Hra na Makbetha

Alternative title: Play on Macbeth Macbeth Behind Closed Doors Play Macbeth
Synopsis: A version of Macbeth directed by Pavel Kahout and performed by the Living Room Theatre Company. Pavel Landovsky and Vlasta Charmostova are the Macbeths.
Language: Czech
Country: Former Czechoslovakia; Czechoslovakia
Medium: Audio; Television; Video
Technical information: Colour / Sound
Recording date: 1978
Duration: 75 mins

General: The Czech novelist, playwright, and poet Pavel Kohout was a member of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, most active in the 1950s, a Prague Spring exponent and dissident in 1970s until he was expelled to Austria. He was a founding member of the Charter 77 movement. Because he and other dissident theatre workers had been banned from working in the official theatre, he formed the company Living-Room Theatre with the actors Pavel Landovsky, Vlasta Chramostova, Vlastimil Tresnak, and his daughter, Tereza Bouckova to covertly perform an adaptation of William Shakespeare’s Macbeth in living rooms in Prague. Czech-born playwright, Tom Stoppard’s Dogg’s Hamlet, Cahoot’s Macbeth is inspired by these events.{wikipedia, accessed 10/2007].
History: Produced by Bytove Divadlo (Living Room Theatre), Prague beginning 13 July 1978, at the flat of V. Chramostova and S. Milota, Prague and in other private flats as ‘Macbeth Behind Closed Doors’. An entry for the play in World Shakespeare Bibliography notes that a sound recording was made by Michal Kima and a film recording by Stanislav Milota which was broadcast on television in Germany, Austria, Switzerland and France. No transmission details have been found (12/2007). A video copy of a stage production, dated 1978, is held by the Arts Institute in Prague at 90 minutes. This may be the performance filmed by Milota.
Textual information: Translated into Czech by E.A. Saudek; adapted by P. Kohout.

British Universities Film & Video Council