Битеф

name to Divadlo na provázku (Theatre on a String), formed a loose association of professional dramatic experts, drama students and enthusiasts from many other artistic professions. All they had to work from was their enthusiasm and the involvement of their audiences, and it was these assets which saw them through the whole period of their amateur beginnings. Their creative efforts, which gave birth to seventeen productions, culminated in a desire to become a professional theatre. On January Ist 1972 the Divadlo na provázku was given its professional statute as a theatre department of the House of the Arts, thanks to the understanding of the Bmo National Committee as an expression of acknowledgement that the town and its younger generation needed a theatre of this type for their cultural development, and in appreciation of the achievements of the theatre. It was only in a socialist society that the efforts of generations of progressive men of the theatre finally bore fruit. On January Ist 1978, after a new theatre law was passed, Divadlo na provázku was incorporated into a big complex of theatres - the State Theatre of Emo - as the fifth, experimental group. The basis of the theatre is a stable group of artistic and technical workers, who bring in outsiders for the realization of individual productions and other activities. This allows the character of a loose association to be preserved, brings new blood into the group, and makes possible bigger and more ambitious productions. The theatre group contains creative artists with various temperaments. They are united by the same aims and acknowledgement of these basic principles: the theatre has to be dynamic in adapting to conditions and needs, forming an closed system with them; it has the philosophy of a socialist theatrical and cultural centre, expanding into a cultural movement, filling the gap existing after the abolishing of Divadlo mladých (The Youth Theatre), and creating a platform for the younger generation of artists, seeking a new artistic expression of reality. The group seeks in its programme to fulfil the cultural needs of youth, to inspire the activity of young dramatists, actors, creative artists, musitians, and to find a new art form in the spirit of the socialist avant-garde. It has the character of a laboratory. The principal method used is that of expe-

riment in order to seek and explore new possibilities. It is a matter of principle to sacrifice time, effort and unsuccessful experiments and to probe the whole sphere of theatrical creativity and organization. It takes its inspiration from a study of the rich tradition of the Czech folk theatre, experiments of the Czech and Soviet theatrical avant-garde (E. F. Burian, J. Honzl, V. Meyerhold, A. Tairov and others) and contemporary developments in the world theatre. The Divadlo na provázku practises the synthetic open theatrical form, which comes to life only when all elements of artistic structure are represented in their own right and on the basis of equality. This balance can be achieved only by a producer who has all the elements at his fingertips and is able to arrange and compose them and instrument the theatrical score exactly in measure, tempo, colour, tone and harmony, into a polyphonic production. The entry of an author-producer constituent into the work results in a transformation of the whole structure of the work. All the elements are set in motion and new relationships are obtained, producing a dramaturgic and scenario shift. By a dramaturgic shift we understand an independence of dramatic texts, a search for new themes of scenic statement in the sphere of non-theatrical texts, texts which are from the point of view of traditional theatre irregular. The choice of such material links the theatrical creation of Divadlo na provázku with the grass roots of social and material socialist reality. The guiding principle of such drama is always and must always be the positive, i. e. not to describe and thus repeat and propagate the weaknesses, shortcomings and negations of our age, but to increase and strengthen progressive national values. (F. X. Saida) Various themes are elaborated in the author-producer workshop of the theatre in extremely various forms, but particularly by montage and collage into the script, which then becomes the point of departure for the scenic realization. We always seek such themes as are at a given moment highly immediate for the creator and thus form the basis for lively communication with the young audience. The scenario shift can be seen in the sphere of a consistent transformation of the script into the resulting theatrical form and a motion of the theatrical situation symbol. In searching

for new scenic métaphore we wish to create a lyrical expression of our contemporary life in our society. The Divadlo na provázku realized its productions in an irregular space freed from the limitations of the fixed baroque theatre hall. We include in the overall, creative character of the theatre programmes, posters, the symbol of the theatre, placards, etc. The scenography of the Divadlo na provázku organizes the theatrical space (hall, gymnasium, circus tent, shop floor, street, countryside, etc.) according to the demands of the production in such a way as to cater for the demands of the producer, actors and the audience, to encourage activity and maximum integration. The use made of space by the theatre is an attempt to make a flexible arrangement of stage and offer all members of the audience the same opportunity to see and hear and to remove differences between them. The actors fully identify themselves with the programme of the theatre and with its methods and creative approach. In the Divadlo na provázku the actor is given an entirely new task, he seeks new forms of scenic expression corresponding to the realization of irregular texts in a flexible theatre space. An actor, as the only living agent standing inside the synthesis controls the elements of this synthesis. The basic precondition of the actor’s performance is an internal harmony with the theme communicated, its improvized development, so that in, e. g. mime, (B. Polivka, A. Ambrová) the actor may even be the author of the performance. The Divadlo na provázku actor must be highly versatile and must constantly develop his versitility through individual and collective rehersal. In ten years of its professional existence the Divadlo na provázku has acquired a regular audience of students and young workers and wishes to expand its sphere of activity to the very young. It seeks to form an informal environment for its public, without any of the attributes of officialdom, to be open to stimuli from its public and at the same time to teach them its own interpretation of theatre (discussions, club, questionnaires, etc.). The organization of all elements of the Divadlo na provázku is subject to the basic principle that experimental theatre forms specific working conditions and a different solution of problems to those of conventional theatre, and each member of the theatre must

be prepared in advance to solve these problems. The Divadlo na provázku is preparing itself organizationally for the carrying out of such tasks as may present themselves in future, as for example teamwork of all producers or the setting up of a studio in circus tent, etc. The evolution of the Divadlo na provázku is intended to tend towards free theatre, theatre open to all influences originating in reality and in theatrical development. In this sense a productions is understood as a meeting of a complete range of creative individualities with unique experience of life, the producer then acting as the organizational element, composing the final form in such a way as to preserve the uniqueness of all the creators. The method of work on the production is to be more and prore inclined towards experiments with many variations of individual sequences and of the whole, since we set out from the assumption that the idea, motif or theme can be expressed in manifold ways, each of which has its own justification and allows a particular standpoint to be expressed. Nor will the shape of the production be fixed at the time of the première, but room will be left for further improvisational development, which may go as far as the creation of new scenic variations on the original theme. As far as the genre of acting is concerned we shall draw closer and closer to the traditon of folk theatrical form and the rudiments of theatrical culture in our lands and in the whole of Europe. On the basis of scenographical experiments with theatrical space both as already practised and as proposed in theory we should like to co-operate in the planning and realisation of a new theatrical hall intended exclusively for the Divadlo na provázku, which would allow maximum flexibility of space. We do not wish to be confined to an enclosed hall, however much adapted to the possibilities of change and transformation of space arrangement, but to transfere our theatrical expression corresponding to the contemporary and at the same time proclaiming it. Our principles seek to express only the crudest criterion of our relation to objective reality in our time, and to the human subjective reality, which, in spite of tireless exploration remains basicly unmapped territory. The programme policy is motivated