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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 December 2021
Otomar Krejča's productions employing masks have formed a small but striking part of his total oeuvre. A contemporary Czech director, Krejča (along with Josef Svoboda and Ladislav Vychodil, both designers, and Alfred Radok, a director) has drawn international recognition to the theatre of Czechoslovakia. Consistently seeking to expand the limits of his art, he has extended the parameters imposed by a socialist-realist policy in the arts that has been influencing theatre in Czechoslovakia for nearly twenty-five years. His productions have ranged from fresh ventilations of Chekhov (The Sea Gull, Three Sisters, Ivanov) to boldly staged Shakespearian revivals [Hamlet, Brussels, and Romeo and Juliet,, Prague) to work with new Czech dramatists such as František Hrubín, Josef Topol, Válav Havel, and Milan Kundera.
The title photograph is of Krejča's production of The Masquers of Ostend by Chelderode. The action comes near the end, when the wastrel, transformed into the Angel of Carnival, dances between the Devil and Death. The photographer is Sochürek Vilém, courtesy Theatre Institute, Prague.
1 A Reuters dispatch appearing in The New York Times on May 25, 1972, said that the Theatre Behind the Gate would give its last performance on June 10, 1972, the closing apparently resulting “from a political crackdown by the authorities.” Krejča, a liberal, was dismissed as director of the company in 1971. ed.
2 In the Spring, 1972, Krejča was preparing a new staging of Chekhov's The Sea Gull for the Gate Theatre.