(*1969)
After graduating from the Faculty of Education in Prague, Zdeněk Jecelín taught at a private school in the town of Kolín. He was accepted by the Drama Faculty of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague to study directing, later changing to dramaturgy and becoming the pupil of Professor Jaroslav Vostrý. As a dramaturge he worked on productions by the Municipal Theatre in Mladá Boleslav and the Theatre Association CD 94. He is head of a private drama school in Kolín, and has written four plays for the theatre. His first, Tristan and Isolde (1998) won third prize from the Alfréd Radok Foundation. Family Seat (1999) won a competition for original plays held by the National Theatre, and was staged in the Theatre of the Estates. He also wrote the comedy Captain Fracasse (for the Těšín Theatre), a love-story set amongst the bohemian artists of Renaissance Florence. His latest play Satana (2004) was awarded honourable mention in the Alfréd Radok Awards of 2004.
List of plays:
/Tristan a Isolda (Tristan and Isolde) , 1998, première 25. 2. 2000 Činoherní studio, Ústí nad Labem
Kapitán Fracasse (Captain Fracasse), 2001, première 23. 6. 2001 Česká scéna, Český Těšín
Rodinné sídlo (A Family Residence), 1999, première 27. 3. 2002 Národní divadlo, Prague
První opera (The First Opera), 2000
Satana, 2004
Tisíc a jedna noc: Královna hadů (An Arabian Night: The Snake Queen), , première 5.5.2007 Loutková scéna Jihočeského divadla, České Budějovice
Not yet translated plays:
TRISTAN A ISOLDA / TRISTAN AND ISOLDE
3 women, 12 men, chorus
This play based on the medieval legend is obviously inspired by the current interest in Celtic history. The atmosphere and narrative style are reminiscent of fantasy řction. But in spite of the exotic setting the characters think and behave in a markedly modern way. Tristan and Isolde gradually become aware of many different kinds of love, but also of responsibility and the conflict between honour, duty and emotional honesty. In this world magic and fantastical řgures (a dragon, a goblin named Frocin) are as real as is the hatred that devours Isolde's mother Nimue, who has never known love. The spectacular light scenes would do any action movie credit. The story-line has a fairytale simplicity, but the heroes' actions and motivations are more ambivalent: they are looking for the truth, in themselves and in others and, against all the odds, intuitively seeking ways to happiness without breaking their code of honour.
The text makes use of a "big screen" setting, of legendary and historical struggles over the independence of Ireland, and of almost fairy-tale motifs (the goblin Frocin, the dragon) for this story of eternal lovers. The way in which the author sees these actions - a mixture of kitschy colour prints, idealised chivalrous honour and sharp, "purely" expressed feelings and relationships (from the aesthetic point of view, whether stroking or rubbing up the wrong way) - is extremely contemporary. /.../ The fantasy of the stories interpenetrates with sensitively drawn "contemporary" psychology and a permanent tension in several amorous relationships.
Marie Reslová: Nebozí milenci, Svět a divadlo, 2000)
RODINNÉ SÍDLO / A FAMILY RESIDENCE
7 men, 7 women
After an absence of two years, a descendant of a Russian noble family Andrej Smirnov flies home from Paris to get married to another aristocrat, Olga Rodinova. Olga's aunt Valerie Balakireva organizes a fancy-dress ball echoing those from the time of Tsar Alexander the First. Andrej goes to the ball but only to scorn the other guests with poisoned remarks: he is no more the entertaining companion he used to be while trying to revive the ancient Russian nobility's lifestyle. He is not able to explain why it is so, not even to his best friend Michael Voznesenski.
During the betrothal ceremony at the former family home in Krasnopol, bought with money made in France and given by Andrej to Olga and her relatives, Andrej unexpectedly finds himself in the company of Olga's nihilist-minded sister Tatyana. Her completely negative attitude to life masks a childhood trauma: her parents died in a Communist jail. After initial hostile exchanges Andrej and Tatyana go for a short and brutal lovemaking only to elope together to Paris immediately afterwards.
But Andrej doesn't find happiness even with this new woman in Paris. Moreover, his life is threatened as he refuses to continue to work for the Russian Mafia in France that supplied the money to buy Krasnopol in the first place, and as a consequence both Tatyana and Andrej decide to return to Russia. Both sisters are unable to reach reconciliation, especially after Tatyana tells Olga she's ready to leave Andrej and start a new career as a curator in Paris. Michael challenges his former friend Andrej to a duel (he's unable to forgive him for the way he treated Olga). When Andrej refuses the challenge, Michael shoots him dead, thus effectively destroying any chance for a relationship with Olga he'd been craving. On the plane to Paris (his flight there was paid by the Russian Mafia who commissioned Andrej's murder) he meets Tatyana who doesn't suspect any wrongdoing on his part.
The central plot is interwoven with a range of secondary stories about other idiosyncratic small characters. The play is written in the spirit of light comedy exploiting several motives from the Russian classical literature without sending them up.
The play was awarded 2nd Prize at the Prague National Theatre Playwriting Competition and produced in March 2002 at the Estates Theatre.
SATANA
9 men , 3 women
Two warring families, two rivals in love, grenades from revolutionary Russia, in the archaic world of the Caucasian nation the Narts. Who is Satana, and whose life will she ruin? An exotic detective story, a love story with mystic elements.
On her deathbed, Dzerassa asks her sons Wyryzmeg and Kamyk from the line of the Ochsortags to keep watch over her grave for the first three days and three nights after her funeral. She is afraid of the forest spirit Wasterdz, who once tried unsuccessfully to seduce her and who threatened her that if she did not give herself to him while still alive, he would at least violate her body after her death. The sons fulfil their mother's wishes. Wyryzmeg keeps guard the first two nights and doesn't blink an eyelid. On the third night the younger Kamyk takes over. And he doesn't last out. He gives in to temptation, drinks rong with the sprite Syrdon, and makes love to Dzylan of the Borovec family, of the line of their age-old enemies the Ochsortags.
Nine months later, when Wyryzmeg is to marry Elda of the Alagovec family, a new-born baby is found on Dzerassa's grave. Nothing can be kept a secret in the mountain villages of the horse breeders, so it must have been left by a foreigner - or.... No one dares to say what they are thinking: Could it be the child of the dead Dzerassa?
Satana - for that is what everyone calls her - is adopted by Wyryzmeg and Elda and brought up with their own son. But Satana ages twice as fast, and at nine years old is ready for marriage. She is beautiful, gorgeous, but men are afraid of her. She meanwhile longs for love, and her chosen one is Wyryzmeg, her adoptive father and maybe even her brother.
War is about to break out between the Ochsortags and the Boroveces and it seems that the leading role will be played by Russian weapons which are being traded to everyone by the contemptuous Syrdon.
Satana is beautiful and clever; it only takes a little subterfuge for her to become Wyryzmeg's second wife. But taste grows with food, and Satana's hours are still ticking away twice as fast. She has no idea that death is on her heels, that she invokes a curse on those close to her, that the destinies of all those who met at Dzerassa's grave on that long ago third night will again horribly intertwine.
TISÍC A JEDNA NOC: KRÁLOVNA HADŮ / AN ARABIAN NIGHT: THE SNAKE QUEEN
10 men, 6 women
The almost detective story starts with an apparently banal incident - an apple is stolen by a poor Muslim thief Salim from a daughter of a rich Jewish merchant named Sarah. But there is more to the story than meets the eye: although the two are enemies at the moment of theft they have to join their forces as they run away from their pursuers. In a fast-moving play full of action and with the scenes linked together in a dynamic way there is also a romantic subplot.
Although the play uses motives from the Thousand and One Night stories (The Queen of Snakes, The Three Apples) and has elements of myth at its basis, it's telling a contemporary story with realistically presented characters that could live at any time. It's combining straight drama with both puppet and shadow theatre techniques. The author also uses the inspiration from a movie cartoon Laputa Castle in the Sky (1986) directed by Hayao Miyazaki. The text is close to the same author's plays Tristan and Isolde and Satana.
It was first produced on May 5, 2007, by the Puppet Stage at the České Budějovice Theatre.