Pozdně osvícenská dramaturgie Jana Vedrala – Bojda Tomáš (2025)

This book-length interview with prominent Czech theatre and radio dramaturge, playwright and teacher Jan Vedral offers a unique opportunity to follow the development of Czech theatre and radio over the last half-century through the story of one creator. Rather than presenting a conventional biography of a figure most closely associated with Prague’s Divadlo na Vinohradech, it provides an engaging and committed view behind the scenes of creative work, revealing previously unknown details about the background to key events in modern Czech theatre and radio culture. As someone directly involved in cultural life, Vedral describes the mechanisms of censorship during the normalization period, the gradual thaw of the 1980s and, in an extensive chapter, the still insufficiently documented transformation of Czech culture in the 1990s. This includes his personal involvement in major cultural-diplomatic efforts to stabilize the Czech cultural sphere under market conditions, followed by his work in the new millennium. The book also examines Vedral’s teaching career through its various stages, taking into account the connections between all the creative fields in which he worked throughout his life. The interview was conducted by radio and theatre historian Tomáš Bojda, who also prepared the book. It includes an extensive name index and was published on the occasion of Jan Vedral’s seventieth birthday. The contents are in Czech.