Prague School theatre theory emerged thanks to a group of mostly young critics and scholars, theatre-lovers and theatre practitioners associated with the Prague Linguistic Circle in the period from the 1920s to the 1940s:
This whole community has become known as The Prague School. Most of its members dealt with language and literature, but those included on this website and the associated publications explored methodological approaches to theatre (as well as drama and performance).
- Jan Mukařovský (1891–1975)
- Petr Bogatyrev (1893–1971)
- Jindřich Honzl (1894–1953)
- Roman Jakobson (1896–1982)
- E. F. Burian (1904–1959)
- Jiří Frejka (1904–1952)
- Miroslav Kouřil (1911–1984)
- Karel Brušák (1913–2004)
- Olga Spalová-Srbová (1914–1987)
- Jiří Veltruský (1919–1994)
I THEATRE IN GENERAL
This section is devoted to the theatre as a specific and unique art form with its own set of theoretical problems. The Prague School was among the first to emancipate the theatre as a discipline worthy of academic and critical reflection, independent of literary studies, sociology and popular culture or ethnographic enquiry.
II SIGN – OBJECT – ACTION
The essays presented here are the first to theorize the concept of the sign in the theatre, doing so in a pre- or proto-semiotic way. Moving outside linguistic systems as set up by Ferdinand de Saussure and C. S. Peirce, the Prague School formulated its own dynamic system of terminology of the sign, drawing heavily on contemporary phenomenology. Its theories developed into discussions of signs within larger systems of relations – structures – that operate in particular hierarchies where some of the components are dominant, others less so. The essays in this section, written by theorists as well as the theatre practitioner Jindřich Honzl, elaborate a terminology that helps articulate what actually happens in the theatre during a performance.
III FIGURES AND PLAY
With Otakar Zich’s theory of acting as their starting point, Petr Bogatyrev, Jan Mukařovský and Jindřich Honzl elaborated critical tools for speaking of and analysing the actor and the actor’s art. These essays are related not only to theatre studies but also to early play theory (Bogatyrev’s first essay). While three of the texts discuss Charlie Chaplin, Honzl’s study contextualizes analytical theory in the framework of theatre history and its stock types.
IV FROM PAGE TO STAGE
Jan Mukařovský and Jiří Veltruský devoted systematic attention to dramatic literature and the literary component in the theatre. While Otakar Zich disregarded the special position of the dramatic text within the theatre performance, viewing it as a merely subservient component of the whole, both Mukařovský and Veltruský highlight its unique position as an artefact that exists within the theatrical structure in a certain state of autonomy. Mukařovský also observes – in one of the earliest texts on adaptation and dramatization – that the theatre often makes use of an inner dialogism present in non-dramatic literature.
V LAYERS OF SPACE
The essays in this section are dedicated to innovative and sometimes visionary explorations of the stage space, from implied or imaginary space in drama through performance space and the proxemic relations on stage to early theories of scenography as stage space in the theatre and in film. These essays link the theatre with the visual arts, theorizing the moment when the in-house visual artist (the stage designer) became a virtual poet of form, creating spaces that will then be inhabited by characters, action and drama.
VI TOWARDS STRUCTURES OF MODERN ACTING
Advancing general theories of acting, the stage directors Jiří Frejka and Jindřich Honzl contributed not only to modern, avant-garde theatre practice but also to criticism by discussing particular details of the modern actor’s art, from mimicry through mimetic signs and signals to a creative engagement with actorly conventions. This section is complemented by a 1976 essay by Jiří Veltruský that further refines the critical tools of acting theory with a view to the current state of the art.
VII ETHNOGRAPHICAL ENCROACHMENTS
The essays in this part focus on the relations between the theatre and society – both civic and folk – discussing performative folk traditions (among them folk ballads, which also had a visual and a performative aspect), folk costumes in relation to their performative, theatre-like qualities, as well as the theatre’s function in the public sphere and its role for the formation of a civic society. Rather than being concerned with the artefact of the theatre, these essays focus on the theatre’s social dimensions.
VIII ART – MEDIA – SOCIETY
The concluding section of the reader is dedicated to texts that might – somewhat anachronistically – be referred to as intermedial theory. Their focus is on the use of different media in the theatre, the concept of the stage metaphor (both essays on this topic were written by a leading avant-garde theatre director), the active use of puppets in an innovative theatre production, and a far-reaching rethinking of the theatre as a hierarchy of components that is inherently linked with the norms and values of the society in which it exists.
(This section is adapted from the introduction to the Theatre Theory Reader, pp. 14, 25-27.)
Theatre is much more than a play presented on a stage. There are dozens of professions associated with the theatre, and all of them influence what a piece will be like, from actors and the directing team to designers and tech people, to name but a few. But the list of those associated with each theatrical event ultimately runs all the way through to audiences, without whom the whole concept of theatre lacks any meaning. Put simply, theatre can come into existence in a variety of ways and a variety of activities can be understood as theatre.
When it comes to Prague School theatre theory, what we mean when we say “theatre” often refers to what today’s terminology would call “performance”. The development of performance studies in the 1980s was a scholarly reaction to changes in what was understood as performance in the previous decades, and the concepts that were developed then went on to influence performative practices as such. The concept “performance”, with its many secondary and implied meanings (all of which are worth studying), has become commonplace. It distinguishes itself in certain respects from “theatre”, which is often limited to a specific art form. We would like to do away with this division and return to a broader use of the term “theatre”.
“The whole of stage reality – the dramatist’s words, the actor’s performances, the stage lighting – all these represent other realities. The theatre performance is a set of signs.”
Jindřich Honzl
The Mobility of The Theatrical Sign, 1931
The Theatre Theory Reader: Prague School Writings (2016), edited by David Drozd, Tomáš Kačer and Don Sparling, is an anthology of texts, lectures and essays written between 1920 and the 1980s. The main text is divided into two sections. The first major part, which includes the reader itself, represents the first comprehensive and critical anthology of texts reflecting on the development of Prague School’s theatre theory from its beginnings associated with the aesthetics of Otakar Zich. The majority of the thirty-eight texts presented in this section are from the 1930s and early 1940s, the period when the Prague Linguistic Circle was most active, functioning as a theoretical laboratory as well as a focal point for scholars, artists and intellectuals. A number of the essays presented here date from the postwar period but retain their original pre-war momentum. The second section, an afterword entitled “Prague School’s Theatre Theory and Its Contexts,” was written by Pavel Drábek and his collaborators. It describes the background of the emergence of the Prague School, aiming to facilitate a better and deeper understanding of these texts.
By its very nature, this book is not meant to be read as though it were a novel, from the first word to the last in the given order. Instead, the reader is invited to explore those parts that are relevant for him or her. Just as the Prague School theorists viewed theory as a toolbox of approaches to theatre analysis, the presented anthology should be considered to be a toolbox of possibilities. To facilitate this, the eight sections of the anthology cover the most common areas of performance analysis:
- David Drozd, Tomáš Kačer and Don Sparling, eds. Theatre Theory Reader: Prague School Writings (Prague: Karolinum, 2016)
The book is available for purchase here (CZ) or here (globally)
The book is an outcome of the research project Czech theatre structuralism: context and potency (2011-2015). For the project’s backstory, read here.