BABYBOOM On the twenty-fifth of December, three couples are waiting in the maternity ward. You could cut the emotions with a knife. Instead of calming the situation, the only nurse on duty at Christmas makes things worse with her chaotic behaviour. The mothers-to-be are worried, expectant, physically suffering. The fathers-to-be choose a different tactic – one is panicking, the other drinking, and the last one stoically waiting for the outcome. The babies, oblivious to all the havoc and tension around them, are breaking out with resolve. Or… almost all of them...
What does it mean to have a child? How does it change one’s life? How important is the parents’ relationship here? Do you really want to bring children into this world? This tragicomedy shows what really happens in the maternity ward, generally considered to be a place of joy and happy expectations. The Slovak playwright won the 2010 Dráma Award with her play.
A bitter and crazy comedy from the maternity ward. Everyone will find something familiar in Babyboom.
– JANA SOPROVÁ, Lidové noviny
Babyboom is a perfect production for a wide range of audiences, not just women and mothers. The tasteful and skilful stage adaptation is sure to become a staple of the Drama Club’s repertoire for many seasons.
– MARCELA MAGDOVÁ, Divadelní noviny
The play takes place in a hospital, in the waiting room outside the maternity ward. The characters include three couples waiting to deliver their babies, and a nurse. Seemingly a cruel comedy at first, the play gradually, slowly and subtly reveals tragic undertones. The most beautiful and meaningful blessing we can receive in our lives – to conceive and give birth to a child. In this play, however, the kindest, most natural and good of events turns into a neurotic bargaining with emotions and instincts, where the characters attempt to make use of the cathartic experience of childbirth for their own benefit, to exploit, threaten, attack, arouse pity, and destroy each other...
– ROMAN POLÁK, Chairman of the Jury of the 2010 Dráma Awards
ONDŘEJ SOKOL (1971) He studied acting and directing at DAMU from 1990 to 1995. In 1996, he joined the ensemble of the Mladá Boleslav City Theatre. In the autumn of 1999, he came to the Drama Club, where he is engaged as an actor, director and translator. In 2003, he received the Thalia Award for Young Artist under 33 and two Alfréd Radok Foundation Awards – Play of the Year and Talent of the Year – for his production of The Lonesome West. He was nominated for the Sazka Award and the Divadelní noviny Award for his performance as Vicomte de Valmont in the stage adaptation of Hampton’s Les Liaisons Dangereuses. In the 2007/2008 season, he received the Sazka Award and the Divadelní noviny Award for his direction of The Playboy of the Western World by J. M. Synge. He made the film The Lake in 2014. His other directing credits for the Drama Club include American Buffalo (2015), Kati (Hangmen) (2016), Our Ladies of Perpetual Succour (2019) and Linda Vista (2021).
DRAMA CLUB ‘The founders of the Drama Club, Ladislav Smoček and Jaroslav Vostrý, deliberately presented no grandiose programme or manifesto, not even upon the establishment of their theatre. All begun with a seemingly simple thesis Vostrý came up with based on his observations of theatre in his previous job as a theatre critic: Exploring the capabilities of an actor reveals the possibilities of a human being. The idea has proven so comprehensive that it can still be traced in all Drama Club’s productions – regardless of their success,’ wrote Jan Kolář on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of this scene. This year, Tomáš Suchánek was appointed as the theatre managing director, replacing the long-serving Vladimír Procházka at this position; Ladislav Smoček, Martin Čičvák and Ondřej Sokol are among the in-house directors. Ondřej Sokol also acted as the artistic director in the last years, before being succeeded by actor Martin Finger. Many outstanding Czech actors were or are members of the theatre’s ensemble, including Ivana Chýlková, Libuše Šafránková, Josef Abrhám, Petr Čepek, Jiří Hrzán, Jan Kačer, Jiří Kodet, Pavel Landovský, Petr Nárožný, Josef Somr, Ondřej Vetchý, and many others.
