Svěrák Zdeněk

Czech actor, humorist and scriptwriter. He is one of the most popular Czech cultural personalities. Born in Prague, he trained as a teacher at Charles University of Prague. His work contains over 300 musical texts and plays, and more than ten movies. His most famous film scripts are arguably Kolja (Kolya) (Academy Award winning film) and Obecná škola (The Elementary School) (nomination for Academy Award). Together with his close friend, Ladislav Smoljak, he created the popular fictional personality Jára Cimrman.

LIST OF PLAYS (selection):

/ Akt (The Nude), with L. Smoljak, 1967 première 4.10.1967, Divadlo Járy Cimrmana (JCD)

/ Vražda v salonním coupé (A Murder in the Saloon Compartment), with L. Smoljak 1970, première 14.5.1970, JCD

/ Posel z Liptákova (A Messenger from Liptákov), with L. Smoljak, 1977 première 20.4.1977, JCD

/ Lijavec (The Cloudburst), with L. Smoljak, 1982 première 22.1.1982, JCD

/ Dobytí severního pólu (The Conquest of the North Pole), with L. Smoljak, 1985, première 25.10.1985, JCD

/ Záskok (The Stand-in), with L. Smoljak, 1994, première 4.10.1994, JCD

/ Švestka (A Prune Tree), with L. Smoljak, 1997, première 12.11.1997, JCD
/ Afrika (Africa), with L. Smoljak, 2002, première 5.10.2002, JCD

TRANSLATED PLAYS:

Dobytí severního pólu English - The Conquest of the North Pole (in progress), Polish - Zdobycie bieguna północnego przez Czecha Karola Niemca

Dlouhý, Široký a Krátkozraký Polish - Długi, Szeroki i Krótkowzroczny

Posel s Liptakova Polish - Ogniwa I i II
Vyšetřování ztráty třídní knihy Polish - Dziennik lekcyjny
Akt Polish - Akt
Němý Bobeš Polish - Bobek niemowa czyli czeski Tarzan

Jára Cimrman - Ladislav Smoljak - Zdeněk Svěrák

THE CONQUEST OF THE NORTH POLE

(DOBYTÍ SEVERNÍHO PÓLU ČECHEM KARLEM NĚMCEM)

5 men

According to the authors, Mr Cimrman was commissioned by a Prague restaurant to create a tableau vivant representing the conquest of the North Pole. According to the customary opening lecture, the Czech genius undertook the task with his usual responsibility and travelled to the North Pole himself. There he found the Arctic Yeti and was the first to find out it is an autogamous being. He also allegedly wrote another play, A Torn Child, that gets its own lecture. There is a third lecture before the play itself starts, dedicated to the genre of living tableaux and allegorical pageants, as - the authors say - Mr Cimrman was a brilliant artist in this discipline, having created a famous trilogy of Czech history battle scenes called Our famous defeats.

The play itself begins when Prague North Pole expedition leaves civilisation in 1909 and gets on its way to the Pole, led by the Sokol chief Karel Němec. They travel on skis with no dogs (the sledge is being drawn by the famous strongman Frištenský. The story is told as seen by Assistant Instructor Foustka. The next tableau finds the expedition on an ice floe drifting towards the North. They fight melancholy caused by the slow progress by learning a patriotic song praising Czech ability to adapt. Nevertheless, soon they are plagued by hunger; the expedition decides it is necessary to slaughter and eat the dogs - it's just the strongman Frištenský who cannot understand he himself is considered the dog by the others. Before the slaughter, the Czechs organize a farewell to their comrade with many patriotic funeral speeches. They are then touched by their own sensibility and decide it would be more humane to let Frištenský freeze to death. It's by chance they find an alternative: they find frozen members of a previous American expedition led by professor Macdonald and take them along to make them conquer the pole posthumously. When there, the expedition members find they forgot to double the amount of necessary food while planning and there is nothing to eat for the journey back. As they re-assess the value of dead American bodies, a polar explorer of Czech origin returns unexpectedly to life while defrosting to tell them professor Macdonald was researching effects of hibernation.

In the epilogue, the audience finds out that Mr Němec expedition never claimed its success being the first to conquer the pole as it did not want the claim to go to Austro-Hungarian Empire.

Jára Cimrman - Ladislav Smoljak - Zdeněk Svěrák

STAND IN (ZÁSKOK)

6 men

Cimrman's play about the unlucky opening of Vlasta

The lecture this time concerns Cimrman's work as a dramaturge, consisting in reducing number of characters in world drama for his six strong amateur theatre company. He would cut the number of sisters in the famous Chekhov play to one and produced Hamlet without Hamlet. Having to solve a power failure during a performance led Cimrman to establish a basis for radio drama genre (the first text to be produced would be called Pitch Dark, and is performed during the show). The uniqueness of Cimrman's approach in the context of the dramatic writing of his time is then illustrated using "correspondence" between him and the famous playwright and National Theatre dramaturge Ladislav Stroupežnický.

The play Stand In itself tells a story of one performance by a strolling theatre company. One of the actors run away and is being replaced by a famous stand in actor Karel Infeld Prácheňský who offers to play for the whole of that evening box office receipt. The conflict between cynical approach of a famous lovey and the enthusiasm of the improvising troupe during both rehearsals and the performance leads to a chain of slapstick situations. This is probably the most sophisticated of all the Cimrman plays; it is a regular comedy commenting on the declining theatre profession.

(...) we follow the destruction of a work of genius by a real master, caused by a total incompetence of the guest actor who, although performing in Pilsen with the famous Vendelín Budil Company, is unable to keep in mind the two commands from Cimrman's Decalogue. They are number two - "Remember, onstage you are usually called a different name from your own. It's also useful to know the names of the other characters!" - and five - "Do not repeat everything after the prompter. Some of the lines go to your colleagues!" (...) Ladislav Smoljak´s directing gives a gentle and reliable impetus to the pataphysical machinery of Cimrman production - every embarrassing moment is where it should be.

(Eva Stehlíková, Svět a divadlo 2/94)

The main realm for Mr Smoljak and Mr Svěrák is the word. They absorbed creatively routine stereotypes of various language areas (teaching, sciences, politics, psychology, philosophy, radio and/or TV current affairs and education). They made their own the basic templates of literary and theatrical genres (detective story, fairy tale, opera, operetta) and they make fun of their standard logics. They don't perform as consequent a decomposition of well-known, tiring idioms as, for instance Václav Havel. Their artistic ambition is different. The rich and structured literary humour is as if permeated by the ontogenesis of a Czech sceptical intellectual. (...) The plays' content does not avoid infantile and pubescent themes (...) moving via public education and naive mock science to "pure" philosophy. Jára Cimrman, as a prototype of a distracted mad and comical (and also very improbable) polymath character, could be linked to a certain nation-wide self-flagellation. But a kind detachment makes the theme of great men in history satisfyingly wise.

Jan Kerbr, Svět a divadlo 2/1994