Theatre Theory

The Czech theatre theory has helped reflect on what theatre and performance is, does and could do. It is a critical tradition worth revisiting, rethinking, re-reading, studying and using again in our thinking about what happens in performance.

This website offers a basic overview with an introduction to the existing research, publications and other activities, primarily by the research team based at the Department of Theatre Studies at Masaryk University in Brno, Czech Republic.

The team has undertaken two research projects:

Czech theatre structuralism: context and potency (2011-2015)
Theatre as Synthesis of Arts: Otakar Zich in context of modern science and actual potential of his concepts (2016-2018)

These two projects produced two summative publications:

Theatre Theory Reader: Prague School Writings (Karolinum, 2016), ed. David Drozd, Tomáš Kačer and Don Sparling
Otakar Zich: Aesthetics of the Dramatic Art: Theoretical Dramaturgy (Karolinum, 2024), ed. David Drozd and Pavel Drábek

Each of the books has its backstory and each is a result of lengthy and complex research and editorial work.

In the tabs you also find other publications, essays and studies that provide the contexts, offer further insights, and hopefully also inspiration for critical thinkers to use Czech theatre theory into their own research and teaching.

What´s new

Otakar Zich and his Aesthetics of The Dramatic Art visit Cologne!

6. June 2025

Meet us at IFTR 2025 conference in Cologne!

As a part of annual IFTR conference 2025 Performing Carnival!, taking place in Cologne, there is also a book launch of still fresh and ground-breaking edition of Otakar Zich's Aesthetics of Dramatic Art. You are invited to meet the general editor David Drozd to hear about the book, content and contexts, issues of translating terminology, searching for actual inspirations in almost a century old theoretical opus.

Friday, June 13, 2025, 12:45 PM-1:30 PM, Room: S16, Building: 106 Seminargebäude - Seminar Building

Our Research

Prague School Theatre Theory

Zich’s Aesthetics of the Dramatic Art

“The year 1931 is an important date in the history of theatre studies. Until that time dramatic poetics – the descriptive science of the drama and theatrical performance – had made little substantial progress since its Aristotelian origins. […] That year, however, saw the publication of two studies in Czechoslovakia which radically changed the prospects for the scientific analysis of theatre and drama: Otakar Zich’s Aesthetics of the Art of Drama and Jan Mukařovský’s An Attempted Structural Analysis of the Phenomenon of the Actor.”
Keir Elam
The Semiotics of Theare and Drama, 1980