Alfred Radok's Contribution to Post-War Czech Theatre

Abstract

Alfred Radok, who died of a heart attack in 1976 in Vienna at the age of 61, was perhaps the outstanding Czech theatre artist of the post-war era. An assistant to E. F. Burian in the late 1930s, Radok in his subsequent work reflected not only that major artist's influence but also that of K. H. Hilar, the earlier towering directorial presence of Czech theatre. All three possessed an innate, intuitive sense of theatre as an autonomous art; all three were noted for their reworking of scripts for maximum theatrical impact; all three rejected the theatre of realistic illusion and were responsible for major innovations in total staging, in which all elements of production are exploited to serve the director's vision rather than to maintain fidelity to the surfaces of life.