Authors
Daniela FISCHEROVÁ
Writer, playwright, radio dramatist, and screenwriter, Daniela Fischerová was born in Prague on February 13, 1948. After graduating high school she studied dramaturgy and scriptwriting at the Film and TV School of the Academy of Performing Arts (FAMU). She then worked as a scriptwriter and served as an editor at a publishing house. Her screenplays that have been made into films include Neúplné zatmění (Partial Eclipse, 1982) and Vlčí bouda (Wolf’s Lair, 1986). Since 1973 she has worked freelance and since 2000 she has taught creative writing and the Josef Škvorecký Literary Academy in Prague. Her radio plays include Čeho se bojí mistr (What Are You Afraid of, Master, 1990) and Andělský smích (Angelic Laughter, 1994).
Since the beginning of the 1970s, Daniela Fischerová has focused primarily on writing fiction for children and young adults. Having first wrote fairy tales, she has also expanded the genre with short stories, poetry, and a musical comedy for children. She has authored a concertina book for children, a volume of nursery rhymes, and other volumes of short texts. Her debut as a playwright was the poetic parable Hodina mezi psem a vlkem (Hour Between the Dog and Wolf), which takes the form of a fictional trial of the first “poète maudit,” François Villon. As a signatory of Charter 77, however, the play was banned after four performances. Her plays were prohibited from being performed for another eight years. During this time Fischerová concentrated on screenwriting, and then at the beginning of the 1990s radio plays, which she finally could return to not long after the revolution in November 1989. She inventively reworked several classic literary motifs and themes. In Princess T. she modified the old fairy tale of Princess Turandot, largely known from the dramatic piece by Carlo Gozzi. And then in Legends she was equally original in interpreting both the Faust and Pied Piper legends, assisted in this by her knowledge of the Old German texts. Each of these dramas presents a conflict between open-minded individuals and those who represent social power. It allowed Fischerová to explore the very real pre-revolution problem of collaboration with the totalitarian regime while at the same time she was able to pillory the blind alley of contemporary pragmatism. Her plays tended to take the form of an anti-illusive theater, repeatedly employing the formula “theater within the theater.” In the 1990s, Fischerová continued to write plays and work for children and young adults, and she also became known as somewhat of an authority on and perceptive interpreter of astrology (this comes from her long-standing interest in the ancient philosophies of India and China). The decade also saw her devote much more time to writing prose. Her dramas (such as Andělský smích) betray an inclination for the prosaic and epic. Her first collections of stories (Prst, který se nikdy nedotkne / Fingers Pointing Somewhere Else and Přísudek v této větě je podmět / The Predicate Is the Subject) present an amalgam of various genres in a prose that is succinct and laconic, a trait found in her literary feuilletons as well. These collections should be considered primarily as the initial stage of a more synthesized work: the multiple layers and meanings in her debut novel, or parable as novel, Happy end, in which she gives ancient philosophers a modern twist and tries to trace the many diverse paths to human identity by using a whole host of autobiographical motifs to give plausibility to the time frame, though the narrative itself is timeless.
(vn)
En français 
Daniela FISCHEROVÁ, En français.doc
