Kafka as a Starting Point for Circus Art

Hana Strejčková*

Abstract

While the jubilee celebration for Franz Kafka has attracted considerable attention, it has also raised a number of questions. Fortunately, in the case of the K project, a circus performance directed by Daniel Gulko for the Czech company Cirk La Putyka, the work was not viewed as a reader’s diary but, rather, as a kind of fairy tale. At times quite bizarre and colourful, the performance displayed the wide interpretive terrain of Kafka’s work. Thanks to the recent two anniversaries, the 140th anniversary of his birth in 2023 and the 100th anniversary of his death in 2024, Franz Kafka has reclaimed his place in the artistic foreground. At the same time, however, the initials FK have always evoked a positive response, thanks to the timeless, bizarre and ambiguous appeal of Kafka’s work. Thus, contemporary artists often refer to these initials and use them as inspiration for their own creative projects.

Keywords: Kafka, contemporary circus, Kafkaesque, Cirk La Putyka, absurdity

Introduction

The work of Franz Kafka represents a kind of cultural and intellectual threshold that cannot be crossed unnoticed. One can be a thoughtful reader of one of his selected works or short formats or a meticulous comparatist who samples the flavour of recurring motifs. At the same time, his literary world is not entirely pleasant; rather, it is a kind of nightmare, dominated by a perverse justice system where fear and self-absorption, oppression, uniformity and authority reign supreme. The writer displays a masterly flair with his grotesque depiction of pitiful and visible cruelty and ridiculous reality. To this day, he has proven to be a constant inspiration for reflection and speculation of all kinds; for example, his work is ideal for a theatrical stage and more specifically for contemporary circus.

Aspects of Theatricality in Kafka’s Work 

Kafka’s work has been analysed, used and universalised numerous times in the past, sorted into compartments and even laced with definitions. Therefore, it remains to be seen how widely his work could be interpreted, where his further creative results and fragments might be placed, or even what new directions he himself would take if he were still alive. As Hyršlová writes in her “Afterword”:

“The immense fame with which Kafka’s work was embraced, especially after the Second World War, resulted not only in numerous generations of writers seeking artistic stimulus from him, but also in staffs of experts from various disciplines and interpreters of different provenances and formats finding it necessary to comment on him.” (249)

The multiple efforts to categorize his work have revealed that he may or may not be a modernist, postmodernist, existentialist, nihilist, Dadaist or utopianist. Furthermore, he may not be but could also be a source of inspiration for surrealists, decadent artists and others. Kafka was no stranger to the grotesque, to political and social dissection through the lens of sarcasm, or to humour on a spectrum ranging from the light-heartedly subtle to a grey-black satirical hue.

In certain cases, Kafka sees the theatre as a refuge, a solution to a life crisis, a signpost, as, for example, in the novel America:  

“On a street corner, Karl saw a poster with the following announcement: ‘At the racecourse in Clayton, today from 6 a.m. till midnight, personnel are being hired for the Theatre in Oklahoma! . . .If you miss the opportunity, there will never be another! For anyone thinking of his future, your place is with us! All welcome! Anyone who wants to be an artist, step forward! We are the theatre that has a place for everyone, everyone in his place!’” (218)

Wake Up in a Century (Part Amerika)—Kafka’ s world as a theme of site-specific immersive performance—FysioART Company and Municipal Theatre Varnsdorf, Czech Republic 2024. Photo: Ivo Šafus

And circus environments, variety shows and cabarets often serve Kafka to intensify absurdity. A very clear example is the short story First Sorrow:

“A trapeze artist—it is common knowledge that this art practiced high up in the cupolas of the variety theatres is one of the most difficult mastered by man—had at first, out of a striving for perfection, later out of tyrannically imposed habit, arranged his life such that, as long as he was working on a particular feat, he remained day and night on the trapeze.” (82)

However, it is not a rash venture to place Franz Kafka’s timeless work in relation to the theatre, especially that of contemporary circus, or to link impressions from reading in general with the potential skills of artists and performers. Indeed, many of his followers have read these images and elaborated them poetically and in other ways, for example, the Czech writer Bohumil Hrabal.[1]

Kafka himself situated some of his texts directly in the environment of the theatre, circus or variety show, as underlined in the examples already mentioned above, thus recognizing the art of performers and street freaks in his own way. What he writes in his Report to an Academy is quite revealing:

“And as freedom is counted among the most sublime feelings, so the corresponding disillusionment can be also sublime. In variety theatres I have often watched, before my turn came on, a couple of acrobats performing on trapezes close to the upper ceiling. They swung themselves, they rocked to and fro, they sprang into the air, they floated into each other´s arms, one hung by the hair from the teeth of the other. ‘And that too is human freedom,’ I thought, ‘self-controlled movement.’ What a mockery of holy Mother Nature! Were the apes to see such a spectacle, no theatre wall could stand the shock of their laughter.” (253)

Show called K—one scene from the performance inspired by Kafka’s Report to an Academy. Director Daniel Gulko, Cirk La Putyka, Jatka 78, Czech Republic 2023. Photo: Lukáš Bíba

Kafka put his heroes in situations that were typically completely absurd and without a clearly visible exit.[2] He forced them into positions which they could neither accept nor escape from on their own.[3] Vanity emerges, and with it the futility and intractability of the situation, due to difference or deviation from a continuing or newly standardized condition. One can feel anxiety as well as fear for the family and for one’s own existence[4] and understand the eternal doubts, a conscious play with the tension of forces, a tug-of-war between the poles of I don’t understand and I surrender, leave me alone and follow.

Dramatist Václav Havel also saw the sensitivity of the world with his unbiased view and was able to name it in the form of an absurd drama or through a philosophical-sociological essay, and even find reasons for it or raise questions about it. To draw a comparison with Kafka, here is a quote from Havel’s work:

“Of course, life is present in every human being in its essential intentions: in everyone there is a piece of the desire for his own human dignity, moral integrity, the free experience of being, the transcendence of the ‘world of being’; but everyone is at the same time, to a greater or lesser extent, able to put up with ‘living a lie’; everyone somehow falls into profane objectification and expediency; in everyone there is a piece of the willingness to dissolve into the anonymous crowd and flow comfortably with it through the riverbed of pseudo-life.” (17)

Kafka’s characters represent different ages, professions and social positions, the individual in the gears of bureaucracy, alone against the system, a spectrum ranging from clerks, soldiers, hunters, impresarios, servants, artists, circus performers to animal representatives. Kafka portrayed these characters colourfully, yet matter-of-factly, such as:

“. . . a lovely lady, pink and white, floats in between the curtains, which proud lackeys open before her; the ringmaster, deferentially catching her eye, comes toward her breathing animal devotion; tenderly lifts her up on the dapple-grey, as if she were his own most precious  granddaughter about to start on a dangerous journey; he cannot make up his mind to give the signal with his whip, but then finally masters himself enough to crack the whip loudly; he runs along beside the horse, open-mouthed . . .” (Up in the Gallery 401)

Josephine the Singer and her mouse nation. K, director Daniel Gulko, Cirk La Putyka, Jatka 78, Czech Republic 2023. Photo: Lukáš Bíba

Aspects of Kafka’s work that potentially tie him to the circus industry include numerous appearances of animals, such as horses, dogs, pigs and others, as well as animal creatures, such as Josephine the Singer and her mouse nation, Red Peter the monkey, Samsa the beetle, or even other creatures, such as the half kitten or the half lamb.

His deliberate use of animal forms for human individuals, animals with human characteristics or humans with animalistic behaviour is literally fantasy-inducing. It invites physical action, a plastic representation of the bodily apparatus. This is further proven by this example from the short story A Hybrid:

“I have a curious creature, half cat, half lamb. A bequest from my father´s estate, it really developed in my care; before it was much more lamb than cat, but now it´s half and half. Head and claws come from the cat, size and stature from the lamb; both bequeathed the glint and wildness in its eyes, the soft and snug coat of fur, the manner of its movements no less leaping than skulking.” (189)

The gallery of corporeality embedded in Kafka’s work as groups of animal beings or humans with animal traits was also present in the work of Polish playwright Tadeusz Rózewicz,[5] especially in the dramas The Trap and The End of the Hunger Artist. For example, in the first chapter of The Trap, entitled The Maid’s Room, there are words such as “snake,” “bear,” “bees,” “drones,” “calf,” “cow,” “mule,” “pigeons,” “lamb,” “monkeys,” and the declaration of the character Franz, who says at the end, “I’m a dirty animal” (Rózewicz, The Trap). Here, corporeality is underscored by diverse fauna and represented figuratively by the aversion to meat or ingestion and the description of physiological manifestations such as sweating hands.

Next, in The End of the Hunger Artist the hero has freely chosen the cage as his field of action, and after discovering that the fly has died in his palm, he calls himself a miserable human fly without wings. The Impresario, then, says to him, “You stare at me like an ox at a painted door” (Rózewicz, The End 14), while the strange girl calls him a donkey who is just sitting in a cage. These adaptations of Kafka’s short stories underline their physicality and heighten their existentialism. 

For example, when Samsa was reincarnated as a strange beetle, the male body became insectile, so that the critique of the petty bourgeoisie, the caricature of hypocrisy and the cruelty of reality were ideologically foregrounded. On the human level, with his new physicality, he felt clumsiness, self-pity and hatred, and he could find no other reconciliatory solution to his impasse than to surrender to death.

The acrobat in a shell-like beetle costume as a Samsa. K, director Daniel Gulko, Cirk La Putyka, Jatka 78, Czech Republic 2023. Photo: Lukáš Bíba

The scenic freedom of plot stems from the convergence of breathable spaces between the lines, a structured lack of fixed order and a logic which springs paradoxically from absurdity. This innovative approach allows for the emergence of superstructures which serve as motivated interpretative extensions without denying the source.

In October 2023, the Prague multifunctional venue Jatka78 premiered a production aptly named K,[6] directed by Daniel Gulko.[7] The Czech ensemble Cirk La Putyka[8] describes its original project, featuring ten performers, as a “hallucinatory-comic trip into the world of Franz Kafka.” The spectacular is a colourful chaos of songs, acting and circus disciplines in which aerial acrobatics is most prominent. The creative team utilized an ingenious suspension system to lift upwards the acrobat in a shell-like beetle costume so that he appeared to climb with his legs curled up to the ceiling. Director Daniel Gulko enhanced the grotesquely horrific scene with lighting, almost to the point of denying Samsa’s terrifyingly daunting reality, which he evoked through the acrobat’s near-flawless coordination as he moved in inverted perspective. The melancholically existential tone dissolved into a grotesque exaggeration under Gulko’s direction.

Trailer of the production of Cirk La Putyka, K
A Landscape of Complicated Nonsense: Communication, Absurdity and Circus

Without a doubt, Kafka’s work features elements of absurdity to address the central problem of communication, creating scenic treatments with stage metaphors that are difficult to understand through conventional logic or obvious contextualization. This is usually the case when there is no apparent connection between the images presented and the perceived and manifested conflicts, or when paradox and unexplained relations create a shift between reality and dreaming.

According to Patrice Pavis, “the absurd is that which we experience as unreasonable, which lacks sense or logical connection. . . , which cannot be explained by reason and which denies man any philosophical or political justification for his actions” (19). In Report to an Academy, an ape named Red Peter commented on his animal past from the position of a humanized animal or ape imitating a human in order to secure a life outside the cage. In his confession, which could loosely be seen as an accusation, he repeatedly returned to words like “exit,” “inevitability” and “despair,” asserting literally that people are too often deceived by freedom. For example, he described, in a passage ridiculous for his species, his frequent experience while working in a variety show: as he was waiting to perform, he often witnessed acrobats practicing on trapezes that were suspended from the ceiling at a considerable height above the ground. These acrobats were thrown about, flying through space, catching each other (quoted above). And when Peter the Monkey was learning to be at least a moderately educated European and wanted to speed up the process, he jumped, quite naturally in his case, between the five rooms of instruction, as there was a different teacher in each room.

Kafka’s text introduced the relationships between the natural and the feigned as well as truth and self-deception; it foregrounded a contrast between the cramped space of the cage where captured animals were initially placed and the more comfortable space in large buildings with high ceilings. The trained animal’s mockery of human smallness seemed to enhance the representation of everything low. Daniel Gulko’s directorial treatment of Cirk La Putyka presented the two monkey heroes as verbose cabaret performers wearing suggestive animal head masks, moving about in gentle swinging movements, as they tried to break free from captivity by imitating human voices. The tenor of the performance defined the degree of pathos required to explore the possibility of freedom in the chaotic and unstable world presented on stage.  

On the other hand, in the story The Hunger Artist, the original human being has become a creature with animal features. The artist, with his fanatic resolution to not eat anything, lived proudly imprisoned in his own body, deliberately occupying a cage, unlike Peter the monkey, and was positioned in full public view, in the squares or the menagerie or near the stables. Deluded and with no one needing to count the days of his hunger strike, he became a pampered performer lost in the pageantry of his endeavours, for whom the drain of spectator interest, or consumerism,[9] “almost abhorrence of exhibitions of starvation” (Kafka 1990, 224), meant gradual decline and, by not finding a palatable diet for himself, inevitable physiological death.

From the narrator’s perspective, the decaying human body is seen metaphorically as a wilting flower of which only carrion remains. The description of the body is focused on the portrayal of a rachitic figure in a black leotard with an emphasis on details such as a thin waist, a bony arm, and an emaciated body. The hunger artist can be seen as an outline of the experience of a partially lived body; this interpretation is linked to Merleau-Ponty’s theory that posits the consciousness of first being seen and then being able to see, but without self-reflection. The protagonist experiences his own body precisely through the viewing of others; he allows himself to be observed by others, or imagines the observation of his own person, or watches himself in order not to be caught by someone. He affirms his seemingly monotonous existence through others, in the glare of onlookers’ eyes, in a world where he resides but at the same time lives in isolation.

The narrator, however, relinquishes his attitude of interpretive clarity: “In fact, the artist did not close his eyes to the real conditions either” (Kafka, Short Stories 224). As the hero under the pile of straw is transformed from less visible to barely perceptible and finally becomes invisible, he experiences his final humiliation of neglect and draws his last breath. Under Gulko’s direction, the short story The Hunger Artist found a scenic solution in the manipulation of objects (long sticks) that suggested a cage. In an imaginative but economical movement, the hero enacted his own existential drama with elements of bitter tragicomedy.

A scene from the performance of the Sinking Ship Production full-length show The Hunger Artist, with performer Jon Levin, winner of Summerhall Lustrum Award for Excellence at the Edinburgh Fringe 2017 and nominated for two Drama Desk Awards (Outstanding Solo Performance, Outstanding Puppet Design). Photo: Kelly Stuart and Adam Kissick/APAP

In this context, the American Sinking Ship Production full-length show The Hunger Artist,[10] directed by Joshua William Gelb, adapted by Josh Luxenburg and featuring a solo performance by Jonathan Levine, took a multi-genre approach with its emphasis on physical expression and appearance, focusing on both the emotions of the protagonist and the absolute absurdity of his actions.

The combination of award-winning acting and the carnival-nostalgic treatment by the director was tremendously successful: the result was a skilfully executed balance of central characters, audience participation, theatrical shorthand and devices of movement and object theatre. Crucially, this collaborative effort successfully showcased the elements of black humour which run throughout the story.  

Kafka’s heroes and their scenic representations often excel as equilibrists of uncertainty, for whom the mystery of balance is an unattainable standard, whether they allow themselves to be caged or to define an airspace above the menagerie in the circus tent, shrunken to the narrow platform of the trapeze.

Kafkaesque, Kafkaesque, Kafkaesque

In conclusion, I would like to suggest that—it’s all Kafkaesque! The term Kafkaesque is now recognized as an instance of standardized language, not only as an entry in the official Czech dictionary but also as a recognized token of erudite language internationally. Researcher Barbora Procházková from the Institute of the Czech Language, Czech Academy of Sciences, provides an extensive definition of the term Kafkárna/Kafkaesque as follows:

“The term has to some extent become synonymous with typical Kafkaesque elements, such as the feeling of powerlessness and isolation, the mental ambivalence of the individual, his alienation, the analysis of the absurdity of power and its apparatus. All of this is conceived in a timeless way and outside a certain space, and is therefore applicable to various social systems.”

The term Kafkaesque, such an intensely experienced reality of the past, is clearly portrayed in a story from the 1960s in Czechoslovakia, during the so-called Prague Spring. It took place at the Na zábradlí Theatre and the main actor was the original narrator Ivan Vyskočil,[11] co-founder of the theatre. At that time, the theatre company were struggling with technical problems, especially with sound. The outdated tape recorder did not meet the technical requirements of the highly popular production called If There Where a Thousand Clarinettes.[12] This is how Ivan Vyskočil recalled the event in the book of interviews:

“Before the beginning of the performance, the door of the theatre opened, . . . two gentlemen in leather coats came in and asked for the manager. They all immediately pointed to me. The gentlemen then asked me if we could go and sit somewhere alone. We then went to a little room at the back of the house—it was called Bomax, the gentlemen had keys to it . . . So we went in. I thought that things were getting tough, I was ready for anything, and the one—he was the secretary of the Minister of the Interior Rudolf Barak—said to me: ‘The Minister is giving orders and sending you a tape recorder from the Ministry’s fund.’ . . . Later, in a letter of accusation against Minister Barák, evidence was provided that he had arbitrarily provided the Divadlo Na zábradlí with a tape recorder from the property of the Ministry of the Interior.” (Hulec 46)

Snooping, informing, interrogating, questioning, conspiring, confusing and thwarting performance, these are all common occurrences in the world described in Kafka’s prose, as is the experience of a bodily condition, that of shame, or embarrassment, which appears to the observer(s) as comic, grotesque or ridiculous. Everything is interconnected in his characters, the most notable of which are Karl Rosmann, the Land Surveyor K, and the bank clerk Josef K . . .

Cirk La Putyka capitalized on these feelings by climbing to heights on unanchored surfaces, such as a free-floating curtain and a Chinese pole, by using illusionary magic to make what was seen appear to be intellectually inexplicable (for example, levitation) and by repetitive activity that involved sorting, comparing, listing and filling out meaningless forms. However, Gulko’s circus-like conception of Kafka as a dream, play and absurd naivety was successfully embodied, not only within the artistic choreographies, but also in the figure of the pianist, who supported the whole show not only with his live musical accompaniment and the punctuation of many successful gags but also by playing the piano in the air, thus perfectly complementing the dramaturgy of aerial acrobatics. 

The most strongly represented circus discipline is aerial acrobatics. K, director Daniel Gulko, Cirk La Putyka, Jatka 78, Czech Republic 2023. Photo: Lukáš Bíba

Kafka’s words seem to send warning signals not only to the citizens of his time but also to those who live in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The performance depicts a bizarre world framed by a spy, eminently destabilizing and bodily trembling. He constantly encourages the search for one’s own sense of being, for a conscious bodily existence in a time of everyday variables. An inversion of traditional values, along with the presence of confusion, misunderstanding and approval, is significant for the hypersensitivity of the modern and postmodern world. Life requires a balance of spiritual and physical equilibrium: “If we stand upright, we are never immobile, although it may appear so: in fact, we perform a multitude of miniature movements in order to shift our weight” (Barba and Savarese 9). Or as Jacques Lecoq[13] has noted: “Life is a constant movement, an imbalance caught in a fixed point” (9). Kafka also looked at the world deeply and thoughtfully and recorded his small observations in Aphorisms: “The true path is along a rope that is not stretched high, but just above the ground. It seems more designed to be tripped over than walked over.”

The indecipherable Kafka is a breeding ground for artistic imagination, with his dismembered swathes of emotionally and existentially rootless individuals. The interest of the human subject in liminal experience represents an impulse to build bridges between the banks of the word and the human body. The so-called “wow-effect”mediated by the circus trick has the potential of lightening to illuminate many of his ideas. Kafka’s work as a starting point can also be a finish line and a tape measure as the creators take their eyes off the page and hurl their bodies higher, populating the space above them with the associations embodied in the assemblages. A contemporary circus based on Kafka in performance and art has no need to retreat into a kitchen of thin sauces.  


Endnotes

[1] “The bubbles of silence rise to the moon that exercises on the trapeze of night.” (Hrabal, An Advertisement 15).

[2] “Sometimes we must sink to the bottom of misery to understand the truth – just as we must go to the bottom of the well to see the stars” (Havel 41).

[3] “I’m standing on a platform on a tram and I have no certainty whatsoever about my position in this world, in this city, in my family” (Kafka, Short Stories 30)

[4] “When Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from troubled dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into a monstrous insect” (Kafka, The Metamorphosis 7)

[5] Tadeusz Rozewicz (1921–2014) was a Polish poet and playwright.

[6] Cirk La Putyka: K (theatre production), directed by Daniel Gulko, premiere 3 October 2023, Prague Jatka78.

[7] Daniel Gulko is an American director and circus artist who has been associated with the Czech new circus scene and its development since the 1990s.

[8] Czech new circus ensemble was officially founded in Prague in 2009 by brothers Rostislav Novák Jr. and Vit Novák.

[9] “The profound identity crisis caused by ‘living a lie’ and retroactively enabling this life undoubtedly has a moral dimension: it manifests itself—among other things—as a profound moral crisis of society. The man who has fallen into the consumerist scale of values, ‘dissolved in the amalgam of civilization’s herdiness and not anchored in the order of being by a sense of responsibility higher than the responsibility for his own survival’, is a demoralized man; the system relies on this demoralization, deepens it, and makes it a social projection” (Havel 22).

[10] Josh Luxenburg: The Hunger Artist (production), directed by Joshua William Gelb, opening June 2017, the Connelly Theater New York City. For more details, see here (Αccessed 15 Mar. 2024).

[11] Ivan Vyskočil (1929–2023) was Czech theatre director, psychologist and pedagogue.

[12] Jiří Suchý, Ivan Vyskočil: If There Were a Thousand Clarinettes (production), premiere 9 December 1958, Divadlo Na zábradlí Prague.

[13] Jacques Lecoq (1921–99) was theatre teacher and director, founder of the International Theatre School Jacques Lecoq.

Bibliography

Barba, Eugenio, and Nicola Savarese. Dictionary of Theatrical Anthropology: On the Hidden Art of Actors. Translated by Jan Hančil, Dana Kalvodová, Jitka Sloupová and Nina Vangeli. Lidové noviny Publishing House—Theatre Institute, 2000.

Havel, Václav. The Power of the Powerless. Lidové noviny, 1990.

Hrabal, Bohumil. Kafkárna. See My World. Československý spisovatel, 1988, pp. 181–90.

—. An Advertisement for a House I Don’t Want to Live in. Melantrich, 1965.

Hulec, Vladimir. Jump into the Abyss—Ivan Vyskočil. Time Around Clarinets. Prague Scene, 2000, p. 46. See also Divadelní noviny 8, no. 2, 1999.

Hyršlová, Květa. “Afterword.” Franz Kafka. Odeon 1990.

Kafka, Franz. Aphorisms. Torst, 1998.

—. Amerika. Translated by Michael Hofmann. Penguin Random House U.K., 1996.

—. Short Stories. Translated by Vladimir Kafka. Odeon, 1990.

Lecoq, Jacques. Un point fixe en mouvement. Actes Sud, 2016.

Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. Visible and Invisible. Translated by Miroslav Petříček, Oikoymenh, 1998.

Procházková, Barbora. When You Say Kafkárna. Naše řeč, 2009, vol. 92, no. 4, pp. 220–23.

Putyka, Cirk La. K, directed by Daniel Gulko, 3 Oct. 2023, Jatka78, Prague.

Rózewicz, Tadeusz. The End of the Hunger Artist. Translated by Irena Lexová, Dilia, 1979. 

—. The Trap. Translated by Jaroslav Simonides. Divadlo Komedie— Company.cz, 2013. 

Strejčková, Hana. K—Picture Book of Absurd Dreams. Taneční actuality, 10 Oct. 2023. Accessed 15 Mar. 2024.

Suchý, Jiří and Ivan Vyskočil. If a Thousand Clarinettes, 9 Dec. 1958, Divadlo Na zábradlí, Prague.

Luxenburg, Josh. The Hunger Artist, directed by Joshua William Gelb, June 2017, the Connelly Theater New York City. Accessed 15 Mar. 2024. 


*Hana Strejčková (PhD) graduated from the Prague Academy of Performing Arts, where she majored in dramaturgy and directing in the Department of Drama Theatre. She studied physical theatre at the Jacques Lecoq International Theatre School in Paris and graduated from the Pascale Lecoq Scenography Studio L.E.M. She also graduated in Creative Pedagogy from DAMU KATaP and completed a three-level training in Meyerhold’s Theatre Biomechanics under the guidance of Master G. Bogdanov. She defended her PhD at the Department of Nonverbal Theatre at the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague. As a theatre director, she collaborates with the National Theatre in Prague (Laterna magika). She is a co-founder of the FysioART art association, which aims at interactive nonverbal theatre for children and young people, including theatre for early years. As a researcher, she collaborates with the Arts and Theatre Institute in Prague, and she lectures at Prague Academy and Palacký University. She is an Executive committee member of the Association of the Czech Theatre Critics AICT/IACT.

Copyright © 2024 Hana Strejčková
Critical Stages/Scènes critiques, #30, Dec. 2024
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