*2.1.1971
After finishing a high school in Ostrava he graduated from the Drama Faculty of Janáček Academy of Performing Arts (JAMU) in Brno as director. Between 1993 and 1998 he worked as director, member of the joint board of administrators and later as the artistic director of HaDivadlo in Brno. At the same time, in 1994 - 1998, he was Arnošt Goldflam's assistant at his department of directing at JAMU. Since 2002 he is the artistic director of Komedie Theatre in Prague.
In 1989 he started to work with Brno Surrealist Circle A. I. V, from mid-1990s he took membership in the Group of Czech and Slovak Surrealists. He published his texts in Analogon and Intervence magazines, but also in Literární Noviny and Salon Práva literary periodicals. He also worked as an artist and exhibited at the Group of Czech and Slovak Surrealists exhibitions. From 1998 on he takes part on the Analogon Nights cycle (13 to date); from these, he produced a four-part series for the Czech TV. In August 2004, his first feature film Vaterland - A Hunting Diary opened, based on Jařab's own screenplay.
Since his Brno years, he writes and directs his own plays and dramatizations, currently showing at the Komedie Theatre in Prague. These include Nosferatu, Parsifal, Three Golden Hairs of the Wise Old Man, Prince Sternenhoch's Sufferings. He also directs other, mostly German-speaking playwrights such as R.W.Fassbinder - Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant, Elfriede Jelinek - Klara S. Recently, his writing-directing activities culminated in a series of plays loosely connected to specific localities in Prague (Vodičkova - Lazarská, Žižkov, Charles Square). They are stark scenarios full of mysterious atmosphere that results from unvoiced relationships between characters.
The production of Vodičkova - Lazarská has been selected for the prestigious Wiesbaden festival Neue Stücke aus Europa (June 2008).
LIST OF PLAYS (selection):
/ Jeux d´Enfants aneb Paříž XIII, Jeux d´Enfants, or Paris XIII, 1995, premiére 22.4.1995, HaDivadlo Brno
/ Klimeš (with Luboš Balák), 1997, premiére 16.5.1997, CED Brno
/ Ostrostřelci (monodrama), Sharpshooters, premiére 24.9.2003, Pražské komorní divadlo
/ Nosferatu, premiére 2.11.2007, Pražské komorní divadlo
/ Parsifal, premiére 29.4.2005, Pražské komorní divadlo
/ Tři zlaté vlasy děda Vševěda, Three Golden Hairs of the Wise Old Man, premiére 10.2.2007, Pražské komorní divadlo
/ Utrpení knížete Sternenhocha, Prince Sternenhoch's Sufferings (after Ladislav Klíma), premiére 20.4.2007, Pražské komorní divadlo
/ Vodičkova - Lazarská, 2005, premiére 1.12.2005, Pražské komorní divadlo
/ Žižkov, 2006, 19.10.2006, Pražské komorní divadlo
/ Karlovo náměstí, Charles Square, 2007, premiére 7.3.2008, Pražské komorní divadlo
TRANSLATED PLAYS:
Vodičkova - Lazarská German - Die Kreuzung
VODIČKOVA - LAZARSKÁ
5 characters (4 men, 1 women)
A main street in the heart of Prague where shoppers go shopping, where young lads go to drink, foreigners to show off, everybody to change tramways during the night, and the failures to fail. But people do live in this dusty and noisy "shop window" and events of almost mythical dimension can happen here. Crowd pushes a nosy companion from a local bistro under the tram. That means saving an absent-minded prostitute from death - whether by chance or intentionally is not clear.
The text is a result of interaction with the author's production inspired by a found text, passages and thoroughfares, but also by a video recording, photographs and soundtrack made with a mobile phone. The project is both a borderline documentary and a parable about vistas into different spaces and about defending basic human dignity.
David Jařab's scenario is a playful inter-textual game. The documentary line is mixed up with an apocryphal one: a model for one of the characters is Jesus Christ (number 5 in the text). The man keeps appearing and disappearing unexpectedly, changes beer into water, people talk about miracles in connection to him.
Kateřina Rathouská, Mystérium Lazarské a Vodičkovy, Divadelní noviny, 10. 1. 2006
The opening, seemingly nonsensical lines signal immediately this won't be traditional storytelling. Instead, the audience is offered an opportunity to join, step by step, text and scenic clues into a jigsaw puzzle linking a tabloid story to a meeting with an extraordinary being. (...) Jařab's successful parable offers a new perspective of everyday situations, it discovers the atmosphere of a place that he knows only too well and that he discovers and resurrects for the others. This perspective is neither obvious nor superficial, the excellent script gives it depth and also - thanks to imaginative set and natural acting - incredible lightness. The artistry of Jařab's expression is mainly in its form, in a theatrical language that offers comparison between this admirer of Surrealism and the film guru of the same artistic orientation - Jan Švankmajer. With his project Vodičkova - Lazarská Jařab proves he's able to tell a story as well and as riveting as the filmmaker.
Tereza Vinická, Zázračné vzkříšení Lazara Vodičky, Lidové noviny, 7. 12. 2005
ŽIŽKOV
6 men, 5 women
A play about love, crime and the fact that you better look after your womenfolk when a stranger appears or it all could come to a bad end.
Another instalment of a free "topography" cycle moves from central Prague of Vodičkova St - Lazarská St to another specific locale, that of a traditionally worker district of Žižkov in Prague. It concentrates on a group of local young people living in the deadly drabness of a big city. The place is dominated by jealousy and gossip, with some love and friendship thrown into the mixture. The stasis of these relationships is disturbed by the arrival of a Stranger: he is an exile returning to his birthplace. His appearance immediately upsets existing ordered relationships: the women suddenly come to life again; the men are trying to plot to take advantage of the "foreigner". The stranger is interesting, provocative and charming - but he also holds a mirror to people's own lives. In the end he disappears, and it is not clear whether he was killed for his money, or just left the place.
Žižkov has not been written with only Prague in mind - it could be set in the suburbs of any other city (possibly with the change of the play's title), as boring drabness of human relationships can be found anywhere in Europe.
SELECTED REVIEWS:
While Vodičkova-Lazarská is a text based on the playwright's lyric and poetic confession, in Žižkov the dramatist uses a form that is more prosaic and accessible, and also closer to the theatre of classical drama.
Tereza Vinická, Scénické kouzlo Žižkaperku, Lidové noviny 25.10.2006
A remarkable shift of David Jařab's theatrical poetics from almost Surrealist "strangeness" that was the hallmark of his initial productions at the Komedie Theatre, to authenticity and suffocating realism, reminds me of the similar shift in the Czech art in 1940s. One can only wish it would be still as enlivening and fruitful.
Bronislav Pražan, Nová původní hra o naší bídě, Týdeník Rozhlas, 20.11.2006
Bram Stoker - David Jařab
NOSFERATU
5 men, 3 women
Dramatisation
It is curious that the post-gothic, bloodthirsty novel of Dracula, one of the most famous among the Twentieth Century myths, has lately become so popular. Although this dramatisation follows the basic storyline, it stresses the plot's relation to the fate of individual and today's society inviting deeper interpretations. The play can be seen as a probe into the darker sides of human psyche and into darker tiers of contemporary Western society. From the play's perspective, Dracula represents the Evil that could be interpreted, for instance, as personification of terrorism - the danger that is invisible yet potentially ubiquitous.
Count Dracula, stylised into a distinguished, elegant gentleman, does not look threatening at first. His castle is visited by Harker, a decadent youth hampered by prejudice. Dracula only has to wake up the latent evil in his subconscious: on his return to London, Harker infects with the same evil his wife Mina by transferring onto her his own nightmares. After coming to a visit to Dracula, Mina completely submits to him. The "Exorcist" Van Helsing becomes Dracula's main opponent, but he is unable to destroy the Count who represents the general evil. Dr Seward is also attempting to bring some order into the dark and grimly dreamy atmosphere of the play as he is trying to cure Mina from her nightmares. Dracula is being helped by the double-edged character of Lilith, a personification of sexual perversion and sadistic Evil, sucking out strength out of Harker.
The play is a parable using both motives of the classic Bram Stoker story and the atmosphere typical for decadent writing of the late 19th Century. The lines uttered by the characters are stark and frosty while opening opportunities for stage interpretation.
In Nosferatu, David Jařab takes another route: Dracula for him is a phantom of a soul, evil, irrational and eating away human society from the inside through fear. It does not surprise that the script doesn't mention the word "vampire" once and that no blood is being sucked. On the other hand, one possible interpretation is quite explicitly offered: terrorists may be this kind of vampires in today's world: in the projection on side panels we see the loop of pig slaughtering fading into takes of people getting onto a bus. Meanwhile, Dracula's helper Mr Renfield puts down a lonely suitcase...
Kateřina Kolářová, Bezkrevní upíři, Reflex, 22.11.2007
The viewer finds himself almost beyond the gates of rational perception and has to decide for himself: is this an impromptu play using pulp literature to achieve a kind of spiritualist seance and taken to formal perfection, or can we see in it a serious attempt at entering the subconscious. It's not by chance Jařab belongs to the Czech surrealist community.
Vladimír Hulec, Reflex - Ex, 22. 11. 2007