Gesamtkunstwerk

Modern Czech Theatre: Reflector and Conscience of a Nation by Jarka M. Burian, 2000: University of Iowa Press.

Nothing better underscores the tangled web of theater and politics in modern Czech history than the fact that a playwright, Václav Havel, led Czechoslovakia out of communism in 1989. Yet that is only one of a dozen such strange intersections that marked the Velvet Revolution. Simply put, theater was at the heart of the revolution, and the revolution itself was theater. If drama students, actors, directors, and playwrights played a decisive role in bringing down the regime, it was because theater had long been a hotbed of political ferment. Theatrical artists were frequently and perhaps not incidentally at the forefront among dissenting intellectuals. They understood something about the regime under which they lived better than most--that what communism really demanded of individuals was not so much active faith in the system as the appearance of faith. This was especially true after 1968 and the crushing of the Prague Spring reform movement, when all but a very few lost their last illusions about communism in the Soviet sphere. In the absence of real faith in the system, the regime asked only that people act as if they believed in it.

In "The Power of the Powerless," his most important essay as a dissident, Havel identified this theatrical element, this insistence on acting, as the key to the regime's stability. His strategy of resistance was therefore antitheater: to stop acting, to stop playing the game, to stop the mindless repetition of slogans and participation in rituals in which no one believed. This meant "living in truth," stepping out of the theatrical game to which social and political life had been subordinated and into a real public sphere.

It was in part this sensitivity to the theatrical quality of life under communism, along with the corresponding attentiveness to issues of power, personal integrity and compromise, and public and private life that made Czech theater, despite so many obstacles, so very good for much of the twentieth century. In his new book Jarka M. Burian argues that Czech theater deserves to be studied both for its artistic achievements and for the exceptional insight it provides into the relations between stage and society, theater and politics. Modern Czech Theatre makes a good case for these claims and will undoubtedly be a useful introduction to the subject for years to come.

Although there have been some book-length studies in English of major figures in Czech theater--of the playwright Karel Capek, for example, and of the scenographer Josef Svoboda (a study also written by Burian), the only general work until now was Paul Trensky's Czech Drama Since World War II (1978). While Trensky's book covers three important decades, Burian's is the only comprehensive survey of the theater throughout the century. This approach allows him to explore long-term continuities in Czech theater that might otherwise go unnoticed.

Burian's central argument is that under the conditions of clearly defined political struggle, conditions which for better or worse (mainly for worse) prevailed in the Czech-speaking parts of Europe after the eighteenth century, Czech theater was endowed with an enviable sense of purpose that allowed a uniquely resonant theater culture to emerge. From the start, the raison d'être of Czech theater was politics, specifically national politics. It was born in resistance to the centuries-old Habsburg domination of the Czech lands and was one of the principal vehicles for the creation of Czech national consciousness. Indeed, the massive National Theater on the banks of the Vltava River in Prague is as much a monument to the arts as it is to the bitter Czech-German conflict of the late nineteenth century that fueled its construction. Burian likewise attributes the vitality of Czech theater in the 1920s and 1930s to the enormous outpouring of energy after the achievement of national independence in 1918. Even during the dark years of Nazi domination during World War II, theater...