Comments about SETKÁNÍ/ENCOUNTER

prof. Mgr. Petr Oslzlý is a dramaturg, scriptwriter, actor and for many years the artistic director of the Husa na provázku Theatre. He was the director of the Centre for Experimental Theatre Author and co-author of almost fifty theatre scripts, ten books and a large number of essays on theatre and art. He was a co-initiator of the Velvet Revolution in November 1989, and an advisor to President Václav Havel in 1990-1992. Last but not least, he was the director of the SETKÁNÍ-ENCOUNTER festival from 1995-2018, the rector of JAMU from 2018-2022 and since 2007 the head of one of the three studios of dramaturgy and directing at JAMU.

What was the festival like during your tenure compared to now?

Since its first realization in 1992, when it was a meeting of only three theatre schools from Prague, Bratislava and Brno, the festival has evolved - since 1995 and during my tenure - to its current form, when it is undeniably one of the most prestigious European festivals of theatre schools. It is very important that students have started to participate in its organisation and implementation, and that it has become a regular subject of the Theatre Production study programme. And students from other programmes are also taking an increasingly active part in it.

What do you like about the festival?

I like that in its current form it is already more or less entirely in the hands and responsibility of the students, for whom it is not only an opportunity to practically test their ability to program and organize a larger international festival event, but for all students it is an entry into an international theatre environment. This is very important. While theatre co-creates the cultural identity of a nation, it is and always has been an international phenomenon. And the Encounter/EnCOUNTER Festival is an extremely valuable school of understanding, exchange of experiences, and learning about the uniqueness and affinities in an international theatre environment.

Do you have a memory you'd like to share?

I have a lot of memories over the three decades, but I want to mention one important feature of the festival of the past years for me. When I was its director, I was always very happy when a school from a country from which no school had ever participated in the Encounters/ENCOUNTER Festival was included in the programme of the upcoming edition. Each school more or less reflects and represents the theatre culture of its own country, and the festival thus gradually discovered a wider and wider theatre "territory". Through each school, our knowledge of the different forms of theatre in the contemporary world was thus expanded. I would like to point out that we managed to welcome theatre schools from all continents except Australia to the festival and the Janáček Academy in Brno - at least we had judges from there. However, there are still a number of countries - rather non-European - from which no school has yet been at the Encounters/ENCOUNTER festival. So there is still a lot to discover and get to know. And to get to know each other...

What do you do – professional activities, projects, research, etc.? What does it consist of? What led you to this activity?

In 2018, at the beginning of my four-year term as Rector, I left my position as Director of the Centre for Experimental Theatre, which I co-founded and was Director of for twenty-five years, and therefore also from the Husa na strand Theatre, where I had worked throughout my artistic life. Without stopping to think about possible practical theatre projects, my main creative activity, besides teaching, is writing. Of course, writing primarily about theatre - but also about life... I understand it as a duty at my age, to which I am obliged by the rich and varied experience of creative life in the Czech and, to no small extent, international theatre...