There is a long tradition of theatre in the Czech lands and numerous surviving records and monuments to attest to it. School theatre was introduced by Jan Amos Komenský, who included theatre in his revolutionary system of education, and by the Jesuits, who were among the most active promoters of Catholic Baroque theatre. Court and aristocratic theatre was another area of significance, an example of which is the important theatre and Baroque architectural monument in Český Krumlov. The Royal National Theatre of Count Nostitz (today the Estates Theatre) opened in 1783 in Prague and was the site of many important theatrical events and was where the premieres of Mozart’s operas were held. The fact that the Czech kingdom was part of the Austrian Monarchy from the 17th century meant that most performances during that period were in German. The Czech National Revival in the 19th century is closely linked to the development of new Czech theatre. In 1883, the representative National Theatre was opened; the building’s construction was mostly financed from a national collection, and its opening marked the culmination of efforts to establish Czech and Czech-language repertoire. Czechoslovakia became an independent state in 1918, and the interwar period saw the emergence of Modernist theatre, which was particularly associated with the work of two directors, Jaroslav Kvapil and Karel Hugo Hilar, and was where the Czech playwright Karel Čapek started out. Czech theatre was strongly influenced by the avant-garde directors Emil František Burian, Jindřich Honzl and Jiří Frejka. The February coup in 1948 had a dreadful impact on Czech culture and society, but the 1960s were an exceptionally auspicious time for Czech theatre. The small stages typical for this period became launching pads for the important director Jan Grossman and the playwright Václav Havel. The National Theatre also managed to thrive; the great Czech director Otomar Krejča, Alfréd Radok and the scenographer Josef Svoboda worked there in the late 1950s. Radok and Svoboda created the world-renowned Laterna Magika. The ‘Golden Sixties’ ended with the onset of Normalisation after the 1968 putsch, which marked a return to censorship and repression. After 1989, Czech theatre – like Czech society - has undergone a substantial, systemic, and financial transformation and seen the rise of a new generation of theatre-makers.
