When we put an essay “From symposium to theatre” by prof. Július Gajdoš (1951) on the first place from all the articles printed in Disk 29, we have good reasons for it. This issue is focused on drama and acting and Gajdoš’s article represents their two poles. It starts with the report about a symposium dedicated to Grotowski’s heritage: the report refers to a pole of theatre efforts that strive for a reform of theatre and acting: for a reform that wants to dispose theatre of its as‑if inborn falsehood in the name of authenticity but it very often ends outside the theatre premises on the edge of psychotherapy or behind it and with such a relation of a person and the world that was cultivated by religions. A report about two performances in London that is included in Gajdoš’s essay refers to the opposite pole: to theatre that develops the best professional traditions of this art connected with entertainment. Naturally, it is entertainment with a certain standard: we speak about entertainment that is not a mere distraction which leads to concentrated experiencing the existence in the world and to something that is or may be linked with it; to experience a daily rush leads us from. Gajdoš’s essay confirms the fact that it is worth to pay attention to any of these (alternative or traditional) approaches only if we deal with something that real art of acting is able to enrich us in a specific case.

Western theatre formed itself in a cultural framework when the encounter of the original mimic element with a written (and prescribed) text had the essential meaning. Prof. Jaroslav Vostrý (1931) asks a logical question in his essay: “Mimos and Logos: Author’s Text and Actor’s Interpretation”: Was not or is not something that forms the essence of mime and miming – i.e. unleashing of the kinetic activity and physical creativity connected with the ability of a change – present in the origins of a written drama? Considering so‑called dramatic acting, is it then an interpretation of a text in the sense of art of reading it as an entire being? Does an actor’s whole body become a voice that is able to read a written text on one’s behalf and for others? And read it in a specific way that what we hear is something more than what we read? Such an interpretation may represent what an actor has to know – both as attore (unlike commediante) or actor (unlike player); i.e. what a dramatic actor has to know unlike a comedian, entertainer or mime – although s/he him/herself should be a mime for this purpose. This makes a dramatic actor an interpreter and a person who inspires artificial and artistic literary culture from the very beginning. Modern age added the typical in one’s own way to the art of reading before it left actresses and actors at the mercy of an agent for whom the in one’s own way represents a special duty and who often tries to replace the author of the written text – but sometimes an actor as an understanding being: i.e. to a director.

In the last issue, we published the first part of the essay by Zuzana Sílová (1960) where the author asks a question why a comedian could become a successful representative of modern drama in the certain moment of theatre development and if this situation did or has not happened in Czech theatre. While the author dealt with the development of Czech comedy acting from Václav Svoboda (i.e. from the 1790’s) to Bohuš Zakopal (who end his career as an actor in 1930) in the first part, she deals with the heirs of Jindřich Mošna (1837–1911) in the second part: according to Jindřich Vodák, this is the name for actors who deal mostly with portraying a little person on the way from showing comic types to modern individual character. In the case of a comedian who was exceptionally talented in motion and who was also a star of the 1920’s – Ludvík Veverka (1892–1947), his acting was about gleaning in the following years – probably because of his progressing illness – thus his development to great comedy characters remained unfinished. Zdenka Baldová (1885–1958) represented a specific form of female clownery but it could not be thoroughly exploited. On the contrary, the career of František Smolík (1891‑1972) is exemplary: this is the way how a talent for comedy develops from detested roles of lovers and through a comic type of a ‘pedant’ to a peculiar Quixote‑like variations in the characters that cross the border between oddness of professors and heroism in certain moments.

When Jaroslav Vostrý speaks about the tradition of a mime and miming in the quoted essay, the article “‘Liberated Acting’: Miroslav Horníček and Miloš Kopecký (not only) in Karlín Theatre” by Mgr. Pavel Bár (1983) can serve as an illustration of changes and specific demonstrations of this tradition in Czech theatre of the second half of the 20^th century. The basis of the analysis is a performance of both actors‑mimes in the play Tvrďák (A Bowler Hat); its text represented a mere script of the performance. Pavel Bár analyses their cooperation from the point of view that a clown duo Voskovec & Werich and their pre‑war Liberated Theatre provided them with as well as the context of beginnings of both actors in a generation theatre called Větrník/A Pinwheel; and naturally in the context of Horníček’s experience with the partnership with Jan Werich: Werich had chosen Horníček from the middle of the 1950’s to be his partner in a clown duo which was a part of the stagings of the plays by V&W in the ABC Theatre (where Kopecký played as well). The staging of Kopecký and Horníček that was supposed to link to Tvrďák was not successful and the partners fell out (and also Tvrďák finished after 170 performances). However, the collaboration of both mimes in the only successful staging represented an exceptional attempt to apply ‘liberated acting’ in the time when similar attempts were not desired and it has an essential importance not only for developing their own specific talents. While Miloš Kopecký asserted in great comedy and drama roles at the Vinohrady Theatre, Miroslav Horníček continued to be the best in the discipline he could assert as an author, i.e. to be a word and literary mime.

Formation of theatre and acting by written texts and in confrontation with these texts on the one hand and influence of actors and actresses and acting for portraying dramatic characters by words on the other hand: both facts in their mutual connections represent an object of acting dramaturgy (theoretical and practical). J. K. Tyl’s actor’s dramaturgy concerning mainly female characters and opportunities for their representatives represents an essentially important chapter in the development of Czech theatre. The original thing that distinguished Tyl from his contemporary models was derived from the position of a female element and women had with Tyl not only during his revival activity but in his theatre as well. MgA. Lenka Chválová (1979) describes the cooperation with Magdaléna Forchheimová‑Skalná and Magdaléna Hynková in the first part of her essay “Women in Josef Kajetán Tyl’s theatre”. The analysis of key characters in plays Tyl wrote for them and casted them in takes place in the connection with characteristics of an acting and human type of both actresses. It refers not only to something both actresses helped Tyl discover in his theme but also something more general that a complicated relation between a written role and an actor’s character is determined by especially in the case when a playwright writes for a specific actor or actress. Revelation of the inner topic of both actresses is linked with discovering discrepancies with Tyl; discrepancies inside the ‘character’ itself but also in the relation of human qualities of an actress and an entrusted role: both create a plastic shape of a character in an essential way.

If we write about the position of women and femininity in J. K. Tyl’s plays, we cannot ignore a place that was reserved for them in this season by the dramaturgy of the National Theatre in Prague. We have in mind the stagings of two plays that have only female cast (Daria Ullrichová is the dramaturgist of both plays): they allow to have a look into artistic possibilities of contemporary female ensemble in the National Theatre as well as a comparison of plays by two contemporary playwrights (Czech and Israeli) staged in various spaces. The play Mikve (Mikvah) by Hadar Galron was staged by the director of drama Michal Dočekal in the Estates Theatre) and the play Pláč (Crying) by Lenka Lagronová (printed in Disk 25) is directed by Jan Kačer in the Kolowrat Theatre. MgA. Tereza Marečková (1980) made an analysis of both stagings and she published her study (under her maiden name Dlasková) in Disk 14; it dealt with dramatic work of the mentioned Czech playwright: she enters (at least the smallest) stage of the National Theatre for the first time. An analysis of the staging of the recent play by Lenka Lagronová Křídlo (Grand Piano) (printed in Disk 28) that had its premiere in Uherské Hradiště and the director Radovan Lipus also creates the core of a long report about the activities of the Slovácké divadlo / Slovácko[1] Theatre: Mgr. Jana Cindlerová (1979) called this report “Slovácko Theatre Phenome­non” (and it is an apt name because Slovácké divadlo in Uherské Hradiště represents an important phenomenon on the map of the contemporary Czech Republic) and publishes it in Disk.

MgA. Štěpán Pácl (1982) contributed in the last issue with an analysis of some significant stagings from the contemporary repertoire of theatres in Paris. The title of his essay “Acting As Art” foreshadows what caught his attention the most. He had in mind ensemble acting that is inseparable from an intensive collaboration with a director on a staging that is a common work of all participants. Stagings in Berlin have the same character Pácl writes about in the article called “Do Stay But Just One Moment Longer, Then” where long‑term connections of some actors and actresses with directors of Deutsches Theater in Berlin were applied with success. These directors are Michael Thalheimer (1965), Christian Petzold (1960) and Jürgen Gosch (1943–2009); we have already published texts about them. We mentioned the second one in the connection with his author films which provided us with material for contemplation about a contemporary form of dramatic acting (see Disk 25). Concerning the third director, we had to analyze his exceptional stagings of Chekhov from last year (see Disk 27); when we take them into consideration – although we must consider his work to be finished – we can claim that he belongs to the author of the most significant shift of contemporary European theatre to post‑alternative theatre: it is focused on a directed actor whose manifestation is not based on self‑staging (be it a result of narcissism or an ideal of a victim) but on art of acting.

Post‑alternative theatre is ‘theatre after reforms’; extreme forms of these reforms (from symbolists to Grotowski) formed an alternative to a theatre tradition; its cradle is Bildungstheater, i.e. theatre of drama as a part of the official European culture. Theatre that more or less develops this tradition has become a core of European theatremaking these days: it was enough to absorb stimulations of both ‘reforms’ and it made the dialogue between the official and unofficial, authenticity and play etc the basis of one’s attempts which feeds European culture.

One of the directions of the mentioned reformation efforts (from Stanislavski to so‑called anthropological theatre) is created by tendencies for authenticity in acting and a bet on including a deeper layer of actor’s psyche; the second direction (from symbolism through Meyerhold to a happening) is headed towards an element of the play. The representative of the second direction (a direction of total theatricality of a life and panludism) is N. N. Evreinov (1879–1953) and doc. Jan Hyvnar (1941) speaks about his concept in his essay “Evreinov’s Apology of Theatricality”. Hyvnar also reviews a book by Eliška Vavříková, PhD. called Mimesis and poiesis (mimesis and poiesis in art of acting) that reflects personal experience of an actor of the Farm in the Cave during the work on the staging of Sclavi: its reader will be able to find out in what extent the creations drawing from a stimulation of ‘anthropological’ theatre lead in actor’s creation towards synthesis with the basis of folklore legacy of as‑if marginal (Ruthenian) culture.

If we spoke about a dialogue between the official and the unofficial, a life and a play and so on, we could add between ‘scenic and staging’ to what is in italics. Prof. Miroslav Vojtěchovský (1947) deals with scenicity and staging taking examples from the field of design and mainly ‘pure’ visual arts in his essay “A Week of Water and Light” published in this issue. The second one is about the exhibition by Václav Cigler (1929) in the Kampa Museum that ended on 26th July. According to Vojtěchovský, the glassmaker Cigler has always taught his audience to look at the world through sophisticatedly formed glass and its scenicity that equals creating opportunities for looking in the sense of watching and observing as well as in the sense of thinking. The installations that draw from the connection of water and light he introduced in the Kampa Museum shows the beautiful to the noble according to the author of the essay. Cigler’s work has become a permanent part of the reconstruction of a former mill to a museum: there is a brook flowing from the courtyard under a glass foot bridge between the building of Sova’s Mills and the main place of short‑term exhibitions and then towards a direction of the terrace that is Cigler’s work as well. The whole outbuilding that is inseparable from a glass tower by Marian Karel and a chair by Magdalena Jetelová that was once refused by preservationists, is perceived today not only in the connection with the Museum itself but also as a basis for the scenic concept of the whole left Vltava bank between the Legion bridge and Charles bridge.

The contents of the issue is also Helena Gaudeková’s essay about Japan and its traditional theatre in the visual arts of Emil Orlik (1870–1932) and by Hanuš Jordan’s notice about an exhibition dedicated to circus in the Theatre department of the National Museum. It is followed by three dramatic attempts where a mimic tradition is applied in a significant way; their authors are Július Gajdoš (1951), Jiří Šípek (1950) and Milan Šotek (1985).