(*1979)
director
Špinar’s work is characterized by spectacular scenic images and a significant defamiliarization of the text, in which he emphasizes working with actors, but he is also associated with queer aesthetics.
After his graduation, he was the regular director at the Na Vinohradech Theatre in 2008-2010, where he staged the critically acknowledged Woyzeck and Mary Stuart. He later worked with many theatres in and outside Prague (Švandovo Theatre, Reduta Theatre Brno, Petr Bezruč Theatre, Klicpera Theatre in Hradec Králové) and have created more than thirty productions. Since the season 2014/2015, he has worked in the National Theatre – first as a regular drama director, later as an artistic director. He has staged Pictures from the Insects’ Life, Othello, Manon Lescaut (2016), Midsummer Night’s Dream (2016), Pride and Prejudice (2016); Frailty, Thy Name is Woman (2017); For Beauty (2019); Beware of Pity (2018), Lunch at Wittgenstein (2019). His independent artistic project Homo 40 he created in 2020 in Letí Theatre follows his first piece HOMO’06, which he wrote and directed for the theatre more than ten years ago.
He studied acting and directing and DAMU and is currently the head of drama in the National Theatre Prague. He received the Josef Balvín Award for the production of Woyzeck at the Na Vinohradech Theatre in 2009 at the Prague German Language Theatre Festival and the Alfréd Radok Award 2010 for the Best Production as well as the Mark Ravenhill Award for My Romantic History in the Petr Bezruč Theatre in Ostrava as the Best Staging of a Contemporary Text 2014; he has also received other awards.
“Špinar ranks among directors, who are not afraid of expressivity or dramatic pathos, which appears to have vanished from Czech stages. He merges the ability to see the “big” and “small” space. As he studied acting, he has a sense of actor’s action and the actors seem to awaken new and unrevealed qualities in themselves.”
Jana Soprová, scena.cz