Bezčasí – Žantovská Irena (2016)

Irena Žantovská has many talents. Her theatrical talent awoke first; during her studies, she led a poetry theater, staging texts by authors close to her worldview – Marina Tsvetaeva, Sylvia Plath – as well as authors expressing the generational feelings of the late 1980s, that peculiar timelessness that, despite the grayness around, opened many doors to the creativity of the individual soul – she repeatedly found beatniks (Corsa, McClure, Ferlinghetti) for her productions, later also German expressionists (Lasker-Schüller, Trakl, Grosz), but her steps also led her to stage Czech poets – Kainar, Hrabě, and especially Orten – her direction of "Elegies" (currently at the Divadlo v Celetné with Jan Potměšil and Vladimír Javorský) is among the emblematic works of Czech modern poetry theater. Even in purely drama productions – from regional theaters to the National Theater – she primarily chose authors whose language – in both literal and figurative senses – was rather introspective, stripped of grand external gestures and bombastic emptiness. It is no wonder that she found the greatest mutual understanding with the likes of Chekhov, Strindberg, Genet... Her poetry belongs to that lineage, as an early reviewer of her first collection very astutely noted...