Archive: Culture | Theatre Theatre
Czech-born author and publisher Marketa Goetz Stankiewicz
My guest today is Marketa Goetz Stankiewicz, a professor emerita at the
University of British Columbia. Born in 1927 in the Czech town of Liberec,
Marketa left Czechoslovakia following the communist putsch in 1948. She
established herself in Canada as a professor of comparative literature,
author and essayist, focusing in particular on publishing samizdat
literature, and also writing about the work of Czech playwrights such as
Pavel Kohout, Josef Topol, Ivan Klíma, and her friend the former president
Václav Havel. More
My Prague – Radim Špaček
Radim Špaček is perhaps best known as the director of the multi-award
winning film Pouta, or Walking Too Fast. A former child actor, Radim also
makes documentaries and co-organizes Prague’s Bollywood Film Festival. He
was actually born on the other side of the country, in Ostrava, but came to
the capital as a child.
More
Semafor Theatre – 53 years and inventive as ever
The Semafor theatre, one of the oldest continuous traditions of modern
Czech entertainment, is still putting out new performances after 53 years
of existence. The latest concoction of multi-genre comedy theatre is ‘Kam
se poděla Valerie?’, or ‘Where Did Valerie Go?’, which has four
pre-premieres this week and next, before the real premiere in September. More
Jitka Sloupová and the return of political theatre to the Czech stage
For some years after the fall of communism, Czech audiences avoided any
kind of theatre that might have been perceived as political. After decades
of putting up with politics at every level of life, they had simply had
enough. But today political drama is back with a vengeance. With a mixture
of masochism and schadenfreude, Czech audiences are relishing new plays and
productions that comment on contemporary political life with biting satire.
David Vaughan reports. More
Czech performers take part in prestigious theater festival in New York
This January, a number of theater and dance troupes from the Czech Republic
participated in an annual international APAP performing arts festival in
New York City. The Czech Centre in New York hosted all of the Czech
performances this year, for the second year in a row, at their Bohemian
Hall space in Manhattan. In this week’s Arts, we spoke to the director
of
the Czech Centre in New York, Pavla Niklová, about organizing the
performances for APAP, how some of the pieces resonated with a New York
audience, and what Czech theater companies can bring to the American
theatre capital. Ms Niklová first described what the APAP festival
entails. More
Radka Denemarková: Who’s Afraid of Ivana Trump?
If Virginia Woolf, Sylvia Plath and Ivana Trump were locked up together in
one room, what would happen? In the world of theatre, anything is possible,
and in Radka Denemarková’s “Spací vady“ (Sleeping Disorders) this
is exactly what happens. David Vaughan talks to the author about her
remarkable play. More
Prolific actress Jiřina Jirásková dies aged 81
On Monday afternoon, a popular theater, television and film actress
Jiřina Jirásková passed away in her Prague home at the age 81 after a
prolonged illness. Her acting career spans over sixty years and hundreds of
roles. More
Prague Playhouse stages new production of Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol”
The Prague Playhouse, a successful English-language theatre company based
in the Czech capital since 2003, premieres its new production of Charles
Dickens’ timeless tale A Christmas Carol on Friday at Divadlo Inspirace. More
Ricky Gervais on world’s first stage version of cult TV series The Office
The BBC comedy series The Office has been sold to more than 80 countries
around the world, and local versions have been made in the United States,
France, Germany, Chile, Israel and Sweden. But there’s never been a stage
version – until now that is. Last weekend Prague’s Municipal Theatre
saw the première of Kancl, the world’s first ever stage adaptation of
the cult series. Rob Cameron spoke to Office star and co-creator Ricky
Gervais, and asked him for his reaction. More
The home:scape project - looking for a home
Three theatre groups from Prague, Budapest and London joined forces last
year to create a multidisciplinary project called home:scape. Combining
interviews, blog entries and a multimedia theatre performance the creators
looked at the theme of home, trying to find out what defines that ambiguous
concept for different people – those who had lived in one place their
whole lives, and those who are in constant flux. I asked Jonathan Kennedy,
the executive director of one of the theatre troupes - Tara Arts in London
–how the idea for the project came about: More
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