World Theatre

Arnold Aronson: Looking into the Abys

Looking into the Abyss by Arnold Aronson is an anthology of essays, lectures, speeches, and articles by a top American theatre historian and theorist. His research and interest centres on stage design as an integral part of theatre productions that has a visual quality with an importance equal to that of the word, the actor’s movement, sound, or music, etc. Also significant is Aronson’s interpretation of the theatre as a spatial art in time and in interaction with the viewer. For Aronson, stage design is more than just a visual art that can be studied separately from all the other components of the theatre.
Price 250 Czk / 263 pp. / ISBN 978-80-7008-214-0

Peter Brook: Threads of Time

A key figure in post-war world theatre reflects back on the events that shaped his artistic career: from his happy childhood growing up in a family of Russian emigrants, to his adventurous early days in theatre film in wartime London, his outstanding early successes directing opera and Shakespeare, the experiments he was drawn to in the 1960s and 1970s and his unflagging longing to get to the deepest roots of the theatre. The book also contains recollections of his encounters (and artistic clashes) with great figures of post-war European theatre (e.g. Salvador Dalí, Laurence Olivier, Glenda Jackson, Jeanne Moreau). However, the most valuable part of Brook’s self-portrait is how it tries to trace his internal journey as an artist on a quest. Translated by Jitka Sloupová. 
Price 250 Czk / 235 pp. / ISBN 80-7008-170-8

Edward Gordon Craig: On the Art of the Theatre

Craig was one of the visionaries behind the revolution in scenic art in 20th-century theatre. This anthology presents him through a selection of texts that are essential theoretical writings on 20th-century theatre. In these writings Craig formulated his idea of the theatre as a unique form of art that has to disengage itself from every kind of ‘parasitic tyranny’, whether this means the dictatorship of literature, the painter, or the actor, and find a symbolic stage language for itself, while repudiating realism, which leads to the degeneration of the theatre. In the late 1960s a volume of essays by Craig was prepared for publication in Czech, but that project was quashed by the onset of the normalisation-era publishing policy. Consequently, this book is appearing for the first time in Czech only now, almost a century after its initial publication date. A lengthy review and examples of Craig’s work were presented on the pages of Divadlo (Theatre) by Milan Lukeš in 1958. Almost a half century later, the book is now reaching Czech readers in a translation by Lukeš and with a foreword by him. 
Price 210 Czk / 207 pp. / ISBN 7008-204-1

Milan Lukeš: Between Carnival and Dream (the Shakespearian Context)

A collection of essays written – with the exception of several earlier and substantially revised essays – during the 1990s, most of which were published in The World and Theatre. The title of the collection provides a clue to how in Lukeš’s opinion the theatre of today resembles that of Shakespeare (Bachtin’s notion of the carnival and the Jungian interpretation of dream). Many years of critical experience combined with a deep knowledge of Shakespeare – who is always and it seems inexhaustibly a ‘contemporary’ of each new generation of audiences – allow the author to examine contemporary theatre through a body of work that vividly reflects the changes that have occurred in the theatre in the past century. 
Price 250 Czk / 366 pp. / ISBN 80-7008-158-9

Jana Pilátová: Grotowski’s Niche

Jerzy Grotowski, one of the most important directors and thinkers in the theatre of the 20th century, and his ‘holy theatre’ (as the director Peter Brook called it) transcended the boundaries of this genre in quest of its spiritual-technical roots. First Grotowski explored the theatre in Teatr Laboratorium, then he began to scrutinise the human condition, humanity and the potential of humanity through theatre. The year 1968 and Apocalypsis cum Figuris, a major theatrical work, marked a turning point and paved the way for the emergence of his paratheatre and initiation rites. That same year, which was revolutionary in many respects, the author of this work, theatre arts expert and drama teacher PhDr. Jana Pilátová, who was at that time student, studied for six months under Grotowski, and that experience had a determining impact on the future direction of her life. She maintained contact with Grotowski, published papers on his creative methods as applied in then Czechoslovakia and in Poland, lectured at international conferences, and led creative workshops at home and abroad. This book by Jana Pilátová is the only original Czech contribution to the international year of Grotowski (2009) and has been nominated for the F. X. Šalda Award in the field of theatre criticism. 
Price 360 Czk / 581 pp. / ISBN 978-80-7008-239-3

Eva Stehlíková: Theatre in the Time of Nero and Seneca

It is no accident that the title of this work by a top theatre arts scholar and classical philologist is identical to that of one well-known play. The study is based on the most recent research, most certainly inspired by the transformation of theatre in our times, at the turn of the 21st century, and it examines the great transformation of the theatre in ancient Rome: moving away from drama and towards spectacle of every kind, starting in the 1st century BCE, and mainly under the rule of the Julio-Claudian dynasty. The publication attempts to trace this development, which affected almost every genre and stage potential of European theatre. 
Price 220 Czk / 187 pp. + illustrations supplement / ISBN 80-7008-185-6