A Humanistic Theatre of the Absurd

Jan Grossman is celebrated among theatre enthusiasts throughout Europe, as well as in the Czech Republic, as a remarkably original director who put Czech theatre on the avant-garde map during the 1960s through his work at Theatre on the Balustrade. He moved to this small, progressive theatre in Prague’s Old Town when he became director of the drama company in 1962. The rigorous treatment of social and existential questions in his stagings meant that he was relegated to guest engagements in provincial theatres following the Warsaw Pact invasion of 1968. He finally returned to Theatre on the Balustrade during the cultural thaw of 1988 and, following the Velvet Revolution, continued directing there until his death in 1993. Twenty-fifth May of 2025 is the centenary of his birth.

Much writing about Grossman’s work has been scholarly. Here we provide a glimpse of his ground-breaking stagings during the nineteen sixties through the lens of his creative thought and his work. We think that you will find his approach interesting and his ideas stimulating. We begin with his concept of theatre, how he prepared for stagings and how he worked with actors during a time of cultural ferment. We continue with three productions which were key to making his name and that of Theatre on the Balustrade both locally and internationally. We have relied upon published and primary sources, our own theatre experience and additionally upon an interview with the actress Marie Málková who joined the Theatre on the Balustrade in 1962, played numerous major roles and became Mr Grossman’s wife.

Theatre on the Balustrade: Its Place in a Cultural Flowering

Theatre on the Balustrade was founded in 1958, four years before Grossman became director, when a group which was performing in Reduta in central Prague, sought a more stable home in an old union hall in the Old Town. Reduta, relatively new itself, was (and still is) a jazz venue, and both were part of a cultural flowering which lasted thorough 1968.

This resurgence followed a period of terror and repression. Twenty years earlier, the Czechoslovak Communist Party had assumed power in a coup d’état. It pronounced jazz to be “imperialist decadence” and required “Socialist Realism” in theatre, literature and the plastic arts. Following the deaths in 1953 of both Stalin and Klement Gottwald, the Stalinist Czechoslovak Party Chairman, conditions loosened somewhat, although culture and the press remained heavily censored. In 1957, another development in Czechoslovakia favoured theatres in particular. A new law allowed institutions – as opposed to the ideologically and administratively cumbersome state – to manage theatres, and the Balustrade, Rokoko and Semafor were among a number of smaller theatres and cabarets springing up as a result. Their repertoires were varied, featuring poetry, stories, sketches, cabaret, even mime, and their relationship with the public was relaxed, with improvisation and sometimes even jokes and banter.

Jan Grossman’s Shaping of the Drama Company

Grossman was invited to become the drama company’s director when Vyskočil returned to Reduta. He was a literary theorist and critic whose uncompromising intelligence and rigor got him dismissed from publishing – in 1948, editing at The Young Front, and in 1959, when his three-year editorship at the state publishing house Československý spisovatel was cut short. His theoretical writing included articles for theatre publications, and in both cases, he obtained theatre engagements as a dramaturge and later, director. So, when he arrived at the Balustrade, Grossman had already been thinking about the small theatre movement from both theoretical and theatrical perspectives.

The following year he synthesized his thinking in a paper entitled “The World of the Small Theatre”, presented at an important seminar of forward-looking professionals devoted to the subject. (Theatre (Divadlo) 14:7, September 1963) He reflected on definitions of this type of theatre, finding its unique quality in an authentic meeting of actors and public metaphorically in a particular set of historical and artistic circumstances. He evaluated Socialist Realism which prescribed a social and political order and had therefore rendered this kind of meeting impossible in post-war Czech theatre. And he analysed the potential of the small theatre, its artistic and administrative flexibility, its energy and freshness, and imagined realising that potential by fostering discipline and professionalism together with increased experience. The paper had an immediate impact on those who were working to renew the theatre’s capacity to speak meaningfully to the public.

Theatre on the Balustrade was an ideal place for Grossman to put these ideas into practice. He wanted to introduce the professionalism of a repertory theatre, not of the “stone” type, run by the state and reflecting its ideology, but one whose repertoire developed organically from an analysis of social questions and how people could reflect upon them. The exchanges that audience and actors had enjoyed under Vyskočil could form the basis of more focussed, subtler public engagement for which he coined the word “apelativnost”. Marie Málková characterises it as “a continuing dialogue between the stage and the auditorium”, challenging the audience so that they wouldn’t passively “consume the plot”. So began “appellative theatre” – likely from the meaning of ‘invitation’ or ‘incitation’ of the French ‘appel’.

The Balustrade’s Profile: An Appellative Absurdist Theatre

This programme did indeed focus on plays which gave the Balustrade the reputation of an absurdist theatre. The Garden Party was followed in 1964 by guest-directed productions of Waiting for Godot and Ionesco’s The Bald Prima Donna and The Lesson, as well as Grossman’s staging of Ubu Roi. The next year, he directed Havel’s second play, The Memorandum and, in 1966, his celebrated adaptation of Kafka’s novel The Trial.

Grossman’s most penetrating remarks on absurdist theatre frame it in terms of an appellative theatre and, indeed, an ethical one. Before discussing the theatre per se, Grossman evokes Rudolf Hess, whom he characterises as a demonic figure in the collective unconscious. Recalling Hess’s matter-of-fact descriptions of his liquidation of the Jews, Grossman, however, calls him an absurd figure whose evil is even greater.

He then compares absurdist theatre’s representation of evil for a modern audience with that of classical tragedy, which today, is “too exclusive” and “does not resonate with [one’s] experience”. Absurdist theatre, on the other hand, “turns from great external action to the ‘everyday’, manifesting as seemingly episodic incidents”. So, this theatre unmasks a more dangerous, because stealthy, evil, working through phrases, conventions and dogmas. The focus is not the result of evil, but its beginnings “incubating, unnoticed”.

Absurdist theatre offers no solutions to this phenomenon, however. That is not because a solution does not exist, but rather because it “will never be given to us anywhere, anytime, in any manner”. Instead, a staging confronts a theatre-goer “in the most drastic manner with his possible ruin, not in order to send him to it, but so that he arms himself against it… Absurdist theatre seeks to shock and ask provocative questions.” Is this intention perhaps consistent with the “live intellectual tension” which Havel felt could give rise to the theatre he imagined? Grossman’s characterisation makes absurdist theatre consistent with appellative theatre by placing a certain responsibility on audiences. Concluding his remarks, Grossman identifies the workings of his theatre in the form of a provocative paradox: “It takes the devil’s side in order to reveal the devil in hiding.” (Grossman, 1962, “Introducing The Garden Party” (“Uvedení Zahradní slavnosti”), Mezi literaturou a divadlem, II, pp. 1152-1153)

Havel’s most concrete writing on the absurd from this period takes a different approach, drawing upon the gags of silent film, a world where his Uncle Miloš was a producer.

If a tenant waits for his bucket to fill with water, it’s not a gag.
If a tenant, angry with Laurel and Hardy, pours water on them, it’s not a gag.
But if a tenant, his anger at Laurel and Hardy peaking, must patiently wait for his bucket to fill with water before he can pour it on them, that is a gag

After presenting further examples from films of Chaplin and Buster Keaton, Havel begins his analysis by establishing the first line as an “exposition”. It’s the second, acting on the first, that creates the gag and the absurdity by making something habitual, which has become automatic, suddenly conspicuous – here, waiting for a bucket to fill. The second phase is also an automatism, but of a different kind. Havel extends this process of discovery to humour generally, especially ridicule which relies on absurdity and, like all humour, has a social element.He then broadens automatism in gags to an existentialist analysis which was common to the period of the 1960s. Human beings have increasing difficulty adapting to accelerating technology and social changes which render old habits and automatisms absurd. Attempts to confront these pressures explain why in our time, feelings of absurdity and absurdist art and humour have developed “to an extent hitherto unknown to collective consciousness”. (L’Anatomie du gag, trans., K. Krivanek, Éditions de l’aube, 1992, p. 27)

Havel’s analysis shows familiarity with absurdist theatre and the challenges it presents. Because there tends to be little plot, it can be static, with the risk of boring an audience. Many of the plays meet this challenge through clowning, music hall routines, cross talk, even farce, and Grossman and Havel made ample use of such techniques, which were very present in the culture, to fashion the appellative and absurdist character of the Balustrade.

Grossman’s Work with Actors

Grossman worked little with the resident mime company, which, like the drama company, acquired an international reputation, but he very much emphasized stance, movement and gesture. Like Havel, he was sensitive to the possibilities of movement, but in a different medium.

Prague hosted the 1964 European Clown Competition, where the Russian mime Leonid Jengibarov won first prize. Grossman saw him perform shortly before producing Ubu Roi and identified a “shorthand”, condensing “many features, current in contemporary acting… The common denominator is gesturalism, if we do not understand it only in terms of movement and as the exclusive domain of pantomime”. (“Klaun Jengibarov,” Theatre, 1963, Vol. 14, no. 10, p. 78.) Malková says that under Grossman, the actors “expanded our expressive register and learned what the body can express without words.”

Grossman did extensive personal preparation for rehearsals, compiling notes and drawings which ranged from character development to blocking. Marie Malková maintains that his preparation was the most exhaustive of any director at the time. His work with the company balanced a new emphasis on discipline with the collective spirit which characterized it from the beginning.

Grossman viewed the frequent improvisation in the small theatre movement with irony, and he expressed that most memorably in an interview given after his major successes. He believed in experimentation, he said, “that is concrete, practical, technically communicable… that is, rehearsal.” He appreciated its open space, the uncertainty which “allows for the most varied sorts of approaches and decisions.” (“An Obsolete Invention?” Interview, Milan Lukeš, Theatre, Vol. 18, n° 1, 1967.)

The marriage bed turned into a coronation salon, a parade ground become a battlefield, a court of law and a prison cell. Dustbins were by turns wardrobes, execution machines and armour. A mobile dentist’s chair served as a throne and then an armoured car in which Ubu rode to war. The soundtrack included interludes of muzak with warbling birds and babbling brooks which contrasted with the junk set. Beneath the farce, the whole suggested overtly the Nazi Reich and, more subtly, the world of Communism in which Czech audiences saw their own lives.

Ptydepe is simply the most extreme form of linguistic absurdity, however. In an unnamed firm whose business is never identified, mention of work, such as office mail or funds or other departments is interrupted – and sometimes answered – by preoccupation with rubber stamps or the male employees’ remarks about the women and, especially, food and drink: making coffee, running out for limes or chocolates or onions. As a result, very little gets accomplished despite much busyness.

The play is structured around the presence of Ptydepe and emphasizes the impossibility of communication and of meaningful change. In the first scene, the firm’s director Josef Gross receives a memorandum in this language which, he learns, is already in use. The second scene takes him to the classroom where a fanatical professor gives a mind-numbing lesson. In the third scene, he finally finds the translation department, where his efforts to get the memorandum translated collide with a controlling bureaucracy which audiences knew all too well. This threefold progression repeats three times, so that the majority of scenes concern Gross’s struggle with his staff through Ptydepe, which becomes the instrument of his decline. His helplessness is forcefully and comically illustrated by farce, as shown in the photo below, but also by direct use of the language. For example, he proves unable to assert his authority with George, the Staff Watcher, who catches him out in the translation department:

Only one character likes Gross and translates the memorandum for him, and that’s Marie. Like all of Havel’s plays, this one represents certain challenges for an actress. Marie Málková sees it this way: “The main carrier of the plot is always a man. The women are portrayed in striking complementary colours, but don’t have major roles.” Grossman said that these roles were “‘short, not small, but short’”, and Malková appreciated that because “small roles don’t mean much, but short ones can have a big impact”. That possibility certainly inspired her in this case. “I always liked to characterise my characters externally,” she says, “not just by costume, but also by movement and gesture.” Here’s how she characterizes the secretary Marie:

Marie is so eager to do something good that it takes her breath away. In my imagination, she was so tensed-up that her own body was overtaking her. One critic wrote that ‘Marie leans forward as she walks, her hands behind her back, like a strange bird, or someone who is about to be executed.’ I later remembered Franz Kafka’s aphorism, ‘The cage went out to look for the bird’.

The Trial

The culmination of Grossman’s work at the Balustrade was his staging of Kafka’s novel The Trial. The seminar on small theatres in which Grossman had played such an important part was not the only literary event of 1963. In late May, an international conference marked the eightieth anniversary of Kafka’s birth with one aim being to reinstate this Prague writer whose work was banned in his own country by both the Nazi and Communist regimes.

The following year, the November issue of Theatre published short stories by Kafka, with articles by the influential Polish theorist Jan Kott and the actor-director Jean-Louis Barrault. Grossman was among the Czech contributors, with “Kafka’s Theatricality?” which presented arguments and ideas for adapting Kafka’s novel for the stage.

The question mark in the title is hardly surprising. Most people would not consider Kafka’s novel theatrical material. Yet Grossman found Kafka’s theatricality in features common to his definition of an absurdist play: “an unrelenting matter-of-factness” and “sobriety”.

Kafka‘s style is that of a “‘chronicler’… the lawyer who investigates and analyses… He develops his theme step by step, ‘monotonously’ placing all the parts… in a single plane of meaning.“ (Mezi literaturou a divadlem, II pp. 1171-1172.) These observations are consistent with the “the everyday, manifesting as seemingly episodic incidents” in Grossman’s comparison of absurdist and classical theatres. It’s the juxtaposition of individual, everyday episodes that create an enigmatic world where ‚realistic‘ psychology and cause-effect have no place.

The principal character, Josef K, is arrested – but not imprisoned – by two Warders, representing an anonymous, inaccessible authority. He has periodic trysts with the nurse Lenka during visits to the Advocate, who is to defend him, is later prosecuted and, a year after his arrest, murdered by the Warders.

Grossman’s more general advice to Marie Málková shows the kind of artistic courage he displayed throughout his life.

Drop your inhibitions. Don’t be afraid to embarrass yourself. Try the possible and impossible. And don’t expect everyone to like you. Better to provoke them [theatre goers and critics], whether they agree with you or not. Don’t take the line of least resistance. Put obstacles in your way. Sometimes it’s a thankless grind, but you can arrive at unexpected discoveries.

She inferred from this advice

that it’s best when the actor knows a lot, reads a lot, feels a lot, constantly awakens her imagination, and finally chooses from it all what is most suitable for the character and strikes the purest tone.

Photo Credits

Jaroslav Krejčí

The Memorandum: Director Gross; the secretary, Marie. The Trial: Stage set-up; J. Grossman directing an actress; Performance photo with scaffold.

Alan Pajer

Temptation, Opening Night, 1991, V. Havel, J. Grossman and cast.

Esther Havlová

1991. Grossman, A. Freimanová, V. Havel in rehearsal for Temptation, 1991.

Viktor Kronbauer

1990. Málková and J. Grossman, Prague, 1990.

Marie Málková, personal archive

Marie Málková, publicity photo; J. Grossman and P. Brook at the Balustrade; J. Grossman and V. Havel at work on The Memorandum.

Theatre on the Balustrade site

Theatre on the Balustrade façade, 1960s; The mime troupe; I. Vyskočil; Balustrade auditorium, 1960s.

Creative Commons and Public Domain

Reduta façade; L. Jengibarov performing; J. Grossman directing M. Málková, 1967; A. Radok, 1964; Otomar Krejča, 1951; Charlie Chaplin. Ubu Roi: A. Jarry’s woodcut of Ubu; programme of the original Paris production. The Trial: Book cover. J. Grossman directing M. Málková, 1967.

Other

Pilarová, CTK; J. Šlitr & J. Suchý, https://www.jiri-suchy.cz; J. Grossman, 1951, https://www.bubinekrevolveru.cz; V. Havel, 1950s, Pamět národa; Laurel and Hardy, “Dance scene,” Way Out West, dir., J.W. Horne, 1937.

Acknowledgements

I researched and wrote this post with Barbara Day, an English theatre historian based in Prague, whose specialties include the Theatre on the Balustrade and the work of Jan Grossman. She is the author of a twentieth-century history of Czech theatre, Trial by Theatre, Carolinum, 2019.

Many thanks to those who helped us in our research, most especially, to Mrs Marie Málková whom we interviewed and who gave generously of her time, attention and materials from her personal archive.

Thanks as well to Mrs Irena Vodáková, to Mrs Kateřina Vedralová and to her assistant, Mrs Denisa Šťastná of the Prague Theatre Institute; to Mrs Marie Fišerová, archivist at Theatre on the Balustrade and to Mrs Anna Freimanová of the Václav Havel Library.