The Veil of Jinotaj: Nasková's Loviisa of Niskavuori and National Resistance at Prague's Provisional Theatre during the Protectorate

The Veil of Jinotaj: Naskova's Loviisa of Niskavuori and National Resistance at Prague's Provisional Theatre during the Protectorate1 HANA PECHAROYA Every censor paralyzed expression during the occupation. But {as an aclor J it was nor necessQly to pick and choose tile words, to add nuance to them, or to twist, color, or highlight their meaning. The bright sunshine of truth would disappear in a veil of jinotaj. - Naskova 2982 The subject of the present article is the reception of two plays by the Finnish playwright Hella Wuolijoki,' Niskavuorennaise, (The Women ofNiskavuori) and its sequel, Niskavuoren leipii (The Bread of Niskavuori), which were among many works translated and performed in the Bohemian and Moravian Protectorate under fascist censorship.- The first play was produced on the secondary stage of the National Theatre in Prague just before the occupation, and the sequel during the Protectorate regime. The evidence suggests that despite German censorship and despite the previous appearance of Wuolijoki's The Women ofNiskavuori in Nazi Germany, the sequel expressed a covert form of national resistance to the occupation.S While such adaptations played a relatively minor role in the repertory as a whole, they worked in a distinctive way to maintain a recognition of Czech national identity and so perfonned an important, if modest, kind of political subversion. Although scholarship on resistance in the theatre in Europe during the Nazi period is only in its beginning stages, the unique story of the Czech "national" theatre in the Protectorate suggests some of the subtler forms of theatrical resistance that took place in occupied Europe during the war.6 TH E PRA GUE NA TI ONAL THEATRE Before the war, theatre had played an important role in the movement for Model'll Drama, 45:4 (Winter 2002) 593 594 HANA PECHAROVA Czech independence. The long struggle that led to the establishment of the National Theatre (1862-1883) was seen by Czech partisans as representing the fight for self-determination against German political and cultural domination , and - as happened elsewhere in Europe - the National Thcatre became a cultural institution that embodied national freedom itself. Thus the goals of the theatre were first political and only later aesthetic and pedagogical (see Cerny "Idea").' These goals were given expression in the prominent inscription above the curtain at the National Theatre, which still displays the words "Narod sobifi" ("The Nation for Itself!"). Two well-established institutions comprised Prague's National Theatre before the Protectorate. Both were subsidized through a combination of government funds and private means, and both enjoyed relative artistic freedom. The older and smaller stage, built in 1783 and called the Estates Theatre, had been used since 1920 as the venue for Czech spoken drama. The main building , an impressive edifice that still .dominates Prague's skyline, opened in 1881 as the National Theatre proper" These institutions changed significantly with the establishment of the second Czech-Slovak Republic shortly after the Munich Agreement on 30 September 1938. Under German influence, the authorities delegated the responsibility for theatres 10 the Ministry of Education and National Enlightenment, which promptly reduced the government subsidy. The administration decreed that the newer building be used mostly for opera and ballet. The status of the Prague National Theatre as an established cultural institution was sharply diminished when the Ministry installed a German-speaking company in the Estates Theatre and the Czech ensemble was shunted to a stage that had been used for popular entertainment, the Variele v Karlin at the periphery of Prague. The temporary nature of this institution was reflected in its new name, the Prozatfmni divadlo (Provisional Theatre), and it functioned as the secondary stage of the National Theatre" This move had particular significance in light of the long struggle for Czech drama to achieve a prominent place vis-a.-vis the older tradition of German theatre in Prague. Thus in one of its first decisions the administration reversed decades of progress in the institutionalization of Czech culture, beginning a process that probably would have led to the eventual elimination of the Czech national theatre. Despite the 1939 agreement between Adolf Hitler and President Emil Hacha allowing for Czech "cultural autonomy," the Protectorate institutionalized a German-influenced censorship...