Authors
Karel STEIGERWALD
Born in Vacíkov on 11 April 1945, Karel Steigerwald is one of the Czech Republic’s most productive dramatists. His plays – which typically cast a critical eye over manifestations of the national character in periods of historical crisis – forced their way onto the nation’s stages in the early 1980s. Steigerwald studied Dramatic Art at FAMU (the Faculty of Film and Television Studies at Prague’s Academy of the Musical Arts), after which – from 1973 to 1979 – he worked at the Barrandov Studios as a script editor, a post he failed to retain at least in part because of his nonconformist views. It was then that his collaboration began with the director Ivan Rajmont, who at that time was working at the Činoherní studio [Theatrical Studio] in Ústí nad Labem. Steigerwald would work again as a script editor with Rajmont (1988-1993) at Prague’s Divadlo na zábradlí [Theatre on the Balustrade]. He has also worked as a journalist, most significantly as Deputy Editor of the national daily Lidové noviny. Currently, Steigerwald contributes commentaries to the daily MF Dnes.
Steigerwald has always had an interest in domestic politics, and this is reflected in his work for the stage. In the 1990s Steigerwald’s drama attempted to come to terms with the period of Normalization; he sought connections between the fate of the individual (in his play Nobel) and the culture of informing (Playing the Comedian). In Martin Peschek Goes to Heaven, he studied the moral profile of Bertolt Brecht, a guru of world theatre. Steigerwald’s work is marked by a tendency to sarcasm in its commentaries and glosses – though it is not shy of using more fanciful motifs (as in Nobel) – and it attempts to inject into the stagnant waters of society’s apparent complacency a moral unease. He also makes use of colloquial Czech in its cheapest forms, and this helps him to capture the anchoring of the time in intrigues which disturb and alarm.
(jk)
Deutsch 
Karel STEIGERWALD, Deutsch.doc
En français Karel STEIGERWALD, En français.doc
