It may sound banal, but in the Drama Theatre of the National Theatre in Brno we cultivate drama. Drama, which for us is unthinkable without working with words – with words understood not as literature, but as an impulse for acting. That’s not a given.
Drama today seems to be voluntarily getting rid of what it can be strongest and, in fact, unique in: acting in a dramatic situation – in other words, being a theatre of actors and authors. We are looking for contemporary forms of this approach.
The attempts at great drama are subordinated to the circle of directors approached. We invite directors who still honour drama as an interpretive theatre, whose inventiveness and personality have their starting point in the dramatic text and enhance the actors’ performance. With such creators, we have agreed that doing large ensemble theatre today still makes sense.
Since I am the head of the drama as a dramaturge, I felt it necessary to bring a main director with me. That was Štěpán Pácl, a generationally related director with whom I have the best personal experience of the director-dramaturg tandem and who has been searching for the possibilities of the word in space with all his work, often focused on Czech drama.
I try to present only titles that I am convinced of, whose quality I guarantee dramaturgically.
That’s the only way I can convince the actors and the actors can convince the audience. And it is in our audiences that I believe – that they will demand that their drama not only entertain them, but also present them with disturbing images of the world.
Under the artistic direction of dramaturge Milan Šotek, the Drama Ensemble of the National Theatre Brno focuses on contemporary staging of the canon of Czech drama and initiates the creation of original Czech plays by prominent contemporary authors (e.g. Jaroslav Rudiš, Marek Šindelka, Petr Stančík). The productions of plays by Karel Čapek (Mother), Milan Kundera (The Owners of the Keys) and Václav Havel (The Increased Difficulty of Concentration) are regularly invited to prestigious theatres around the world (including the Israeli National Theatre Habima, the New National Theatre Tokyo, the Sibiu Theatre Festival). The repertoire is suitably complemented by modern productions of world classics (Beckett: Waiting for Godot, Corneille: Liar, Molière: Amphitryon…) and contemporary drama (Czech premieres of plays by Tom Stoppard, Lucy Kirkwood, Martin McDonagh, Tracy Letts and Mario von Mayenburg) directed by top Czech and Slovak authors. Central European dramaturgy (Ödön von Horváth, Ferenc Molnár, Arthur Schnitzler and Johann Nepomuk Nestroy) is also a significant dramaturgical line. The performances of the actors of the Drama Ensemble of the National Theatre Brno are regularly awarded at the most important theatre awards in the Czech Republic (the Thalia Awards for Tereza Groszmannová and Viktor Kuzník).