* 14. 2. 1976
Graduated in dramaturgy from the Janácek Academy of Performing Arts in Brno. Whilst studying, worked on productions in the Studio Marta. He took part in workshops for young dramatists in the course of the festival Bonner Biennial 2000 and has worked as a dramaturge in Czech TV Brno and as a lector in the dramaturgy department of the National Theatre in Prague. Now works as a dramaturge of radio plays in the Brno studio of Czech Radio.
His play Boiled Heads was awarded second prize in the competition for the best original Czech or Slovak play awarded by the Alfréd Radok Foundation in 1999.
List of plays:
Mein Faust, 1996, première June 1998 Festival Divadlo v pohybu, Brno (staged reading)
Trakl, 1998, première November 2000 Divadlo Na zábradlí, Prague (staged reading)
Varené hlavy, 1999, première 9. 3. 2001 Divadlo Husa na provázku, Brno
Je to idiot. Poradí si., 2001, première 30. 4. 2001 Les divokých čtení, Universal NoD - Roxy, Prague (staged reading)
W. zjistil, ze je válka (together with Jirí Pokorný), première spring 2005 Divadlo Na zábradlí, Prague
Translated plays:
VAŘENÝ HLAVY / BOILED HEADS / GOTOWANE GLOWY
2 women, 4 men
A middle-aged married couple, Miriam and Karel, live in isolation in the middle of a forest. However, in the course of one night several intruders force their way into their house. The first is a girl at the age of puberty, Linda, who insists she is looking for her runaway cat in the forest. Karel, who is suspicious, nevertheless allows her to sleep in one of their rooms, which for security he locks. Immediately afterwards a car crashes not far from the house and two injured young men try to gain access to the house. The multiple coincidences have fateful results for the characters. Linda pretends that she is Karel's stepdaughter; she swears at him and complains to Miriam. It is not clear whether she is only being provocative or whether she is ventilating a real trauma. Karel goes along with her game. Both the new arrivals find it strange that a father should lock his daughter in her room, and try somehow to intervene in the row. Linda brings the whole argument to an end when accompanied by one of the youths she runs away into the forest. The other youth has to stay in the cottage because of a broken leg. Early the next day Karel takes him to hospital, in advance cutting off part of his ear as a warning. The young threesome decide not to leave the situation just like that. They succeed in persuading the pub lady-killer J.T. to set out for the cottage with a pistol and scare the couple a little bit. However, Linda and J.T.'s retaliatory measures end quite unexpectedly - Karel and Miriam eventually overcome the attackers and literally boil their heads. The text balances on the edge between a cool thriller and an ironic black grotesque.
The audience does not recognise action as an illusory reality but accepts the offered play which moreover has the comically very rewarding and situationally enlivening principle of drama: paranoia
(Tomáš Syrovátka: Hledání divadla chcete-li dobře uvařené hlavy, Svět a divadlo, 2001/3)
TRAKL
scenes from a poet's life
2 women, 9 men
The play is freely inspired by the life and personality of the Expressionist poet Georg Trakl. Horoščák's Trakl takes place as though it were a single moment when Trakl, who was sent as a doctor to the front during World War I, shoots himself in the field hospital. During one dizzy moment the most important events of his life pass before his eyes. The story unfolds in freely linked scenes. Trakl meets his friend Karl, his sister Greta (with whom he connected by more than brotherly love) and his girl friend, the prostitute Sonia. His anxiety and depression he tries to solve through experiments with various drugs, and he comes into conflict with the police - he is suspected of the murder of a little girl. In the middle of the fury of war he is unable to bear any more of the cruelty of reality and shoots himself. As an embodiment of the spirit of a time which is over, the last Austro-Hungarian Emperor, Franz Josef passes through the play. The ever-present figure of the Emperor is the paternal, authoritative antithesis of Trakl. Horoščák sets their speeches in close conjunction and thus expresses the polarity of the life experience of the doomed poet and claims which the supreme authority of society thoughtlessly affirms. Excerpts from Trakl's poetry are used in the play, colourful visions arising from Expressionism are projected in poetic stage directions.
/The play/ could however have been written because the author instinctively recognised in Trakl's failure of will for life, in the absence of an elementary sense for self-preservation, the opportunity to say something about the feeling of the time, about the fatal inclination of the whole of society for which survival begins to be the most difficult thing in life.
(Marie Reslová: Přežít je to nejtěžší v životě, Svět a divadlo, 1999/3)