Plays

Thomas Bernhard: Ritter, Dene, Voss. Einfach Kompliziert. Elisabeth II

Three plays that date from the final creative period and the later life of this important Austrian dramatist. This volume was published in cooperation with PALLATA Publishers.
Price 164 Czk / 293 pp. / ISBN 80-7008-077-9

František Langer: No Curtain

The fifteenth volume of the Writings of František Langer contains dramatic texts that have never been staged and have never even been published in book form. These are scenes, plays, and fragments of plays that were published in periodicals (The Bells, Three and One, Hours, Animals and People, a fragment of a lost play with fairytale motifs called Glory in Stone), by agencies (Premiering Today), or found among the author’s manuscript papers (Langer’s first dramatic attempt, the psychologising act Strange World, the burlesque Disillusioned Lover, a fragment of an amorously toned social conversation play (Untitled), a play about the ungraspable categories of good and evil At Zavadilka, dialogues on the theme of the pitfalls of officially assigned luck The Station and The Almshouse).
Price 190 Czk / 329 pp. / ISBN 80-7008-169-3

František Langer: Plays I

The first volume of Langer’s drama contains two plays from either end of the writer’s career – the verse Saint Wenceslas in 1912 and the partly versed Bronze Rhapsody from 1958 – and dramatic works with a legionary theme (the scene Morning, the triptych Victors and the famous The Rangers).
Price 190 Czk / 328 pp. / ISBN 80-7008-101-5

František Langer: Plays II

Last year, the Theatre Institute, in cooperation with the František Langer Endowment Fund, began publication of The Writings of František Langer. In 2001 the second volume of Langer’s plays was published. In it readers can find the writer’s best plays from the 1920s and 1930s, which deal with the search for a higher form of justice and the right relationship between guilt and punishment (Periphery, Angels amongst Us, and Seventy-Two). These are complemented by the inclusion of his nostalgic post-war comedy set in an acting environment titled A Spark in the Ash.
Price 190 Czk / 331 pp. / ISBN 80-7008-114-7

František Langer: Plays III

The third volume of plays by František Langer contains four comedies from the 1920s that were very successful in their time (A Camel through the Eye of a Needle, Grand Hotel Nevada, The Conversion of Ferdyš Pištora, Marriage Inc.), which, for their genial, sometimes lightly ironic humour, tendency to idealise, and sense for a good end were not just in their day but also later warmly received by the public and most theatre critics, who moreover appreciated Langer’s excellent dramatic technique and lightly and playfully portrayed Hermannesque figures.
Price 190 Czk / 288 pp. / ISBN 80-7008-136-8

František Langer: Plays IV

Alongside two forgotten plays – Night and Millions – and a dramatisation of Dickens’ Pickwick Papers, which was published just once before, the fourth volume of Langer’s plays also contains two sketches written by Jaroslav Hašek.
Price 190 Czk / 298 pp. / ISBN 80-7008-154-6

František Langer: Plays for Puppet Theatre

This is the sixth and final volume of Langer’s plays (vol. 10 in the publication of the collected writings of Langer). It contains puppet plays intended for younger audiences that Langer wrote in the early 1930s and that work with the traditional motifs of popular fairytales (Prince Casper and His Horse, The Gingerbread House, Casper as Detective, What the King Didn’t Know about at Home, The Wicked Princess and the Good Dragon). Langer went back to writing puppet plays later, in the early 1960s, when the political pressure to exclude him from Czech literature was slowly waning (A Soldier in a City of Liars, Pivoda, the Water Sprite at the Base of Vyšehrad Cliff). The plays are also accompanied by several articles, in which the author reminisces about his childhood and avows his love of the world of puppet theatre (e.g. The Troubles of Puppet Theatre Artists, The Puppetry Plays I Used to Write). The volume was compiled and its foreword written by Milena Vojtková.
Price 190 Czk / 191 pp. / ISBN 80-7008-183-X

František Langer: Correspondence II

The second volume of Langer’s correspondence published as part of the collected writings of Langer contains letters from correspondents whose names begin with the letters L through P. An important part of this volume thus is the correspondence from members of Langer’s own family, which describe the family’s fates during the Nazi occupation and in the early stages of the communist regime. The volume also includes letters that Langer exchanged with theatre artists and other figures instrumental in shaping contemporary theatre. 
Price 190 Czk / 324 pp. / ISBN 80-7008-203-4