(*1955)
(born Zdeněk Petrželka)
Poet, writer, playwright and theatre director
J. A. Pitínský is a masterful stage lyricist famous for his metaphorical images, coarseness and inclination toward the national classics – his inspiration being his home region of Wallachia. He significantly complements the original text, he sometimes works with complied works he merges and adapts.
His early career is linked to amateur theatre in the company of the Amateur Theatre Group, he entered the world of professional theatre after 1990 and was the co-author of the Muse Cabinet in Brno. However, he left the company after one year and became a freelance director in Czech and Slovak theatres. The following productions rank among his most distinguished ones in the Theatre on the Balustrade: Tanya, Tanya, Ritter – Dene – Voss, Theatremaker. He staged Jenůfa and Hippodamia’s Death in the Zlín Municipal Theatre, Job, Anxiety Sister and Elective Affinities in the HaDivadlo in Brno, Dido and Aeneas in the Josef Kajetán Tyl Theatre in Pilsen, Gazdina roba in the Slovácko Theatre, The Cunning Little Vixen in Uherské Hradiště, or Marysha, Markéta Lazarová, The Grandmother, Our Young Bucks, operas Tristan and Isolde and Dalibor in the National Theatre in Prague. He has also written the following plays: The Park, The Bulldog Thing, The Little Room, The Mother and others.
He did not study at any art school, he now works as a freelance director.
His theatre work has been acknowledged many times – he received the Alfréd Radok Award four times for Anxiety Sister in the Dejvice Theatre 1995, Job in HaDivadlo 1996, Dido and Aeneas in Josef Kajetán Tyl Theatre in Pilsen, 1998, Theatremaker at the Theatre on the Balustrade 1999), Czech Literary Fund Foundation Award two times, he received the DOSKY Award in Slovakia, his productions have won several times in the Theatre Newspapers survey. He received the Ministry of Culture Award for his contribution to theatre in 2007.
“The strong philosophical dimension and topics in Thomas Mann’s novel seem to be impossible to dramatize. Yet it does not apply to the eccentric and nondescript phenomenon of J. A. Pitínský, who, using wonderful stylization of actors’ motion and speech, the traditional sense of sound and rhythm, non-pathetic impressionism and imagination, created a forceful and feverish apocalyptic vision of 20th century Europe.”
Michal Novák, idivadlo
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