Wie ein Theaterstück entsteht UND Führer durch die Kulissenwelt
Jak vzniká divadelní hra / How a Play is created AND a Guide to the World behind the Scenes

Author(s): Karel Čapek
Subject(s): Novel
Published by: CEEOL Digital Reproductions / Collections
Summary/Abstract: German edition published in 1975 by Verlag Volk und Welt, Berlin (East)Karel Čapek (1890–1938) assures anyone opening this book—originally published in 1925—that the discussion here concerns only the craft of theater and its miracles, not the art of drama and its mysteries. Naturally, someone as intimately familiar with the stage as this great Czech novelist and playwright—who earned his stripes as a dramaturg and director at Prague’s Vinohrady Theatre in the early 1920s—can offer a wittily acerbic commentary on the world whose beautiful illusion the audience admires from the comfort of their stalls. He takes evident pleasure in tracing the thorny journey of a play from the moment the author hopefully hands it over to the dramaturg: through the disastrous read-throughs and rehearsals, the squabbles over casting, the friction between director, author, and actors—whose temperaments and stage fright add further complications—and finally the thicket of stage mechanics in which the production repeatedly gets entangled. When the curtain finally rises on opening night, thanks to an army of staff, the actors’ faces—repulsively grimy and greasy up close—suddenly appear radiantly beautiful; the crudely painted scenery transforms into an enchanted landscape, tin turns to gold, and coarse tow becomes a prophet’s beard. Theater is, after all, a place of miracles, Čapek sighs, adding: "The greatest miracle, however, is that it works at all." (German edition published in 1975 by Verlag Volk und Welt, Berlin (East) - TRanslated by Karl-Heinz Jähn )

• Details
• Contents