava in 1948 and is a set designer. From 1968-70 he 

studied stage design at the Theatre Faculty of the Academy of Performing Arts in 

Prague, where he was one of the last pupils of Professor František Tröster, and 

from 1971-74 at the School of Applied Arts under Professor Josef Svoboda. He is 

not far from action scenography or from the three-dimensional space of František 

Tröster in his more challenging tasks. He has worked for both small and large 

theatres, including the National Theatre in Prague, and is a sought-after stage 

designer for operettas and musicals. The high point of his work was with the 

Theatre On the Balustrade in Prague and its artistic director, the intellectually 

demanding director Jan Grossman. The influence of Žídek's brief period of study 

with František Tröster was manifested on this small stage, which has asserted 

progressive tendencies in the theatre ever since its foundation (1958). In Molière's 

Don Juan (1989) a central, structurally conceived object occupied most of the stage 

space. This concrete fragment of a monument of architecture changed its 

meaning, “atmosphere” and function in connection with the stage action and 

actor's performances. Although stable, it functioned as a meaningfully variable 

element of the staging. The eerily enlarged and narrowed doors in Václav Havel's 

autobiographical Largo Desolato (1990) surrounded the comings and goings of 

private individuals like ramparts of silent but ever-present spies. At the same time 

they created a projection screen for the play of the deformed shadow of an 

antique chandelier whose arms/tentacles made the eeriness of the nightmares of 

the spied-on dissident protagonist visible. The central accent of the stage design 

for productions of another play by Havel, Temptation (the Faust theme updated 

to 1991) was a round opening in an expressively angled ceiling under which was 

placed a bucket and a washbasin. It served as a passage for raids by the devil and 

was at the same time an ordinary, uncomfortable hole, through which water 

dripped - a clear use of metaphor and irony. 

44

Largo Desolato, Václav Havel; 1990 

Don Juan, Molière; 1989 

OPPOSITE: Temptation, Václav Havel; 1991 

45

Jana Zbořilová 

Jana Zbořilová was born in Prague in 1952 and is a set and costume designer. 

From 1972-74 she studied stage design under Professor Michael Romberg and 

Professor Albert Pražák (a pupil of František Tröster) at the Theatre Faculty of the 

Academy of Performing Arts in Prague, where she has been teaching since 1990. 

In 2001 she won the Gold Medal at the Triennial of Stage Design in Nový Sad in 

Serbia. She is influenced by the openness, objectivity and variability of action 

scenography and the connected imaginative poetics of the Brno Theatre Goose on 

a String, with which she worked in the 1970s. She collaborated with the poetic line 

of this studio-type theatre (director Eva Tálská), full of tenderness, cruelty, but also 

inventive humor (Nosegay, Song of Viktorka, Gallows Songs). When the theme 

requires it, her humor has recently become sarcastic to the point of merciless 

incrimination (especially in the costume element). A sense for comic and poetic 

playfulness also operates on large stages, where at the same time the gesture of 

monumental shape and dramatic pathos is important (the National Theatre in 

Brno in collaboration with director Zdeněk Kaloč, 1990s). There is in her designs 

an inexhaustible sense of humour and play with subjects and meanings, manifested 

in diverse nuances. Connected with this is the method of collage in which 

some of her set designs are carried out (Chekhov's Uncle Vanya, 1996, Molière's 

Misanthrope, 1997, Marivaux's Le Dispute, 2002). A spontaneous linkage with the 

line leading from the Poetism of the 1920s (the Czech period of Surrealism), of 

captivating film montage, through the material and objective diversity of visual 

art of the 1960s to the “clip” aesthetic of Post-Modernism is manifested here. Her 

costume creations focus on a crucial point of grotesque parody, chiefly in the 

female characters which are captured with a devastating lack of flattery. Her 

designs for the play Horse and Death With Me (1999) by Eva Tálská present subtle 

clowns, endowed with a nostalgic poetry; the female clown however is presented 

as a hyperbolized caricature of a bogus wrestler. 

46

The Firebird, Daniela Fischerová; 2000 

ABOVE LEFT 1, 2: Horse and Death with Me, Eva Tálská; 1999 

ABOVE RIGHT: The Beggar’s Opera, Václav Havel; 1994 

OPPOSITE: Misanthrope, Molière; 1997 47

Dana Hávová 

Dana Hávová was born in Jihlava in 1955 and is a costume designer. From 1977- 

82 she studied in the Theatre Faculty of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague 

with Professor Albert Pražák and Professor Jan Dušek (pupils of František Tröster). 

Her own artistic inclinations are robust exaggeration and caricature in whose 

spirit she layers costume like superfluous peelings or protective carapaces. She 

does not lean towards slickness and harmony (and is clearly influenced by the 

“aesthetic of ugliness” close to some roots and offshoots of action scenography). 

The characters in Pavel Landovský's The Flophouse Keeper (directed by Jan Burian, 

1990) are wrapped up in their clothes as though in bullet-proof armor. They are 

wearing everyday clothes, but in spite of this they look as though they are 

wearing a body mask. The nod in the direction of fashion is thrown into doubt 

by the “junk-shop” hallmark. Analogous “junk-shop” impropriety (although less 

striking) marks the costumes for Vaclav Havel's Temptation (directed by Jan 

Burian, 1990). The variations of satanic masks which the characters wear for the 

party are more harmonious and more “chic” than their everyday wear, always a 

little loose-fitting and trying to give the illusion of comfort. The caricatured 

enlarged heads on the designs present a comedy about society as a panoptical 

display of depersonalized phantoms, fulfilling the idea of a modern witches' 

Sabbath. 

48

Temptation, Václav Havel; 1990 

49

Karel Glogr 

Karel Glogr, set designer, was born in Prague in 1958. From 1977-82 he studied set 

design under Professor Jan Dušek and Professor Albert Pražák (pupils of František 

Tröster) at the Theatre Faculty of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague, 

where he himself worked as a teacher from 2000. Work with directors of various 

inclinations led him to the use and application of various styles and expressive 

media. However, in the context of a given production he maintains a unified style. 

He is closest to the director Hana Burešová, whose work also shows diversity in 

style and genre. They have staged together both tragedies and farces, frequently 

with a conscious paraphrase of period production practice. In Calderon's The 

Wonder-Working Magician (1995) Glogr used baroque wings, liberated of course 

from their illusionism (its artificiality was recognized and emphasized). The set 

design for Johann Nepomuk Nestroy's farce Monkeys and Women (1999) was 

harmonized into the irony of a cheap color-print idyll, complete with the use of 

wings. Glogr undertook excursions into the history of styles with other directors. 

In Arthur Schnitzler's Undiscovered Country (directed by Ladislav Smoček, 1992) he 

applied archaized wing prospects whose idyllic quality contrasted with the bitter 

out-of-tune quality of the play. In Shakespeare's Othello (directed by Jan Burian, 

1995) the meaning of the architectural element varied by details: a grouping of 

neutral rectangles was at one time rocks on the seashore, at another palaces in 

the city streets. In the design for J. M. R. Lenz's Tutors (directed by Petr Kracik, 

1998) the influence of the Expressionist vision of reality is recognizable: the 

deployment and uneasy tilt of movable elements is reminiscent of an old 

cemetery with tombs half overturned, and creates a disturbed, tense atmosphere. 

50

The Tutor, Jacob M. R. Lenz, Jaroslav Vostrý; 1998 

August August, August, Pavel Kohout; 1990 

OPPOSITE: Richard III, William Shakespear; 1999 

51

David Marek 

David Marek was born in Prague in 1965 and is a set designer and an interior 

designer. From 1985-89 he studied stage design in the Theatre Faculty of the 

Academy of Performing Arts under Professor Albert Pražák and Professor Jan 

Dušek (pupils of František Tröster). In 2003 he was the Commissioner of the Czech 

exhibit at the Prague Quadrennial, the international exhibition of stage design 

and theatre architecture. His work is inspired by various architectural, design and 

theatrical styles. But for the most part he has used only one style, eschewing the 

Post-Modernist trend of mixing elements from different styles and epochs in the 

context of a single production. In the stage design for Goethe's Clavigo (1994) he 

used an unambiguously recognizable Cubist morphology (including movables). 

Whereas in the 1920s broken, restless lines and shapes on the Czech stage (for 

example in the Expressionism and Cubo-Futurism of Vlastislav Hofman) were 

used as disturbing, dramatizing elements, at the beginning of the 1990s the 

reappearance of the style operated as a Post-Modern recollection, exclusively 

particularized with some amount of irony for the dramatic surroundings. During 

the 1990s Marek freed himself from such directly used influences; but on the 

other hand, his share in the scenic interpretation of the work increased, chiefly in 

cooperation with the director Michal Dočekal. For Chekhov's Three Sisters (1996) 

Marek and Dočekal created a space by the concrete use of elements from 

monumental palace architecture and sharpened them in a dreamlike way (with 

the help of light). This scenic interpretation allowed the sisters as old women to 

relive their stories in their distorted memories somewhere in a Soviet old people's 

home. More recently (at the beginning of the millennium) spatial sensitivity 

appears more strikingly in his work. The stage design for Josef Bohuslav Foerster's 

opera The Artless (2001) is founded on the articulation of the stage floor 

(gradually rising pathways as the motif of a journey, here the journey to God's 

tomb) and the effectiveness of the backcloth beyond the emptied space: the black 

silhouettes on the dawn-blue horizon, fatefully watching out, are a tableau - a 

part of the set design. 

52

The Artless, Josef B. Foerster; 2001 

Clavigo, Johann W. Goethe; 1994 

OPPOSITE: The Artless, Josef B. Foerster; 2001 

53

Petra Štětinová Goldflamová 

Petra Štětinová Goldflamová was born in Prague in 1970 and is a costume, set 

and puppet designer. From 1990-96 she studied set design in the department 

of alternative and puppet theatre of the Theatre Faculty of the Academy of 

Performing Arts in Prague under Professor Petr Matásek and Professor Miroslav 

Melena. - The schooling in puppetry is not irrelevant to her work. In the 

production If Pigs Had Wings (1996) puppet animals appeared, even though this 

was not a puppet production but a cabaret with songs for children. They were 

part of the whole theatrical picture book, supporting by resourceful visual 

expression the imagination of the child audience. Recently the designer has 

created mainly costumes for productions by the director Arnošt Goldflam. She 

approaches the figure in costume and mask with tenderness and humor as 

though it were a puppet. Her designs are reminiscent of illustrations for fairy 

stories. Imagination surrounds her like a beneficial background and forms a 

concrete shape with a light irony and joy of narration. The Cabaret Vian-Cami 

(1998) was full of peculiar beings, jokey and a little dangerous - from 

Neanderthals to archaized pilots. The designs for the straight theatre version of 

Puccini's La Bohéme by Arnošt Goldflam (2002) are lyrically ironic without 

caricatured exaggeration; dove grey and pink flowers glow on Mimi with 

a subtle harmony, not very typical for the contemporary Czech theatre. 

54

TOP AND ABOVE LEFT 1, 2: Mathew, the Honest, Ladislav Klíma, Arnošt Goldflam; 2002 

ABOVE RIGHT 3, 4: La Boheme, Arnošt Goldflam, Giacommo Puccini; 2002 

OPPOSITE: The Forest Maid, or Journey to America, Josef K. Tyl; 2003 

55

Jan Štěpánek 

Jan Štěpánek was born in Prague in 1970 and is a set designer. He returned to 

Czechoslovakia from Germany after the end of Communism, and from 1992-98 

studied stage design at the Theatre Faculty of the Academy of Performing Arts in 

Prague under Professor Jan Dušek (a pupil of František Tröster). He worked for 

small and large theatres exclusively with directors with whom he felt an affinity. 

He was influenced by the rawness of German theatre (and feels close to it). His 

designs of sombre and aggressive colors are worlds in themselves - expressive 

and emotional images which apparently have nothing in common with the 

theatrical stage. In fact, they suggest the spirit of the production, or at least 

the designer's idea of it. In outdoor locations we often see austerity and asceticism 

in Štěpánek's spatially felt sets, but something of the original pictorial vision 

penetrates (especially by means of lighting); as though the designer determined 

the theme of the play for himself and in his designs transposes it into ciphers of 

free visual art. People Annihilationt by Werner Schwab (1999) is a picturesque 

danse macabre, in which are luscious colors appear from materials of darkness. The 

Hanged Men in Marius von Mayerburg's Fireface (2001) have the shape of dead 

fish, decoratively ornamented emptied interiors like rare drawings in Indian ink. 

Some sort of ritual “Agony” is abstractly expressed in the designs for Gabriela 

Preissová's Household Woman (2000), the urgency of the basic dramatic quality of 

the theme resounding all the more intensely. 

56

The Summer Guests, Maxim Gorky, 1999 

Fireface, Marius von Mayenburg; 2001 

OPPOSITE: Šárka, Zdeněk Fibich; 2000 

57

Kateřina Štefková 

Kateřina Štefková was born in Prague in 1971 and is a costume and set designer. 

From 1989-94 she studied stage design at the Theatre Faculty of the Academy of 

Performing Arts in Prague under Professor Jaroslav Malina and Professor Jan 

Dušek (pupils of František Tröster). She has been designer for the Theatre On the 

Balustrade in Prague since 1994. Her work is marked by the visually accented 

vision of the director Petr Lébl (1963-1999, artistic director of the Theatre On the 

Balustrade 1993-1999), full of disturbing images, beautiful on the outside, anxious 

within. A knowledge of the history of clothing and textiles enables her freedom 

in the conception of fantastic creations. The care and thoroughness with which 

she chooses details and different clothing techniques is married with the 

irrationality and strangeness of multiple combinations. Even her “ordinary” 

costumes are, in connection with the acting and the director's interpretation, 

something special and “improper”. She uses quotes from different styles of 

clothing (in connection with the wave of Post-Modernism) as elements which 

particularize and interpret. The heroine of Tankred Dorst's Fernando Krapp Wrote 

me a Letter (1992) was displayed like an opera heroine in a Mannerist frame with 

a luxuriant Secession setting, not so the director and designer could place the play 

in a certain period, but for the exceptional quality and “theatricality” of a single 

human fate to be made plain. The colorfully profligate, operatically decorated 

The Inspector General (1995), shifted by costume stylization into “barbarian” Asia, 

forced on the audience a completely unusual but shocking view of the environment 

of a notoriously over-familiar play and thereby provoked unaccustomed 

associations. That also applied to Lébl's series of plays by Chekhov (The Seagull - 

1994 - Alfréd Radok Award for the best production of the year; Ivanov - 1997; 

Uncle Vanya - 1999). Here the costumes were stylized more subtly (chiefly in color) 

but as part of a crystallized interpreted whole they helped the world of the 

production to be particularized from unusual viewpoints (with elements of silent 

film, Russian Romanticism and the American Western). 

58

Uncle Vanya, Anton P. Chekhov; 1999 

OPPOSITE: Fernando Krapp Wrote Me a Letter, Tankred Dorst (from Miguel de Unamuno); 1992 

59

Egon Tobiáš 

Egon Tobiáš was born in Kladno in 1971 and is a playwright, poet, set designer 

and printmaker. From 1989-95 he studied stage design at the Theatre Faculty 

of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague under Professor Jaroslav Malina 

(a pupil of František Tröster), subsequently postgraduate book illustration and 

printmaking with Professor Jiří Šalamoun. He works in the print studio Hamlet, 

and created the logo of the Theatre Institute in Prague. Although he graduated as 

a stage designer, he practises as such only sporadically. His plays have appeared 

on Czech stages more often than his designs. He is fascinated by the theatre as a 

world formed by its own causality. As a contemporary artist he draws on the past, 

whose concrete impulses he adapts to his pictures (Secession, Decadence, 

Symbolism, Expressionism). He is a set designer of the picture rather than of 

space; he has his own world, in which poetry, visual art and theatre are linked. 

For Sister Anxiety, a stage poem by Jan Čep, Jakub Deml and J. A. Pitínský (1995, 

Alfréd Radok Award for the best production of the year), he created a 

ritual space, conceived with symbolic imagery - rustic, concrete, dreamily eerie. 

The realization and designs differ, but are in both cases steeped in a muted 

mysticism and poetry. His set designs for the play by Jane Bowles In the 

Summerhouse were even provocatively painted, thus deliberately archaic. The 

main elements of the set here were the alternating backcloths in whose luscious 

strokes we can observe echoes of Expressionism. 

60

In the Summer House, Jane Bowles; 2001 

The Foreigner, Egon L. Tobiáš; 1994 

OPPOSITE: Sister Anxiety, Jan Čep, Jakub Deml, Jan A. Pitínský; 1995 

61

Sylva Zimula Hanáková 

Sylva Zimula Hanáková was born in Kroměříž in 1967 and is a costume and set 

designer. From 1986-91 she studied in the Faculty of Education of the Masaryk 

University in Brno, from 1991-92 stage design at the Janáček Academy of 

Performing Arts in Brno under Professor Jan Konečný. She designed costumes for 

different types of companies and different genres. She attracted attention to 

herself chiefly by her work with Vladimír Morávek, director of striking visual 

fantasies which she was capable of taking on. In a production of Shakespeare's 

Richard III directed by Morávek, staged in the Globe Theatre - the Prague 

replica of the London Elizabethan stage - her costumes share in carrying an 

inventive gaudy layer of the production, attracting attention to the “crowd”, 

diffused by background noise (the Globe is situated in the amusement park 

known as the “Výstaviště” [exhibition ground] in Prague, where the Prague 

Quadrennial is held every four years). The effectiveness of the costumes, 

however striking, relied on the actor. It was only with the goblin-like physical 

gestures of Richard that the short black cloak and clownishly extended gloves 

acquired meaning, and it needed the elegant manners of the male actors, 

performing the female characters according to Elizabethan practices, for the royal 

majesty of the costumes to resound fully. 

Viktor Kronbauer was born in Prague in 1949 on the stage of the National 

Theatre. He is a photographer who has worked for the Theatre Institute in Prague 

and for theatres in Prague and the rest of the country. Since 1987 he has been 

documenting the Prague Quadrennial of stage design and theatre architecture in 

photographs. He organizes exhibitions especially on the occasion of festivals, 

where he also leads workshops. He considers himself the pupil of Jaroslav Krejčí, 

who recorded the important initiatives of the Czech theatre by an expressive form 

with an inner charge. He learned from him how to put his finger on the essential 

feature of a production in the limited moment of a shot. Black and white 

photography has the power of concentration; contrast, composition, picture, and 

space, excel in it. Kronbauer's photographs capture moments when “something” 

important is happening and is absorbed in the sequence of action in the space, or 

in fact “something” lurks in that space, applying its action-shaping power. 

Shakespeare's Richard III, directed by Vladimír Morávek and staged in the Globe 

Theatre in Prague (for whose record in photographs he won the Silver Medal at 

the Triennial in Nový Sad in Serbia in 2002) is captured in an atmosphere of 

tension around the key moments, and with a sense for the stylization of the 

acting in the costumes of Zimula Hanáková. For the audience, photography 

cannot replace the experience of seeing a production, but it rouses their interest 

and desire to peep into the “other” worlds of the theatre. 

62

Richard III, William Shakespeare; 2002 

63

... and some other contemporary productions ... 

CABARET UNDINE, Various authors 

(J. A. P. goes to the theatre with his mama. They‘r showing something about 

a water nymph again.) 

Theatre in Dlouhá Street, Prague, 2000. 

Vladimír Morávek, director; 

Milan David, set designer; 

Zuzana Krejzková, costume designer; 

Antonín Dvořák and Daniel Fikejz, music composers. 

“The period is also an issue in the play - Morávek stages the theme of the water 

nymphs (Rusalka) as a pilgrimage through the twentieth century. It begins with 

its sweetly idyllic origins, but the light-heartedness is torn apart by the drastic 

impact of Fascism. The post-war era is entirely different, characterised in the 

second half by a coolly minimalist form of set and stylised costumes.” 

Vladimír Hulec: Kudy to šel Morávek do divadla? (Which way did Morávek go into theatre?), 

MF Dnes, 31. 5. 2000 

64

JE SuiS, Egon Tobiáš, Martin Dohnal, Jan Nebeský 

(The strange case of the parish priest from TUEs.) 

Based on a motif from the novels of Georges Bernanos. 

Theatre On the Balustrade, Prague, 2001. 

Jan Nebeský, director; 

Jana Preková, set and costume designer. 

“Tobiáš and Nebeský do not simply strive for a scenic account of the story (…), 

but from fragments of material create simultaneously the atmosphere of 

Bernanos' world and contemporary coordinates with the use of a Post-Modern 

method of montage and inter-text correspondences. (…) Instead of psychological 

analysis and literal reflexes, the director and designer… prefer suggestion through 

pictorial means founded on basic elements and movements - fire, water, wine, 

mud… walking up and down, ascending, descending…” 

Zdeněk Hořínek: Nesnesitelná snadnost hříchu (The Unbearable Easiness of Sin), 

Lidové noviny, 8. 11. 2001 

65

ROMEO AND JULIET, William Shakespeare 

National Theatre (Theatre of the Estates), Prague, 2003. 

Vladimír Morávek, director; 

Jan M. Chocholoušek, set designer; 

Zuzana Krejzková, costume designer; 

Daniel Fikejz, music composer. 

“Jan M. Chocholoušek's design and Vladimír Morávek's direction ostentatiously 

remind the audience that they are in the theatre. And, moreover, in the unique 

space of the Theatre of the Estates (…) the use of the proscenium boxes to 

indicate the “warring houses” at the beginning, and one in particular (…) for the 

balcony scene, solves the question of the revered genius loci in the Elizabethan 

spirit as well.” 

Milan Lukeš: Z českého snáře (From a Czech Dreambook), Svět a divadlo, 2003, no. 3 

“The action on the stage is harmonised in dark colours. At the beginning black, 

white and pale blue dominate, at the end black and red, the colours of blood and 

death. Another symbol? The red roses, mournfully thrust into the ground, always 

at a fateful moment. As though the soul of the lovers was always injured by their 

thorns. At the end, Morávek prepares from those roses a frosty, glassy bed for 

them both, the bed of death.” 

Vladimír Hulec: William Shakespeare/Romeo a Julie, Instinkt, 2003, no. 5 

66

Work in the Exhibition

HELENA ANÝŽOVÁ 

Emil F. Burian: PARIS PLAYS FIRST FIDDLE 

National Theatre of Moravia and Silesia, Ostrava at Hukvaldy Castle, 2002; 

Jaroslav Malina, set designer; Luděk Golat, director. 

9 costume designs, pencil and brush on paper, 11 3 /4” x 8 1 /4” each. 

Wolfgang A. Mozart: BASTIEN AND BASTIENNE 

National Theatre of Moravia and Silesia, Ostrava, 1999; 

Jaroslav Malina, set designer; Luděk Golat, director. 

6 costume designs, pencil and brush on paper, 11 3 /4” x 8 1 /4” each. 

Wolfgang A. Mozart: BASTIEN AND BASTIENNE 

National Theatre of Moravia and Silesia, Ostrava, 1999; Luděk Golat, director. 

Jacket and trousers. 

JAN DUŠEK 

Miloš Štědroň, Romain Rolland: THE PLAY ON LOVE, DEATH AND ETERNITY 

Municipal Theatre, Brno, 1998; Stanislav Moša, director. 

4 stage designs, pen and gouache on paper, 16 1 /4” x 11 5 /8” each. 

Bohumil Hrabal, Evald Schorm: NOISY SOLITUDE 

Theatre On the Balustrade, Prague, 1984; Evald Schorm, director. 

Stage design, mixed media on paper, 17” x 17 3 /4”. 

Thomas Mann, Štěpán Otčenášek: A MAGIC HILL 

Dlouhá Theatre, Prague, 1997; Jan A. Pitínský, director. 

Stage design, gouache on paper, 12 5 /8” x 17 3 /4”. 

Friedrich Dürrenmatt: ACHTERLOO 

Theatre “K”, Prague, 1991; Miloš Horanský, director. 

4 costume designs, mixed media on paper, 17 3 /4” x 13” each. 

Max Frisch: BIEDERMAN AND THE FIREBUGS 

Theatre “K”, Prague, 1990; Miloš Horanský, director. 

4 costume designs, pen and gouache on paper, 17 3 /4” x 13” each. 

Gabriela Preissová: HER STEP DAUGHTER 

South Bohemian Theatre, České Budějovice, 2003; Zdeněk Černín, director. 

3 stage designs, pen and guache on paper, 10 7 /8” x 15 3 /4” each. 

Aeschylus: PERSIANS 

Strub Theatre, Loyola Marymount University, LA, 2004; Katrin B. Free, director. 

2 stage designs, pen and gouache on paper, 11 1 /2” x 16 1 /2” each. 

Aeschylus: PERSIANS 

Strub Theatre, Loyola Marymount University, LA, 2004; Katrin B. Free, director. 

4 costume designs, pen and gouache on paper, 16 1 /2” x 11 3 /4”. 

Mikhail Bulgakov: MASTER AND MARGARITA 

Municipal Theatre, Brno, 1999; Zdeněk Černín, director. 

4 stage designs, combined technique on paper, 16 1 /2” x 11 3 /4” each. 

68

MARIE FRANKOVÁ 

Nikolai V. Gogol: THE INSPECTOR GENERAL 

Municipal Theatre, Zlín, 1999; 

Jaroslav Malina, set designer; Ivan Balaa, director. 

9 costume designs, colored pens on paper, 11 3 /4” x 8 1 /4” each. 

Friedrich Schiller: DON CARLOS 

Stibor Theatre, Olomouc, 1994; 


4 costume designs, mixed technique on paper, 16 1 /2” x 11 3 /4” each. 

Bertolt Brecht: DON JUAN 

E. F. Burian Theatre, Prague, 1988; 

Jaroslav Malina, set designer; Jan Bartoš, director. 


Molière: THE MISER 




Sophocles: OEDIPUS REX 

National Theatre (Theatre of the Estates), Prague, 1996; 

Jaroslav Malina, set designer; Miroslav Krobot, director. 

4 costume designs, collage on paper, 16 1 /2” x 11 3 /4” each. 

KAREL GLOGR 

William Shakespeare: OTHELLO 

Tyl Theatre, Plzeň, 1995; Jan Burian, director. 

2 stage designs, mixed media on paper, 16 1 /2” x 19 1 /2” each. 

Pavel Kohout: AUGUST AUGUST, AUGUST 

Stibor Theatre, Olomouc, 1990; Karel Nováček, director. 

2 stage designs, gouache on paper, 15 1 /4” x 17 1 /8” each. 

Arthur Schnitzler: UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY 

Vinohrady Theatre, Prague, 1992; Ladislav Smoček, director. 

2 stage designs, collage on paper, 16 1 /2” x 20 3 /4” each. 

Jacob M. R. Lenz, Jaroslav Vostrý: THE TUTOR 

Theatre Pod Palmovkou, Prague, 1998; Petr Kracik, director. 

Stage design, mixed media on paper, 13 3 /8” x 15 3 /4”. 

William Shakespeare: RICHARD III 


Stage design, gouache on paper, 17 1 /2” x 26 1 /4”. 

Pedro Calderon de la Barca: THE WONDER-WORKING MAGICIAN 

National Theatre, Prague, 1995; Hana Burešová, director. 

4 stage designs, collage on paper, 9 1 /2” x 9 1 /2” each, 

2 costume designs, felt pen and gouache on paper, 16 1 /2” x 11 3 /4” each. 

69

DANA HÁVOVÁ 

Pavel Landovský: THE FLOPHOUSE KEEPER 

Nezval Theatre, Karlovy Vary, 1990; Jan Burian, director. 

4 costume designs, mixed media on paper, 16 1 /2” x 11 3 /4” each. 

Václav Havel: TEMPTATION 



JAROSLAV MALINA 

Wole Soyinka: BACCHAE OF EURIPIDES 

Clarence Brown Theatre, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, 2003; 

Elisabeth Craven, director; photos by Kenton Yeager. 

Stage design, mixed media on paper, 16 1 /2” x 23 5 /8”, 

4 production photos. 

C. P. Taylor: GOOD 

Jerwood Vanbrugh Theatre, Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, London, 2003; 

David Sulkin, director, photos by Mark Tupper. 

Stage design, mixed media on paper, 23 5 /8” x 16 1 /2”, 

1 production photo. 

Per Olov Enquist: A LYNX’S HOUR 

Theatre Aréna, Bratislava, Slovakia, 2003; Ivan Balaa, director. 

Stage design, collage on paper, 11 3 /4” x 23 5 /8”, 

digital copy of poster design. 

Molière: TARTUFFE / THE BOURGEOIS GENTLEMAN / THE MISER 

Municipal Theatre, Zlín, 1997-99; M. Franková, costume designer; 

Ivan Balaa, director; photos by Jan Regal. 


Giuseppe Verdi: RIGOLETTO 


H. Anýžová, costume designer; Luděk Golat, director. 

Stage model. 

Giuseppe Verdi: RIGOLETTO 


H. Anýžová, costume designer; Luděk Golat, director. 

Poster design, 23 5 /8” x 16 1 /2”, 

3 copies of sketches, 2 production photos. 



M. Franková, costume designer; Ivan Balaa, director; photos by Jan Regal. 


Cesare Zavattini: COME NASCE IL SOGETTO CINEMATOGRAFICO 


M. Franková, costume designer; Ivan Balaa, director; photos by Jan Regal. 


70

Pierre de Marivaux: LE DISPUTE 

Tyl Theatre, Plzeň, 1999; Karel Kříž, director. 

Stage design, pencil, mixed media on paper, 16 1 /2” x 23 5 /8”, 

2 costume designs, mixed media on paper, 11 3 /4” x 8 1 /4”. 

DAVID MAREK 

Josef B. Foerster: THE ARTLESS 

Tyl Theatre, Plzeň, 2001; Michal Dočekal, director. 

2 stage designs, tempera on paper, 16 1 /2” x 11 3 /4” each, 

1 production photo. 

Pierre de Beaumarchais, Giacommo Rossini: THE BARBER OF SEVILLE 

Dlouhá Theatre, Prague, 1996; Hana Burešová, director. 

Stage design, gouache on paper, 17” x 25”. 

Johann W. Goethe: CLAVIGO 

Theatre Spolek Kašpar, Prague, 1994; Jakub Špalek, director. 

Stage design, gouache on paper, 17” x 25”. 

PETR MATÁSEK 

Jan Plachetka: CIRKUS UNIKUM 

Drak Theatre, Hradec Králové, 1978; Josef Krofta, director. 

Design of puppet, pen and chinese ink on paper, 27 5 /8” x 15 3 /4”. 

Jan Plachetka: CIRKUS UNIKUM 


Nadezda, mannequin puppet , carved wood, 31 1 /2” tall. 

Dario Fo: LITTLE PIECES 

Drak Theatre, Hradec Králové, 1987; Jan Borna, director. 

2 stage designs, oil on cardboard, 18 1 /8“ x 19 3 /4“, 18 1 /8“ x 29 1 /4“. 

Hans Christian Andersen: THE LITTLE MERMAID 

Odensee Theatre, 1988; Josef Krofta, director. 

4 production images, wax technique on paper, 9 7 /8“ x 7 7 /8“ each. 

H. Ch. Andersen: RED SHOES 

Theatre Group The Red Shoes, Sogusvuntan Theatre, Iceland, 2003; 

Benedikt Erlingsson, director. 

8 puppet drawings, brush, chinese ink on paper, 11 3 /4” x 8 1 /4”. 

Josef Krofta: DON QUIXOTE 


2 marionette puppet, carved wood, dressed, 19 3 /4” tall. 

Collective work: …WHAT’S THAT? 

Drak Theatre, Hradec Králové, 1995; Jakub Krofta, director. 


Heiner Mueller: HAMLET- MACHINE 

Sarah Kane: PHAEDRA’S LOVE 

71

Werner Schwab: FAUST, MY BOSOM, MY HELMET 

National Theatre, Prague, Project Bouda, 2003; 

Tomáš Svoboda, Petr Tyc, Thomas Zielinski, directors. 

6 production photos, 11 7 /8” x 7 7 /8” each. 

Heiner Mueller: HAMLET- MACHINE 

Sarah Kane: PHAEDRA’S LOVE 

Werner Schwab: FAUST, MY BOSOM, MY HELMET 

National Theatre, Prague, Project Bouda, 2003; 

Tomáš Svoboda, Petr Tyc, Thomas Zielinski, directors. 

Stage model, 39 3 /8” x 19 3 /4” x 19 3 /4”. 

MARTA ROSZKOPFOVÁ 

Henrik Ibsen: PEER GYNT 

Silesian Theatre, Opava, 2002; Václav Klemens, director. 

Stage design, mixed technique on paper, 23 5 /8” x 31 1 /2”. 

William Shakespeare: HAMLET 

Bezruč Theatre, Ostrava, 1999; Jiří Josek, director. 

Stage design, mixed technique on paper, 25 3 /8” x 35 5 /8”. 

Michael Frayn: COPENHAGEN 

Šalda Theatre, Liberec, 2000; Lída Engelová, director. 

Stage design, mixed technique on brown paper, 27” x 37 7 /8”. 

Carlo Goldoni: THE SERVANT OF TWO MASTERS 

Bezruč Theatre, Ostrava, 1999; Jiři Seydler, director. 

4 costume designs, felt pen, collage on yellow paper, 16 1 /2“ x 11 3 /4“ each. 

William Shakespeare: TWELFTH NIGHT 

Theatre Dejvice, Prague, 1999; Miroslav Krobot, director. 

2 costume designs, felt pen, collage on yellow paper, 16 1 /2” x 11 3 /4” each. 

Doman Nowakowski: MICK JAGGER’S MOUTH 

Bezruč Theatre, Ostrava, 2002; Andrzej Celinski, director. 

4 costume designs, felt pen, collage on paper, 17” x 22” each. 

Dario Fo: ACCIDENTAL DEATH OF AN ANARCHIST 

Bezruč Theatre, Ostrava, 1989; Josef Janík, director. 

2 costume designs, felt pen on brown paper 

adjusted on white paper to 26 5 /8” x 17 1 /2”. 

KATEŘINA ŠTEFKOVÁ 

Tankred Dorst (from Miguel de Unamuno): FERNANDO KRAPP WROTE ME A LETTER 

Theatre Labyrint, Prague, 1992; Petr Lébl, director. 

4 costume designs, collage on white paper, 

adjusted on black matboard to 18 7 /8” x 26 3 /4” – two units. 

Anton P. Chekhov: UNCLE VANYA 

Theatre On the Balustrade, Prague, 1999; Petr Lébl, director. 

6 costume designs, pencil and pastel on colored paper, 11 7 /8” x 8 1 /4” each. 

72

Anton P. Chekhov: IVANOV 


6 costume designs, pencil and pastel on colored paper, 11 7 /8” x 8 1 /4” each. 

Anton P. Chekhov: THE SEAGULL 


4 costume designs, charcoal on paper, 11 7 /8” x 8 1 /4” each; 2 copies of costume designs. 



8 costume designs, felt pen on paper, 11 7 /8” x 8 1 /4” each, 1 production photo 



2 realized costumes. 

JAN ŠTĚPÁNEK 

Maxim Gorky: THE SUMMER GUESTS 

Na Palmovce Theatre, Prague, 1999; Petr Kracik, director. 

3 stage designs, mixed media on brown paper, 

2 units 12 1 /4” x 14 3 /4”; 1 unit 12 1 /4” x 16 1 /8”. 

Marius von Mayenburg: FIREFACE 

HaTheatre, Brno, 2001; Jiří Pokorný, director. 

2 stage designs, pen, gouache on paper, 9 5 /8” x 10 5 /8”; 11 1 /8” 19 3 /4”. 

Gabriela Preissová: HOUSEHOLD WOMAN 

Theatre, Uherské Hradiště, 2000; Jan A. Pitínský, director. 

3 stage designs, mixed media on paper, 11 3 /4” x 16 1 /2” each. 

Werner Schwab: PEOPLE ANNIHILATION 

Prague Chamber Theatre, 1999; Dušan D. Pařízek, director. 

2 stage designs, tempera on paper, 17 7 /8” x 24 1 /2” each. 

S. Ansky (Solomon Rappoport): DYBBUK 

Academy of Performing Arts, Prague, 1998; diploma work. 

2 stage designs, mixed technique on brown paper, 13” x 7 3 /4”, 

2 stage studies 6” x 8 1 /4”. 

Zdeněk Fibich: ŠÁRKA 

Tyl Theatre, Plzeň, 2000; Jiří Pokorný, director. 

3 stage designs, pastel on cardboard, 8 1 /8” x 10 1 /4” each. 

PETRA GOLDFLAMOVÁ ŠTĚTINOVÁ 

Josef K. Tyl: THE FOREST MAID, OR JOURNEY TO AMERICA 

Klicpera Theatre, Hradec Králové, 2003; Arnošt Goldflam, director. 

4 costume designs, mixed media on brown paper, 11 3 /4” x 16 1 /2” each. 

Arnošt Goldflam, Giacommo Puccini: LA BOHEME 

Klicpera Theatre, Hradec Králové, 2002; Arnošt Goldflam, director. 

8 costume designs, mixed media on colored paper, 11 3 /4” x 8 1 /4” each. 

73

Ladislav Klíma, Arnošt Goldflam: MATTHEW, THE HONEST 

Dlouhá Theatre, Prague, 2002; Jan Borna, director. 

8 costume designs, mixed technique on paper 

adjusted on colored paper to 11 3 /4” x 8 1 /4” each. 

Jan Borna, Boris Vian, Pierre Henri: CABARET VIAN-CAMI 

Dlouhá Theatre, Prague, 1998; Jan Borna, director. 

6 costume designs, pen and colored crayon on paper, 11 3 /4” x 16 1 /2” each. 

EGON L. TOBIÁŠ 

Jan Čep, Jakub Deml, Jan A. Pitínský: SISTER ANXIETY 

Theatre Dejvice, Prague, 1995; Jan A. Pitínský, director. 

Stage design, mixed technique on beige paper, 15 1 /8” x 24 3 /8”. 

2 stage designs, tempera on paper, 

adjusted to colored paper, 9 7 /8” x 10 1 /2”; 9 7 /8” x 11 1 /4”. 

Jane Bowles: IN THE SUMMER HOUSE 

Theatre On the Balustrade, Prague, 2001; Jiří Ornest, director. 

4 stage designs, acrylic on paper, 3 units 10 1 /8” x 11 1 /2” each; 1 unit 10 1 /8” x 10 1 /8”. 

Egon L. Tobiáš: THE FOREIGNER 

Drama Studio Ústí nad Labem, 1994; Egon L. Tobiáš, director. 

Leporello; 9 pages; a hand painted leaflet for the play, 

mixed technique on paper, 12 1 /2” x 75”. 

FRANTIŠEK TRÖSTER 


National Theatre, Prague, 1936; Jiří Frejka, director. 

Stage design, pen on beige cardboard, 20 7 /8” x 28 3 /8”. 

Molière: DON JUAN 

National Theatre, Prague, 1957; Jaromír Pleskot, director. 

Stage design, pastel on beige cardboard, 31 1 /2” x 38 3 /4”. 

William Shakespeare: THE WINTER’S TALE 

National Theatre Prague, 1965; Jaromír Pleskot, director. 

3 stage designs, white pastel on black paper, 12 1 /4” x 17 3 /4” each. 

William Shakespeare: ROMEO AND JULIET 


Stage design, pencil, tempera on cardboard, 23 1 /8” x 15”. 


The Provincial Theatre in Brno, 1940; Karel Jernek, director. 

Stage design, brush, chinese ink on paper, 24 7 /8” x 18”. 

Aleksandr S. Griboyedov: WOE FROM WIT 

Municipal Theatre Vinohrady, Prague, 1947; Jiří Frejka, director. 

Stage design, pen, chinese ink, watercolor on paper, 

matted on beige cardboard, 21 3 /4” x 26 3 /8”. 

74

Alban Berg: WOZZECK 

National Theatre, Prague, 1959; Ferdinand Pujman, director. 

2 stage designs, white pastel on black paper, 17 3 /4” x 17 3 /4”; 12 3 /8” x 12 3 /8”. 

Pavel Bořkovec: THE PIED PIPER 

National Theatre, Prague, 1942; Václav Kašlík, director. 

2 stage designs, mixed media on black paper, 17 3 /4” x 17 3 /4”; 12 3 /8” x 12 3 /8”. 

Jean Giradoux: THE MADWOMAN FROM CHAILLOT 

Municipal Theatre Vinohrady, Prague, 1948; Jiří Frejka, director. 

2 stage designs, color pastel on black paper, 12 3 /8” x 17 3 /4” each. 

Andre Salacrou: NIGHTS OF ANGER 

National Theatre, Prague, 1947; František Salzer, director. 

2 stage designs, color pastel on black paper, 12 3 /8” x 17 3 /4” each. 

William Shakespeare: JULIUS CAESAR 


8 photos; the reconstruction of Tröster’s scenography by students 

of Theatre Faculty of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague. 

JANA ZBOŘILOVÁ 

Pierre de Marivaux: LE DISPUTE 

F. X. Šalda Theatre, Liberec, 2002; Vladimír Kelbl, director. 

Stage design, collage on paper, 19” x 25 1 /4”, 

3 costume designs, mixed media, adjusted as a unit to 20 1 /2” x 27 1 /2”. 

Molière: MISANTHROPE 

Vinohrady Theatre, Prague, 1997; Zdeněk Kaloč, director. 

Stage design, collage on paper, 21 1 /8” x 33 1 /8”. 

Daniela Fischerová: THE FIREBIRD 

National Theatre (Theatre of the Estates), Prague, 2000; Zbyněk Srba, director. 

4 costume designs, mixed media, adjusted as a unit to 23 5 /8” x 27 1 /2”. 

Anton P. Chekhov: UNCLE VANYA 

National Theatre, Brno, 1996; Zdeněk Kaloč, director. 

Stage design, collage on black paper, 27 1 /2” x 39 3 /8”. 

Eva Tálská: HORSE AND DEATH WITH ME 

Theatre on a String, Brno, 1999; Eva Tálská, director. 


Václav Havel: THE BEGGAR’S OPERA 

Drama Club Theatre, Prague, 1990; Jiří Menzel, director. 

4 costume designs, mixed media on paper, 16 1 /2” x 11 7 /8”. 

IVO ŽÍDEK 

Molière: DON JUAN 

Theatre On the Balustrade, Prague, 1989; Jan Grossman, director. 

Stage design, pen, gouache, collage on paper, 16 1 /2” x 23 1 /2”. 

75

Václav Havel: LARGO DESOLATO 


Stage design, pen, gouache, collage on paper, 17 3 /4” x 24 5 /8”. 

Václav Havel: TEMPTATION 


Stage design, pen, gouache on paper, 17 3 /4” x 24 5 /8”. 

SYLVA ZIMULA HANÁKOVÁ 


Art Agency Echo, Theatre Globe, Prague, 2001; 

Milan David, set designer; Vladimír Morávek, director. 

4 realized costumes (Richard III, Queen Elizabeth, Lady Ann, Duchess from York). 

VIKTOR KRONBAUER 

photographer 


Art Agency Echo, Theatre Globe, Prague, 2001; 

Sylva Zimula Hanáková, costume designer; 

Milan David, set designer; Vladimír Morávek, director. 

6 black and white production photos, 19 3 /4” 23 5 /8” each. 

... and some other contemporary productions ... 

Egon Tobiáš, Martin Dohnal, Jan Nebeský: JE SUIS 

Theatre On the Balustrade, Prague, 2001; 

Jana Preková, set and costume designer; Jan Nebeský, director. 

2 production photos by Bohdan Holomíček. 

William Shakespeare: ROMEO AND JULIET 

National Theatre (Theatre of the Estates), Prague, 2003; 

Jan M. Chocholoušek, set designer; Zuzana Krejzková, costume designer; 

Vladimír Morávek, director. 

2 production photos by Viktor Kronbauer. 

Various authors: CABARET UNDINE 

Theatre in Dlouhá Street, Prague, 2000; 

Milan David, set designer; Zuzana Krejzková, costume designer; 

Vladimír Morávek, director. 

2 production photos by Martin Špelda. 

76

Acknowledgements 

The curators thank the following for their contributions to the preparation 

and tour of the exhibition. 

Ondřej Černý, Director, Theatre Institute, Prague 

John Snyder, Dean and Director, The Ohio State University at Lima 

Violet I. Meek, former Dean and Director, The Ohio State University at Lima 

Karen Bell, Dean, College of the Arts, The Ohio State University 

Lesley Ferris, Chair, Department of Theatre, The Ohio State University 

Sr. Kathleen Coughlin, CCVI, Vice President for Institutional Advancement, 

The University of the Incarnate Word 

Wayne P. Lawson, Executive Director, Ohio Arts Council, Columbus, Ohio 

Mary Gray, Riffe Gallery Coordinator, Ohio Arts Council, Columbus, Ohio 

Olga Plchová, Project Assistant, Theatre Institute, Prague 

Marie Kmochová, Exhibit Preparator, Theatre Institute, Prague 

Michaela Chlíbcová, Exhibit Preparator, Theatre Institute, Prague 

Athalie L. Brandesky, Exhibit Preparator, The Ohio State University at Lima 

Bradley Steinmetz, Exhibit Preparator, The Ohio State University at Lima 

Beverly Bletstein, Project Assistant Coordinator, The Ohio State University at Lima 

Debbie Horvath, Project Assistant, The Ohio State University at Lima 

The Russell Hill Rogers Fund for the Arts 

The Robert L. B. Tobin Foundation for Theatre Arts 

78

TheMcNay 

THE MARION KOOGLER MCNAY ART MUSEUM 

79

METAPHOR AND IRONY 2 

Organizational Staff 

Theatre Institute, Prague and The Ohio State University at Lima 

Helena Albertová and Joe Brandesky, Co-Curators 

Exhibition Site Coordinators 

The Ohio State University 

Nena Couch, Curator, The Lawrence and Lee Theatre Research Institute 

Prudence Gill, Hopkins Hall Gallery Director 

Gayle Strege, Curator, Historic Costume and Textiles Collection 

Bowling Green State University 

Jacqueline S. Nathan, Fine Arts Center Gallery Director 

University of Toledo 

Sue Ott Rowlands, Chair, Department of Theatre and Film 

McNay Museum of Art 

Jody Blake, Curator, Tobin Theatre Collection 

University of the Incarnate Word 

Kathy Vargas, Director, Semmes Gallery, Chair, Department of Art 

Margaret Mitchell, Associate Professor, Department of Theatre 

The Ohio State University at Lima 

Joe Brandesky, Professor and Coordinator, Department of Theatre 

Editorial Staff 

Joseph Brandesky, Editor 

Marie Zdeňková, Delbert Unruh, Joe Brandesky, Authors 

Barbara Day, Czech to English Translator 

Alexander Paul, Production Photo of “Julius Caesar, 1936” from the Collection of Theatre 

Department of National Museum in Prague, No. H-6-E 250 484 

Bohdan Holomíček, Viktor Kronbauer, Jan Regal, 

Martin Špelda, Mark Tupper, Production Photos 

Viktor Kronbauer, Martin Poš, Photo Reproductions 

Milada Pravdová, Managing Editor 

Karel Čapek, Designer 

Tiskárna FLORA, Printing 

Published by Theatre Institute in Prague. 

Co-publisher: Ohio State University at Lima. 

© Marie Zdeňková, Delbert Unruh © Translation Barbara Day 

© Theatre Institute, Prague, 2004 (Publication No. 527) 

ISBN 80-7008-167-8 

80

METAPHOR AND IRONY 2 - Divadlo.cz

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