Frogs

FROGS The new comedy by Petr Zelenka, scriptwriter and director of Tales of Ordinary Madness, Theremin, Dubbing Street, The Elegance of the Molecule and Fifty, is an exclusive confession of an elite film prop man who liked objects more than people – until she came along. A man at the peak of his personal crisis, a neglected star of his profession, torn between his love for an unavailable woman and his lifelong fascination with props.  All the characters and props in this story are fictional... more or less.

Petr Zelenka recalls the creation of the play, which was written on the occasion of Ivan Trojan’s birthday: “During the rehearsals of Fifty, Ivan mentioned that he was thinking of producing a play himself, a monodrama. When his original plan didn’t work out, I volunteered to write an original text for him. We quickly agreed on the outline of our collaboration and the theme. And the rest is history, as the saying goes.”

Petr Zelenka and Ivan Trojan thank their friend Marek Taclík for the generosity and grace with which he accepted the role of the main anti-hero of the story.

The protagonist of the eighty-minute monologue is not an actor, but a prop man. And not just any prop man. Zelenka and Trojan’s hero is a master prop maker who sees the world through the prism of objects. (...) The play takes the form of a lecture that the prop maker is rehearsing for his future job at the FAMU prop department. More importantly, it is a recapitulation of the life of an overlooked outsider and Zelenka’s typical ‘ordinary madman’.
– RADMILA HRDINOVÁ, novinky.cz

Both the author and the performer are breaking new ground. (...) Frogs bring a new dimension to their collaboration. To not only endure, but also to entertain and move on stage all alone for almost an hour and a half is something like a mountain hike in terms of effort. Not surprisingly, Ivan Trojan handles it with confidence and ease.
– JANA SOPROVÁ, Lidové noviny

IVAN TROJAN (1964) is one of the most prominent and popular Czech actors. He has made a significant impact in both theatre and film. As a theatre actor, he is mainly associated with the Dejvice Theatre, which he joined after previous engagements at the Realist Theatre (now Švanda Theatre) and the Vinohrady Theatre. In the Dejvice Theatre, he is one of the leading figures behind the current course of the company, alongside director Miroslav Krobot. In addition to a plethora of diverse roles, he also directed two plays for the Dejvice Theatre: Stuck (2015) and Guilt? (2021), where the latter was performed by the Dejvice ensemble at the DIVADLO International Theatre Festival. Ivan Trojan has received many awards and besides his successful stage roles, he is known for unforgettable roles in Czech films such as Loners (2000), Václav (2007), In the Shadow (2012) and Charlatan (2020).

PETR ZELENKA is a playwright, screenwriter, film and theatre director. He studied screenwriting and dramaturgy at FAMU in Prague. His first film as a director was a mockumentary about the punk band Visací Zámek, made in 1993. His films are generally acknowledged as outstanding pieces of contemporary Czech cinema, and most of them received prestigious Czech and international awards. His films Year of the Devil (2003) and Tales of Ordinary Madness (2005) won top prizes at the Moscow and Karlovy Vary festivals. As a playwright and theatre director, Petr Zelenka debuted with the production Tales of Ordinary Madness at the Dejvice Theatre in 2001. The play won the prestigious Alfréd Radok Foundation Award in 2001, and its successful film version premiered in 2005. The play was successfully staged in a number of theatres in the Czech Republic, throughout Europe and as far afield as Argentina and Uruguay. His production Theremin premiered at the Dejvice Theatre in 2006. Ivan Trojan won the Divadelní noviny Award for the title role of the real-life Russian scientist, inventor, musician and spy L. S. Theremin. Other important theatre titles by Petr Zelenka include Coming Clean (commissioned by the famous Theatre Stary in Krakow in 2007), Endangered Species (2011), Job Interviews (2014). In 2012, Zelenka returned to the Dejvice Theatre as a playwright and director with Dubbing Street, which was later, in 2018, made into a TV series for the Czech Television, also written and directed by Zelenka. Zelenka’s works produced for the Dejvice Theatre later included The Elegance of the Molecule (2019) and Fifty (2023), both of which, like Dubbing Street, were also performed at the DIVADLO festival.