Authors

Petr Zelenka’s debut work Nové náboženství Kurta Vonneguta [The New Religion of Kurt Vonnegut; published in 1992] received little attention. (Vonnegut jr. – along with Charles Bukowski – is one of Zelenka’s favourite authors.) Zelenka soon made an impression as a film director, however; his first film Visací zámek [Padlock] – whose subject was a punk-rock band – was released in 1993. But it was not until the release in 1996 of the film Knoflíkáři [Buttoners] - a collection of vignettes - that the theme Zelenka finds the most compelling – bizarre lives and longings, particularly those of peculiar loners, who in today’s civilization can barely still be considered a minority – entered the consciousness of a broader cinema-going public. Zelenka wrote the screenplay for David Ondříček’s Samotáři [Loners; 2000], while for the film Rok ďábla [The Year of the Devil] – which won the Main Prize at the 2002 Karlovy Vary Festival – he was inspired by the life of the singer Jaromír Nohavica. Zelenka’s courtship of the theatre began with his translations of the trenchant comedies of British playwright Michael Frayn. On his own Příběhy obyčejního šílentsví [Stories of Ordinary Madness] Zelenka worked with Prague’s Dejvice Theatre; this proved to be one of the most successful dramas of recent years (winning Play of the Year in a 2001 critics’ survey, preceding the Alfréd Radok Award). Odjezdy vlaků [Train Departures] – which Zelenka wrote for Bratislava’s Astorka – is a variation on a work by Michael Frayn. Stories of Ordinary Madness is still playing to packed houses at the Dejvice Theatre under the direction of the author, and recently it was adapted for the cinema. In the meantime Zelenka had written Teremin, another play which would be performed by the same Prague company. In an interview for Svět a divadlo [World and Theatre] in early 2002, Zelenka told Karel Král and Jakub Škorpil: “There is a deep-rooted notion that whatever is reported in the newspapers has its basis in fact. I find this absolutely infuriating: it simply isn’t true. So I reckon it’s up to those of us who write fiction to be more interesting and more truthful than the daily news. Artists have always complained that no one is going to the theatre or cinema because something monumental has happened – I don’t know, the price of petrol has gone up or something. It seems to me that a play should be more interesting and more truthful than an increase in the price of petrol. We’re the ones to blame if our fiction fails to defeat reality.”

(jk)

This Profile was last updated on 1 May 2006

En français Petr ZELENKA, En français.doc