Cabaret in Czechoslovakia

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Cabaret theaters were a very popular form of theater in Czechoslovakia from the end of the 1950s and especially in the 1960s, which stood out from the official theater in many respects and represented an appealing alternative, especially for young audiences. They built on earlier traditions that go back to the beginning of the 20th century.

term

The Czech name for this form of theater - divadlo malých forem - could be translated as "theater of small forms" in the sense of "theater of small genres". The protagonists and operators of these stages name here, among other things, cabaret, jazz, film, dance, pantomime, poetry, puppet theater, musical comedy, visual arts and others, which should make up the substance of the pieces in arrangements - as it is very clear in the self-portrayal of one of the most famous theaters of this type, the Semafor Theater .

History, tradition

In the pre-war period, a number of experimental stages and cabarets appeared in Prague, such as Červená sedma (1909), Divadlo Rokoko (1915), D34 (1933), but especially then Osvobozené divadlo ("The Liberated Theater", 1925), which as was considered left-wing, had great appeal for the intelligentsia and was temporarily re-established after the war; Some of the founders of cabaret theaters in the 1950s also referred to these stages.

After the communists came to power in 1948, genres such as cabaret, satire, poetic metaphor theater and pantomime almost came to a standstill for a time. From the mid-1950s at the latest, however, there was a reawakening of these small stages (similar to that of Czechoslovak film). They distinguished themselves through the conception of the personally perceived author's theater and through very close contact with the audience as well as openness to many genres and thus contributed to the innovation of theatrical culture: the Divadlo Na zábradlí theater was founded in 1958, Semafor in 1959 , which inspired further stage foundations through their successes and became the cultural avant-garde. The focus of communication between stage and audience was the word (spoken, recited or sung) in connection with music; Wherever content was conveyed through music, the connection between the "Western" music played, which was initially forbidden, and the Czech text was an important element of the experience.

The theater critic Vladimír Just , who dealt in detail with the history of cabaret theaters in Czechoslovakia, asked the interesting question whether the myth of the "revolt" of these theaters against the theater establishment, ie the Stalinist cultural totality after 1948, was so rigorous. He put the beginnings back a few years when, after 1953, the first harbingers of the "Czech theater tradition", satire and cabaret, began to revolt on other, established stages and withdrew from party control, sometimes more, sometimes less. He cited examples, such as the appearance of Jan Werich and Miroslav Horníček in "Caesar" (1955 in the ABC Theater ) as an open satire on longstanding court judgments "for nothing", or Theater D 34 with Pod svícnem tma , as early as 1953/54 , and other. If it was protest, Just concluded, then it was not about the no longer so clearly encrusted, unified structures of established Czech theater, but rather was resistance to certain social norms, behaviors and opinions, not only in the field of art.

Divadlo na zábradlí in Prague

As early as the 1960s, the cabaret scene began to stagnate due to professionalization, even if a few other theaters were built during a "second wave": Divadlo Husa na provázku , Divadlo Járy Cimrmana , Radar and others. After the suppression of the Prague Spring , they were thwarted in the following period of normalization : for those involved in the Dadaist- oriented plays of the Okap Theater in Ostrava, which also devoted itself to theater of the absurd , the judiciary imposed prison sentences of between 3 and 20 months, after more Paragraphs such as "denigrating representatives of the world socialist community" and "inciting against the social order" were then applied. Friedrich Dürrenmatt's protest only resulted in this author being banned. At the same time, Just found that, at the same time, there was a shift in conveying the content from the spoken word in favor of stage and movement metaphors, which resulted in a change to a new form of theater - to "studio theater".

Many of these stages still exist today.

Significance for the music scene

Virtually all cabaret theaters were highly productive in the music field and made an important contribution to pop music in the 1960s. The songs that were created here, whether re-arrangements of well-known hits of Western origin or - mostly - own productions, were an integral part of the performances, but they shaped the top ten radio stations at this time and many came on the market as singles or albums ; some performances (like Zuzana je sama doma in Semafor 1960) were based almost exclusively on songs. A selection of song production from the early days (1959–1964) came out in 1965 as a 3-LP compilation by Supraphon. The album contains the production (apart from songs, some spoken scenes) of several cabaret stages with the participation of Jiří Suchý , Jiří Šlitr , Waldemar Matuška , Eva Pilarová , Ljuba Hermanová , Marta Kubišová , Hana Hegerová , Miroslav Horníček , Václav Havel and others. Many of the singers who began their careers or performed in the Semafor soon established themselves in the country's singing elite and won numerous prizes and awards.

Important cabaret stages

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Semafor . History section, online at: www.semafor.cz / ... ( Memento of 23 September 2015, Internet Archive ) and semaphore . History section 1959-1969, online at: www.semafor.wdr.cz / ... , two partially overlapping texts from the area of ​​the theater, both in Czech, accessed on June 7, 2015
  2. ↑ a b c d Vladimír Just, Nebyl jen Semafor a Zábradlí aneb Malá divadla jako hnutí , online at: amaterskedivadlo.cz/ , Czech, accessed on June 7, 2015
  3. ↑ divadla malých forem , a short keyword from the online encyclopedia Co je co, online at: cojeco.cz / ... , in Czech, accessed on June 7, 2015
  4. ↑ Divadla malých forem. Přehlídka divadelních scén a písní z let 1959–64 ; a digitized version can be found online at: www.supraphonline.cz/ with the possibility to listen to short excerpts of all songs and spoken scenes (Czech), accessed on June 7, 2015