Pavel Kohout: The Barometer of Czechoslovakia's Theatre

Pavel Kohout: The Barometer of Czechoslovakia's Theatre MARKETA GOETZ STANKIEWICZ INTERVIEWER. What is more important for your life, politics or the theatre ? KOHOUT. Politics, because I defend the theatre with politics. INTERVIEWER. What do you need more for living, love or the theatre? KOHOUT. Love. Because I write for the theatre out of love. Pavel Kohout, from a fictitious interview. What does one write to fill these 15,000 empty seats; how does one write to appeal to such a huge audience, composed of kings and philosophers, shepherds and fish-merchants? Pavel Kohout musing in the Amphitheatre of Epidauros. "PAVEL KOHOUT was given to our theatre so that there would not be any peace and quiet."} With these words a well-known Czech critic begins an essay on Kohout in which he commiserates with an imaginary scholar writing a book on contemporary Czechoslovak theatre. Faced with this enfant terrible of the Czech stage who has evoked more praise and more abuse than any other contemporary Czechoslovak writer, the hapless imaginary scholar would apparently feel himself "sliding down a curving ramp"2 which permitted neither foothold nor sense of direction. Appreciative of this unsolicited a priori description of the problematic nature of the task at hand, I shall try merely to suggest some areas of interest and value in Kohout's colourful body of work. To date, Pavel Kohout (born in 1928) is the author of two vol251 252 MARKETA GOETZ STANKIEWICZ umes of poetry, eighteen plays and adaptations for the stage, ten filmscripts and two prose works in addition to numerous essays and commentaries-an impressive output for a man who is still in his forties. The body of criticism which has grown up around Kohout's work covers the whole spectrum from enthusiastic praise to barbed attacks. Well-disposed critics speak about his sharp sense for topicality, and his ability to express whatever is in the air but has not yet been formulated, a mood that "is already here yet is still missing."3 Hostile critics, on the other hand, see Kohout merely as wanting to please at any cost, having a nose for what will sell and writing just for the box office. Be that as it may, from the vantage point of the present moment, Kohout is an exciting writer. The very ease and nonchalance with which he manages to turn out one work after another-extremely varied in nature, each seeming to bear the imprint of a different type of creative genius-make his productions a cornucopia of surprises. Kohout has changed course several times. A fervent poet of Stalinist youth in the early fifties, he initiated his theatrical career in 1952, when he was barely twenty-four, with his first crude but very successful dramatic effort, The Good Song. Ever since that date, Pavel Kohout has placed himself in the focal centre of Czechoslovak literary life, reflecting its vicissitudes, projecting its hopes and agonies. Such a Love had its premiere at the Realistic Theatre in Prague in October 1957. It was an immediate success. In Czechoslovakia alone, it became the most frequently performed play-770 performances within four years of its appearance. For over two years it also held the same position in East Germany, where it ran for 574 performances in thirty theatres. Farther afield, it was widely performed in the Soviet Union, throughout Eastern Europe, but also in the rest of Europe from Finland to Greece; even in Turkey, Israel and South America.4 This tremendous success is all the more surprising if we remind ourselves of the almost banal theme of the play: a two men/one woman situation that ends in the suicide of the girl. The main reason for the impact of this well-worn story was that Kohout had told it in a special form. Not that this form was particularly new; among others Brecht had used it and Pirandello before him. But Kohout seems to have found a particularly happy way of building the play around a courtroom scene and gradually illuminating the motivations of the characters involved. A figure identified only as "The Man in a Legal Robe" acts as a sort of judge-confessor throughout...