Third place in the UK Radio Drama Festival goes to A Party produced by Czech Radio
The play A Party won a prestigious international award in the UK Radio Drama competition in the Short Form Drama category. Zuza Ferenczová’s play Problem (Jump Out of Skin) also received high praise, being selected among the six best-rated plays in the Feature Length Drama category.
The short play A Party was written by Jiří Jelínek and directed by Petr Vodička, with Renata Venclová in charge of dramaturgy. It starred byTatiana Vilhelmová and Jan Vondráček. Večírek is a short Macbeth-like play based on the contrast between the pragmatic present and the noble world of Elizabethan tragedy. While the actors of the Shakespeare’s tragedy strive are fighting for victory in a war, an unhappy married couple plans regicide, which is supposed to be the first step of their advance in society. When the couple finally decides to commit the gruesome crime and a visitor comes knocking on the door, everybody with at least some knowledge of Shakespeare’s Macbeth will expect the story to continue as usual. But at this very moment, the author comes with unexpected point. The play premiered on radio as part of the Shakespeare 400 project prepared by Czech Radio to celebrate the last year’s grand Shakespearean anniversary.
The radio play Problem (Jumping Out of Skin) is based on a text by the contemporary Slovak author Zuza Ferenczová. It was directed by Martina Schlegelová, while Zuzana Vojtíšková did the dramaturgy. The main heroine was played by Tereza Dočkalová, the cast also included Tomáš Navlínek, Natálie Řehořová, Patricie Solaříková and others. The play aims at young people, with its main topics being loneliness and growing up. In the span of 84 days, the adolescent heroine, who gets pregnant by mistake at the age of sixteen, asks many grave questions regarding life and death. During the recording of the play, the director used the music of WWW, a band that is popular among the teenagers, and, at the same time, co-operated with the sound designer Jakub Rataj and sound engineer Dominik Budil on polishing the sound of the play to perfection. Jeffrey Adams, an independent radio content-creator from the USA, has shown interest in adapting the play.
“I am glad that the international jury rated so highly all the four plays entered by Czech Radio in the competition, especially in terms of their standard of quality, directing, acting and music,” said Production Director Kateřina Konopásková. “Every such accomplishment on the international scene is a great recognition for our work.”