Theatre on the Balustrade

1958–, Prague

The Theatre on the Balustrade was founded by Helena Philippová, Ivan Vyskočil, Jiří Suchý and Vladimír Vodička, who staged their works in 1958 in a small hall in a historic building in Anenské Square in Prague. The space was initially not suitable for a theatre and the conditions were improvised (e.g. there were no cloakrooms) and the ensemble had to make a lot of effort to adapt the space for theatrical productions. The newly created theatre was led by Vladimír Vodička and named after the neighbouring street leading to the bank of the Vltava.

The theatre’s first production was If a Thousand Clarinets (Kdyby tisíc klarinetů, 1985), a result of Jiří Suchý’s and Ivan Vyskočil’s collaboration. The musical folding picture-book, as its creators called it, was very popular with the audience owing to its originality. Although the theatre abandoned its musically oriented poetics when Jiří Suchý went to the Semafor theatre, the show foreshadowed the theatre’s future success. In 1959, Ladislav Fialka’s art group joined the theatre and their Pantomime on the Balustrade (Pantomima Na zábradlí) met with international success. Apart from pantomime, it mostly staged dramas based on improvisation and depicting reality in an uncommon and playful way. In 1962, the theatre’s artistic director was Jan Grossman, who directed the theatre towards more serious works of the theatre of the absurd; Václav Havel, who worked there as a stagehand, became the theatre’s leading author. When Jan Grossman and Václav Havel were forced to leave in 1968, the authorial production was replaced by the classical drama. Vladimír Vodička, one of the founders of the theatre, was the theatre’s director until 1991. In his time and afterwards, many important directors, dramaturgs and actors worked in the theatre (Jaroslav Gillar, Evald Schorm, Karel Steigerwald, Petr Lébl, Jiří Pokorný, Jan Mikulášek, Jana Preissová and Jiří Bartoška). The Theatre on the Balustrade also won several prestigious awards. The theatre’s most important productions include The Garden Party (Zahradní slavnost) in 1963, Ubu Roi in 1964 and Temptation (Pokoušení) in 1991.