KONEC PRIVILEGIA (DIVADLO, MÉDIA, KRITIKA)
THE END OF A PRIVILEGE (THEATRE, MEDIA, CRITIQUE)

Summary/Abstract: The two decades that passed from the Velvet Revolution are a proper opportunity for a reflexion of a role (or rather a change of roles) of theatre, media and critique. Theatre in the last centuries played in the Czech society always a specific role of a substitute of nonexisting freedoms (national, social and civic). This “nationally revivalistic” role culminated distinctly on the November days of 1989 when at the same time, however, its “nonaesthetic” functions exhausted themselves. During the next years theatre was looking for its sense and its spectators for a relatively long and complicated time. During this period it nearly completely cast away all the political and social-critical functions and yielded them to other media, particularly to television. But also here we witness a strange phenomenon. Professional critical reflexion disappeared from our screens (not so much from printed and electronic periodicals). In the central media critique as a discipline does not exist (the reflexion of politics is provided – with a friendly affirm of moderators – by politicians themselves, the reflexion of culture the artists themselves etc.). Only in the last decade previously impossible political themes penetrate into Czech scenes – and they have a growing response. Does it mean that theatre ahead of time – like many times in the past – announces the first symptoms of approaching serious dangers of proclaimed political and civic freedoms?

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