"I am shocked by the measure of such lousiness": The Image of Class Struggle in the Productions of National Theatre in the 1970s
2014
Abstract
The essay examines five productions staged at the National Theatre in Prague during the 1970s that elaborated on the topic of so called class struggle. The analyses of stage adaptations of plays, whose authors - except for Mikhail Sholokhov - are virtually unknown today, reveal recurring dramaturgical as well as interpretive stereotypes and conventions by means of which the foremost Czech theatre actively participated in the culminating process of normalization (socio-political process which resulted in the establishment of so-called "real socialism" and that was triggered by the occupation of Czechoslovakia by the Warsaw Pact military troupes in August 1968).