Abstract
The presented paper discusses the stage tradition of Samuel Beckett's plays in Czechoslovakia and then Czech Republic between 1964 and 1996. The essay is divided into three subchapters.
The first part situates the first production of Beckett's Waiting for Godot at the Theatre on the Balustrade's (1964) within a wider context: (1) early 1960s productions of foreign plays of the absurd, (2) specific context of the Czech theatre of the absurd, namely Václav Havel's Garden Party, (3) the Czech context of the poetics of the absurd which goes back to Jaroslav Hašek and Franz Kafka, and eventually (4) the unique concept of the theatre of appeal, developed at the Theatre on the Balustrade by Jan Grossman and Václav Havel. In the second part, the reception/absence of reception of Beckett's plays staged between 1964 and 1996 is discussed: the Theatre on the Balustrade's critical reception is compared to that of the 1970 Brno production of the same play; absence of stage adaptations in the period of normalization and post-1989 unconvincing return of Beckett on the Czech stage.
As a symptomatic example of this awkward re-appearance is examined Otomar Krejča's production of the Waiting for Godot. The last subchapter analyzes Jan Nebeský's production of Endgame within the context of his poetics.