Nonseries Publications

Ivan Arsenjev, Irena Vodáková, Matěj Forman: The Purple Sails on the Mystery Boat

A richly artistic book intended for the general public and the professional community that describes the development and nature of The Purple Sails by the Forman Brothers Theatre and Cabaret Dromesko and the related reconstruction of push-boat TČ 2291 to turn it into the Mystery Boat. The book is divided into three chapters. The first chapter contains an interview with the Forman brothers and Igor, a French theatre artist. The second is more ‘archival and documentary’ in nature and records the main stages of work on the boat and the performances. The third, ‘illustrative’ chapter is made up exclusively of photographs by Irena Vodáková, who has systematically recorded the performances and life around them from the very first rehearsals.
Price 399 Czk / 289 pp. / ISBN 978-80-7008-213-3

Anne Bogart, Tina Landau: Viewpoints

The book describes use of the viewpoints method in the preparation and creation of a theatre performance. It is intended for theatre professionals, actors, directors, performers, and dancers. Alongside the essential basic theory, it contains a systematic description of exercises that define the presence of the performer (actor, dancer) on the stage from various perspectives. The American director Anne Bogart is a professor at Columbia University in New York and the artistic director of the Saratoga International Theatre Institute, which she co-founded with the Japanese director and theatre theorist Tadashi Suzuki.
Price 250 Czk / 205 pp. / ISBN 978-80-7008-210-2

Zdeněk Digrin: The Theatre of Apprentices and Diplomats

This is the first original Czech publication on the emergence and development of Italian Renaissance theatre and on the drama and theatre of the cinquecento and the early 17th century.
Price 170 Czk / 527 pp. / ISBN 80-7008-044-2

The Theatre Institute 1959–2009

This publication marks the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the Theatre Institute in Prague. The main part of the publication is a list of publications issued by the institute and exhibitions organised or co-organised by the institute. An important contribution to the history of the Theatre Institute and the history of Czech theatre arts is the paper by Jana Patočková titled ‘From the History of the Theatre Institute’, in which the author focuses on the circumstances surrounding the emergence of the Theatre Institute, describes its foundation and the administrative and legal difficulties that involved, and looks at its early work. The publication also contains interviews with individuals who were a part of the institute’s history, in particular the institute’s first employees, and people who worked for the institute for a long period of time and had an influence on its development. Their recollections testify to the amount of expert work the institute performed, but also to its ambivalent stance towards the previous regime. The institute’s more recent history is covered in interviews with the individuals who have served as the institute’s director since 1989.
Price 180 Czk / 581 pp. / ISBN 978-80-7008-237-9

A Dramatist of Viennese Modernism

A publication devoted to the contributions made by four major dramatists of Viennese modernism: Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Arthur Schnitzler, Hermann Bahr, and Karl Kraus.
Price 220 Czk / 220 pp. / ISBN 80-7008-102-3

Jaroslav Krejčí: The Theatre Fair of Alfréd Radok and Jan Grossman

This illustrated publication, issued to coincide with the Prague Quadrennial 2003, is a report on 35 years of a theatre that, as the author himself says, ‘was given a hard time, and that’s why it was good’. The book contains around 750 photographs of approximately 150 productions, numerous theatre events, and important figures in Czech theatre, with commentary from the author Jaroslav Krejčí (born 1929).
Price 790 Czk / 380 pp. / ISBN 80-7008-148-1

Miscellanea theatralia: Essays in Honour of Adolf Scherl on His Eightieth Birthday

This publication was prepared to mark the eightieth birthday of the prominent theatre historian PhDr. Adolf Scherl, CSc. (1925). It contains contributions from around four dozen author: theatre historians, domestic and foreign theorists, literary theorists, musicologists, historians, and ethnologists. (The German-language papers are published in the original German, English papers are published in Czech translation.) Some of the studies deal with theoretical questions, many of the texts focus on an analysis of specific works of art, and there are some more material studies, too. The themes dealt with by some of the texts are being addressed for the first time or in previously unexamined contexts and from an entirely original perspective. The volume was prepared and edited by Eva Šormová and Michaela Kuklová.
Price 250 Czk / 517 pp. / ISBN 80-7008-180-5

The Open Cases of Jaromír Ptáček

The volume aims to shed light on the dramatist Jaromír Ptáček, an artistic figure who played an important role in creating the modern Czech radio play. The volume contains 14 works: Open Questionnaire, Look at the Dark Sky, Before the Threshold of Silence, A Snail on a High Trapeze, Laying in the Grave, Tears for Mr. Jeremiah, And Who’d Want to Leave Babylon…, My Brother Job, Credible News on the End of the Planet, Musicians of the Night, Number One Theme, What’s Done Cannot Be Undone, Untitled and Nondreams. Vilém Faltýnek is the editor and wrote the foreword to the volume, other accompanying texts were written by the German Czech studies scholar Heinrich Kunstmann and by Milan Uhde and Věra Ptáčková. The volume was published in cooperation with Větrné mlýny Publishers.
Price 289 Czk / 353 pp. / ISBN 80-7008-184-8 (Theatre Institute) and 80-86907-05-8 (Větrné mlýny)

Jiří Orten – Drama, Reviews, Articles

The Writings of Jiří Orten VII

The first section of this book contains the drama Playing with Fate, or in Quest of a Lucky Coincidence (a film libretto on the theme of the Spanish Civil War), a fragment of a dramatisation of Francis Jammes’s Pomme d’Anis, the fairytale The Happy Princess and the drama The Beatification of Silence (co-written with Zdeněk Urbánek). The next section consists of Orten’s reviews of books by famous authors (mostly from 1939) that were published in Rozhledy (Horizons) and Čteme (Reading Now). The third section contains his articles for Mladá kultura (Young Culture), Haló novinny (Hello News), Studentský časopis (Student Magazine) and Kritický měsíčník (Criticism Monthly). The conclusion contains a poll My View of the World that was announced in November 1938 by Kamil Bednář. Many of the texts from this volume have never before been published, others are being published in book format for the first time.
Jiří Orten (1919–1941) was one of the most remarkable modern poets and a follower of František Halas. His verse (Spring Reader, Approaching Frost, Bonfire, My Town, Elegy), diaries (Blue, Mottled and The Red Book) and prose were last published in previous volumes of Writings.
Price 249 Czk / 256 pp. / ISBN 80-7185-462-X

Vlasta Smoláková: The Phenomenon of Lébl 2 or Have a Good Time – with God!

Published by Pražská scéna Publishers and the Arts and Theatre Institute, this publication picks up where the successful first volume The Phenomenon of Lébl left off and using a contrasting montage of authentic contemporary texts charts the prime years of Lébl’s work. The book contains some unique supplements and documents that provide readers with an idea of the significance of the director Petr Lébl (1965–1999) for 20th-century theatre.
Price 199 Czk / 240 pp. / ISBN 80-7008-178-3

The Coordinates of the Theatre (An Anthology of Texts on Contemporary German Theory of the Theatre)

An anthology edited by Jan Roubal. It presents work from the past thirty years and focuses on general questions relating to the essence of theatre, theatre communication, theatricality and performativeness, and examples in past and contemporary theatre. Alongside phenomenological, aesthetic, and semiotic methods, it also captures cultural-anthropological and historical trends. The authors include some of the most noteworthy figures in contemporary German theatre arts, such as D. Steinbeck, M. Brauneck, R. Münz, J. Fiebach, E. Fischer-Lichte, H. Schramm, and H.T. Lehmann.
Price 130 Czk, for subscribers to Theatre Review 70 Czk / 162 pp. / ISBN 80-7008-189-9

Miroslav Šulc: A Chronicle of Czech Operetta 1863–1948

The book presents a detailed picture of the evolution of operetta and operatic theatre in Bohemia and Moravia from its early stages in the 1860s to the start of the 1960s. The book includes an extensive Chronology outlining operetta events and information on almost all the operetta premieres in Czech theatres (data, production teams, lead roles, and sometimes the press’s response to performances).
Price 290 Czk / 503 pp. / ISBN 80-7008-121-X