Abstract
This study analyzes the publication of the samizdat magazine Dialog , which offered a remarkably consistent and integrated diagnosis of contemporary Czech theatre in the 1970s. By identifying and critically reflecting on the theatre's innumerable exceptional achievements and alternatives, against the background of its predominantly and unvaryingly average (and below average) offerings, the magazine searched for, formulated, and maintained the value criteria for both theatre criticism and the theatre arts.
Despite the fact that after three years under trying circumstances the strength and resources of the editorial board and contributing authors were inevitably exhausted, the collection of texts presented by the magazine is undoubtedly one of the most relevant sources we have today on the theatre and productions of the period. The unsatisfactory state of other public professional critical platforms, as well as the many restrictions imposed on the daily press in the field of theatre arts, make the achievements of Dialog by comparison irreplaceable to historians today.
In the broader context, the magazine can be seen as an attempt to distil the quintessence of the present through a cri- tical reception of contemporary theatrical productions. A common leitmotif of Dialog, one that may be found in both its reviews and more comprehensive essays and studies, was an urgent expression of the inadequacy - or indeed the total absence - of stylistics in the theatre of its time. [