High Points of Theatre in the First Czechoslovak Republic

High Points of Theatre in the First Czechoslovak Republic JARKA M. BURIAN In the 1960s Czech theatre achieved international recognition through the work of such major artists as directors Otomar Krejca and Alfred Radok, scenographer Josef Svoboda, and playwright Vaclav Havel, to name only those in the vanguard of an extensive artistic movement. Often ignored, however, was the antecedent of that creative surge in the 1960s, the rich period of Czech theatre that dated back to the nineteenth century and reached a first major crest in the 1920S and 1930S as if in response to the creation of the First Republic of Czechoslovakia after World War I. Theatre in the First Republic had great vitality and great variety: the vitality due in large part to the enormous release of spirit accompanying the creation of an independent republic after several centuries of alien citizenship within the Hapsburg Empire; and the variety to Czechoslovakia's central location between east and west, which facilitated its access to the theatrical avant-garde of France, Germany, and the Soviet Union, and to such vital stimuli as American jazz and film. Particularly since the mid-nineteenth century, the Czechs' efforts to sustain their cultural identity went hand in hand with a desire to become worthy of world citizenship by keeping abreast ofsignificant culture abroad. (Landlocked among powerful neighbors and restricted by a language virtually unknown beyond their borders, the Czechs became traditionally conditioned to the need of acquiring at least two vocations and two languages.) In theatre this tendency toward self-improvement by learning from others produced an exceptional potential for creativity. Probably nowhere else in Europe was there the combination of a firmly rooted repertory theatre system and theatre artists who were not only talented but as a whole free of feelings of national or cultural superiority or of commitment to native theatre traditions or conventions. They were eager and receptive. Moreover, they had been spared most of the ghastly Theatre in the First Czechoslovak Republic 99 wounds suffered by their grander neighbors in the great war, and they were exhilarated by the prospects of a brave new world of national independence and unfettered participation in the artistic turbulence that was revivifying European culture. The contribution of Czech theatre to the great flowering of adventurous theatre of the 1920S may be thought of in terms of several pairs of contrasting tendencies. Its notable achievements included the work of both large, institutionalized theatres and small, experimental studios operating on minimal or nonexistent budgets. The plays produced ranged from standard classics to original plays to works that were less plays than innovative scenarios drawn from fiction, poetry, and journalistic data. Moreover, the plays and the methods of producing them also embodied virtually all current artistic modes with the most significant productions having one centrifugal tendency in common: they sought to flee the dead center of illusionistic realism. Instead, expressionism, constructivism, dada, surrealism, theatricalism, and the special Czech variation of several ofthese isms - poetismI - marked much of the outstanding work of this era, as did the esprit of such paratheatre forms as the circus and the variete. Two other general observations may be made about the theatre of the 1920S and 1930S before proceeding to specifics. In the first place, although the name of Karel Capek (1890-1938) towers above all others if we consider the period with regard to dramatic literature, the theatre, as theatre, was dominated by its directors, first, and its scenographers and actors, second. Playwrights, with the striking exception of Capek, and perhaps Frantisek Langer (1888-1965), did not measure up to their fellow theatre artists. In the second place, if one is to speak of an overall evolutionary tendency or direction in theatre during the twenty years ofthe First Republic, one must tum for guidance to the events dominating life outside the theatre during that period: namely, the sometimes meandering, sometimes rushing stream that led from the first heady days ofindependence to increasing stability and prosperity, only to be followed by economic crisis and the growing threat of fascism and militarism culminating in the ignominious autumn of 1938 and the subsequently inevitable extinction of independence less than six months later. Profoundly influenced by...