METAPHOR AND IRONY 2 - Divadlo.cz

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.
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