Theatre Plays

Thomas Bernhard: Plays IV

Thomas Bernhard’s Plays IV is the last volume in the four-volume series published by the Theatre Institute in Prague devoted to Czech translations of Thomas Bernhard’s dramatic works. It contains the play Giants (translated by Václav Cejpek), which marks the culmination of the first period of Bernhard’s dramatic writings, and both full-length and short works from his middle and final creative periods: Immanuel Kant (translated by Josef Balvín), Above the Mountainsides and Beyond (translated by Zuzana Augustová), The Dead Man, May, The Match, Exoneration, Ice Cream, German Lunch, All or Nothing (translated by Jitka Jílková), Claus Peymann Is Leaving Bochum and Going to Vienna to Run the Burgtheater, Claus Peymann and Hermann Beil in Sulzwiese (translated by Barbora Schnelle) and Claus Peymann Is Buying Trousers and Joining Me for Lunch (translated by Zuzana Augustová). The volume concludes with an afterword by Alfred Pfabigan, ‘Thomas Bernhard: An Austrian International Experiment’. 
Price 240 Czk / 418 pp. / ISBN 978-80-7008-250-8

Thomas Bernhard: Plays III

Thomas Bernhard’s Plays III and Plays IV are the last two volumes in the four-volume series devoted to Czech translations of the complete dramatic works of Thomas Bernhard. The books contain dramatic works (full-length plays and short pieces), some of which never before published, from various creative periods in Bernhard’s life. Plays III contains dramatic works—libretti and short plays from the late fifties and early sixties: Desert Rose, The Mountain, Heads, Fabulous, Rose and Spring (translated by Zuzana Augustová)—and two full-length plays from the seventies—The Ignoramus and the Madman (translated by Josef Balvín) and President (translated by Zuzana Augustová). The volume’s afterword, ‘Write Like a Dog Scratching at Its Bed’, is by Miroslav Petříček.
Price 240 Czk / 308 pp. / ISBN 978-80-7008-248-5

Thomas Bernhard: Plays II

This volume contains the works Ein Fest für Boris (Czech transl. by W. Spitzbart), Am Ziel (Czech transl. by D. Ulrichová), Die Jagdgesellschaft, Der Weltverbesserer and Die Macht der Gewohnheit (Czech transl. by J. Balvín). The publication also contains an essay by Wendelin Schnidt-Dengler titled ‘Tragedies Are Comedies’.
Price 220 Czk / 427 pp. / ISBN 80-7008-049-3 

Ödön von Horváth: Plays

An anthology of plays by the Austrian playwright Ödön von Horváth, the creator of the modern folk play, whose works revealed the nature of emerging Fascism and the ghastly comical mentality of so-called ordinary man and his never-ending longing for love, faith, and hope. The publication contains well-known plays such as Geschichten aus dem Wiener Wald and Kasimir und Karoline, as well as works not previously published in Czech or less known, such as Zur schönen Aussicht, Don Juan kommt aus dem Krieg and Sladek der schwarze Reichswehrmann. Horváth’s plays are published in translations by J. Hrubešová, J. Balvín, and J. Stach.
The book is published on the centenary of the playwright’s birth.
Price 330 Czk / 622 pp. / ISBN 80-7008-135-X

Henrik Ibsen: Plays I

The first volume of selected plays by the great Norwegian playwright contains the plays Peer Gynt, A Doll’s House, Ghosts, An Enemy of the People and The Wild Duck. All of them are published in new translations by J. Brukner, F. Fröhlich, and J. Vohryzk. 
Price 330 Czk / 453 pp. / ISBN 80-7008-193-7

Henrik Ibsen: Plays II

The second volume of selected plays by the greatest Norwegian playwright contains the plays Rosmersholm, The Lady from the Sea, Hedda Gabler, The Master Builder, Little Eyolf, John Gabriel Borkman, When We Dead Awaken. All the plays are published in new translations. 
Price 330 Czk / 452 pp. / ISBN 80-7008-193-7

Bernard-Marie Koltès: Plays

A volume of plays by Bernard-Marie Koltès (1948–1989), who died prematurely, but was regarded as one of the most outstanding figures in French drama of the late 20th century. This volume contains all his most important plays that have been translated into Czech and published separately and performed so far (Combat de nègre et de chiens, Retour au désert, Roberto Zucco) in revised translations, and it has new translations of the plays La Nuit juste avant les forets, Quai Ouest, Dans la solitude des champs de coton, and Tabataba. 
Price: 330 Czk / 273 pp. / ISBN 80-7008-206-2

Tom Stoppard: Plays

This volume contains a cross-section of work by the Czech-born contemporary English playwright Tom Stoppard (1937), including his most famous plays, which are representative of the playwright’s individual creative stages: Stoppard’s brilliant absurdist play Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (1968, transl. by Jaroslav Kořán), which established his fame, the penetrating Wildean historical parody Travesties (1974, transl. by Michael Žantovský), the love comedy The Real Thing (1982, transl. by Jitka Sloupová) and Arcadia (1994, transl. by Jaroslav Kořán).
The volume also contains one-act plays by Stoppard never before published in Czech: the detective comedy The Real Inspector Hound (1968), translated for this publication by Dana Hábová, and the diptych Dogg’s Hamlet, Cahoot’s Macbeth (1979, transl. by Jaroslav Kořán), inspired by the fates of Czech dissident playwrights. The author of the accompanying study ‘Tom Stoppard’ (from 2000) is the playwright’s countryman Jim Hunter.
Price 299 Czk / 480 pp. / ISBN 80-7008-131-7

August Strindberg: Plays I

The first volume of an anthology of plays by the classic modernist Swedish writer August Strindberg provides – together with the second volume – Czech readers with the most comprehensive overview to date of the work of a provocative and great playwright. The first volume focuses on Strindberg’s earlier work influenced by naturalism (The Father, Miss Julia, Creditors, The Stronger, Playing with Fire, The Bond and the Link) and historical plays (Master Olof, Gustav Vasa, Eric XIV of Sweden, King Charles XII, Queen Christina). The volume also contains an essay by Gunnar Ollén ‘Strindberg the Playwright’. 
Price 330 Czk / 755 pp. / ISBN 80-7008-103-1

August Strindberg: Plays II

The second and final volume of plays by the classic Swedish playwright August Strindberg (1849–1912) presents new, first-time Czech translations of eight dramas and two unfinished works. All of them were written after the playwright’s ‘Inferno crisis’ (in the 1890s), when Strindberg reached an intellectual and artistic turning point and radically changed his social, political, and aesthetic views. In his dramatic works these changes were manifested in a turn away from naturalism and a shift towards new directions and streams, in particular symbolism and expressionism. It is with these later plays that Strindberg inscribed his name in the history of world theatre.
The texts of the plays are accompanied by a study, ‘Strindberg’s Post-infernal Dramatic Works’, by the top Swedish expert on the works of Strindberg, Hans-Göran Ekman.
Price 320 Czk / 579 pp. / ISBN 80-7008-159-7