(*4. 10. 1964)
In the 1980s a member of the Children’s Studio of the Theatre on a
String and of the amateur group Unroadworthy Caterpillar. From 1984 an
actress with the HaDivadlo Theatre in Brno. Until 1989 worked on the
scripts for all devised productions of the HaDivadlo Theatre. Returning
from maternity leave she found there were few opportunities for
actresses and began to devote herself more intensively to writing
plays. Arnošt Goldflam, who determined the whole poetics of the
HaDivadlo Theatre, had an influence on her early work. After his
departure from the theatre she developed her own independent, feminist
oriented work. She has been shortlisted for the Alfréd Radok
Playwriting Competition many times and won several awards: in 1997, 4th
place for her play All Saints, in 2000 3rd place for her Minach, in 2003 2nd place for Encroachment and in 2003 3rd place for 3sisters2002.cz. Since September 2004 she works as a lector for the dramaturgy department at the National Theatre in Prague.
In 2006 she returned to her maiden name Klestilová; the same year she had her biggest theatre success so far when her play My Country (Má vlast)
– a satirical take on the absurdity of current Czech politics produced
by the Rokoko Theatre – won the first place in the theatre survey of
the critics at the World and the Theatre magazine as a result, she won
the Alfréd Radok Award 2006 for the best new Czech play. Also in 2006
she wrote a script for the special summer project The Shed at the Prague National Theatre. The play, called Heroes, became a basis for the production by the directing team nicknamed Skutr.
List of plays:
Všichni svatí, 1997
Zisk slasti, 1999, premiere 7. 10. 2000 Festival Les divokých sviní, Činoherní studio, Ústí nad Labem (staged reading)
trilogie minach, 2000, premiere 11. 1. 2002 HaDivadlo, Brno
Stísněná 22, 2001, premiere 13. 3. 2003 Národní divadlo, Prague
3sestry2005.cz, 2002, premiere 17. 5. 2005 Divadlo Rokoko, Prague
Taking off, 2003, premiere 8. 6. 2003 Dejvické divadlo, Prague (staged reading)
HRA(J)!, 2003, premiere 10. 3. 2004 HaDivadlo, Brno
Benefice, 2005, premiere April 2005 Činoherní studio, Ústí nad Labem
Barbíny (together with Valeria Schulczová), 2005, premiere May 2005 Divadlo Na zábradlí, Prague
Usměj se, mami, 2007, premiere March 3, 2007 in the Theatre U Valšů, Prague
Translated plays:
trilogie minach English - Minach, A Trilogy about, and "for", Women
Stísněni English - Encroachment
3sestry2002.cz English - 3sisters2002.cz
TRILOGIE MINACH / MINACH
translated by Alex Zucker
/ 2 women, 3 men
The Minach Trilogy is a loosely connected set of three one-act plays, existentially harmonised probes into the intimacy of human relations seen from the point of view of a woman.
Minach, the first part, is made of a dialogue (really a monologue) of the Sister with her silent Brother, and a conversation of the Sister with her lover Ludwig. The siblings are bound by incest and a shared guilt for the death of their parents. Their lives are so bound together that one cannot exist without the other. The Brother bullies the Sister through his silence. The relationship between Brother and Sister is devastated by the presence of Ludwig ”the man from next door“ who is visiting the Sister. Ludwig is for her the only and last opportunity to begin to live a normal life, butthe Sister does not show it.
The second part, Head or Tails? is a fantasising little game. Here the Woman is here that which determines what will happen, and how. She has at her disposition, Man – the puppet. By naming the Man differently, she creates his various characters. At first she creates Harold, and when she is tired of his docility, she changes him into Edgar, but not even he is without problems, and so, discontented, she creates a new man. The figure of Ludwig emerges.
The Future of My I is a dialogue between the mortally sick Woman 1, whose husband has moved her to the country, and a paid nurse, Woman 2, who is leased by the man until the patient dies. The destinies of the two women encounter each other, on the one hand anxiety from the ending of life, longing still to belong to her husband, and on the other a promising future, that she will maybe begin a new life with the money earned nursing the sick.
STÍSNĚNI / ENCROACHMENT (STÍSNĚNÁ 22 / 22 ANXIETY STREET)
translated by David Nykl
/ 4 women, 6 men
The author wrote the text in the style of a musical composition – a polyphony of voices on the staircase of an old house, putting together fragments of the destinies of individual inhabitants. As adapted for this production, it was made more concrete and the story more topical; relationships between the characters were worked out in more detail and the setting changed to a gymnasium (used as a temporary refuge for the inhabitants of the house). The centre of attention is the ”space“ in which all the inhabitants are obliged to live together. The Woman walks through them and, from overheard scraps of conversation, micro-stories of the people living here are put together. In particular, she meets women who represent different stages of her life. The Woman thus looks at her own situation from the point of view of others’ experience (she is deciding whether she wishes to go on meeting the Man). The ghost of the Pregnant Woman passes through the house; in the past, in fear of a difficult pregnancy, she threw herself under a car belonging to one of the inhabitants of the house. An Older Woman has solved nothing, she is locked into a childless marriage with ”no cares“; perhaps only for her dog which is killed from jealousy by the lover she turned down years ago. The Lady comes from quite another time, a survivor from the old days who no longer wants to live in a world she doesn’t understand and which doesn’t understand her. Their adversaries are the men: Man, Her Man, Gentleman, Doctor and the homosexual couple Young Man and Older Man. The life stories flow side by side, or only slightly mesh together. At the end the lovers make up their quarrels, the man guilty of the road accident owns up in front of everyone, and the marital triangle reaches reconciliation.
Volánková is an author with a distinctive poetics which like (Sarah) Kane links rawness and disjointedness in a way of portraying human fates. (Radmila Hrdinová: Deset osudů stísněných v tělocvičně, Právo, 11. 4. 2003)
Iva Volánková’s plays are interesting not only from a woman’s point of view, but also for their language and dramatic method. /…/ Every voice or character carries his or her theme and response, and the whole has a fragile and ungraspable poetry. (Jana Machalická: Stísněná 22 ve Stavovském: medvědí služba autorce, Lidové noviny, 8. 4. 2003)
3SISTERS2002.CZ (3SESTRY2002.CZ)
translated by Stepán Simek
7 men, 4 women, chorus
As the title indicates, the play takes place in the present day. In the center of the action, we find Olga, Masha and Irina, characters that the author has pointed out. Olga is a cynical, spiteful old maid with neurotic affectations, and haunted by erotic thoughts. Irina is even more cynical (in opposite to Chekhov´s character), playing sexual games in public with her monumental lover. We also find Masha in the crisis - she has just had an abortion and has resigned herself from everything. In addition, she is trying to resolve the issue of artificial insemination - it's unnaturalness simply disgusts her.
However, the sisters´ world is of course not only complicated by their internal problems, but also by external attacks: a fire brigade during their training exercises invades the sisters´ garden; a mysterious man with a hat leaves a suspicious box; and Václav Klaus „personally“ telephones day-care worker Luisa (like a million other Czechs during his last election campaign). Masha´s husband cannot become director of his school because he was a collaborator with the Communist secret police. On the radio, we learn about a hostage-taking incident where „hundreds of hostages“ are detained by Chechen terrorists, and poisoned by some unknown gas during an unsuccessful liberation attempt.
The only characters that seemingly do not allow themselves to be pulled from the world are Andrej (much younger than Chekhov´s character), who does not come out at all from his room where he to always be playing computer games, and the Father - a retired general who has decided not to communicate with anyone.
Everything is intertwined in the resulting apocalypse where everything is annihilated. It is not possible to live normally in today's world with today's information. The world is neither for men nor for women - and certainly not for children. The apocalypse of course occurs also on the television, while the characters sit in the garden and „roast hotdogs“.
In 2002, the play received the prestigious award - 2nd Place in an anonymous competition for the best original theatre play (Alfréd Radok´s Award). The author´s acting profession inspired her to write: one year prior to writing the play, the author performed the role of Olga in the HaDivadlo (HaTheatre) production of Chekhov´s Three Sisters in Brno.
Not yet translated plays:
SMILE, MOTHER (USMĚJ SE, MAMI)
3 women, 1 boy
Two worlds are confronted in a concise story – Věra, a Czech pensioner, goes to New York to live with her daughter and the daughter’s family. Her good friend Maruška stays back home. Věra is hampered in her perception of the world by the traditional Czech ideas: there is only one right solution to every problem, and that your country will be your home regardless of the regime or economical conditions. Her daughter Anna is completely different – she feels at home in America with her husband. The husband is making plenty of money but did not come home for many months; nevertheless, they have several video conferencing conversations every day with at least five love declarations in each. Věra attacks quite rudely Anna’s way of life and the American optimism which, she says, is in the end nothing but hiding the lack of satisfaction with life and refusal to let anything like sadness, grief or death into one’s life. At the end, Věra’s presence completely destroys Anna’s careless security and happiness.
Czech production directed by Pavel Šimák opened on March 3, 2007 in the Theatre U Valšů.
SELECTED REVIEWS:
The story of the old Věra, who goes to live with her sister in America, carries two or maybe three big themes: a mother/daughter relationship, the strength of friendship that can be kept at the distance, and finally the theme that’s not negligeable for Klestilová – that of the controversial appreciation of patriotism.
Luba Skořepová shines in Pavel Šimák’s production as Věra, a common woman believing in the age-old family values and trying – not without pain – to impose on the mechanical and emotionally suffering marriage of her emancipated daughter (Martina Venigerová). Her Věra is moving through the Babylon of an American household fiercely, with humor and with defenceless misunderstanding. (…)
Smile, Mother is a fragile play that will both entertain you for an hour and make you think.
Radmila Hrdinová, Právo