Staging of Greek and Roman drama on Czech Scenes

The picture-text digital database, coming from a long-term collecting of facts, was created in the years 1998-2000 with the help of grants GA ČR(408/98/0704) and MČK (DA 98Po1UKK002) with the cooperation of the Theatre institute and the significant help of multiple institutions (especially the archives of the individual theaters) and individuals, who readily provided their collections. This first version was revised by the workers of the office, extended with translations and scripts and slowly turned into a program created specifically for this purpose by the Lanius company (www.lanius.cz) that allows its presentation and practical use on the Internet.

The databases now includes basic information about the staging of Czech professional, semi-professional and amateur drama and puppet theaters from the year 1889, the information about hosting foreign groups from the year 1960 and information about staging in the Czech television and Czech Radio.

The basic information includes facts about:

  1. Place and time of the staging (the date of the premiere or final performance, name of the group, place, where the staging was introduced, hosting by other theaters etc.)
  2. Staging team (translator, director, assistant director, creator of the scene and costumes, author of the music, choreographer, dramaturgist etc.)
  3. The cast
  4. Bibliographical information about the reviews of the staging
  5. Photographs and complementary materials (signs, posters)

The data is being constantly completed, we are adding full text reviews to the bibliographical information, dramatic texts and their edited versions used in the stagings and other available materials, including English resumes.

Future plans

The other outcome from the database, that is being prepared by the whole of the current work team (prof. J. Bažant, prof. E. Stehlíková, Mgr. D. Čadková, Mgr. P. Šípová, Mgr. Sarkissian and external coworker dr. N. Bažantová), will be a publication in Czech. It will include, apart from a richly commented and illustrated list of stagings also a disquisition about dramaturgy, directing and scenography of stagings of Ancient Greek and Roman drama.