METAPHOR AND IRONY 2 - Divadlo.cz

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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