Mrs Dalloway

MR S DALLOWAY “Mrs. Dalloway is the ruler of small decisions in a woman’s world that hold the full weight of the universe. She is an observer of micro-events and shades hidden to others, unrecognised by them because they do not need them in their lives. Yet it is precisely these insignificant little details what reveals the hardly perceptible secondary laws governing the world,” says writer Bianca Bellová to describe the heroine of Virginia Woolf’s novel. The delicate novel Mrs Dalloway offers a deep dive into the endless nooks and crannies of the human mind rather than relying on narrative. Memories, feelings, and the present are layered on top of each other, and the passage of time is depicted against the backdrop of a slow day in June. Clarissa Dalloway is preparing to host a party. She said she would get the flowers herself. Now that marriage and children are no longer ahead of her, she has the weird feeling of being invisible, unseen and unknown. Anna Klimešová’s production explores the fear of the time passing and the phenomenon of invisible women. At a slow pace and on multiple scenic levels, the director layers thin plot lines, moments when the outer world permeates the inner one, and especially impressions. The combination of direct speech, sound recording and microports serve as the theatrical equivalent of the nuances in tone between objective narrative and inner monologue. The production’s hushed and hypnotic rhythm, devoid of any dramatic spikes, accurately captures the syrupy, almost stagnant feeling of the bottomless moment.

The ensemble of the Theatre on the Balustrade shows top form in their production of Mrs Dalloway. The actors build their characters analogously to the specific literary form, through which the author of the original novel – some hundred years ago – explored the inner feelings of her fictional characters and revealed the meandering stream of their consciousness to the reader. Instant innermost feelings are associatively linked to the characters’ past experiences emerging in their memories. Everyone is simultaneously the observer of their own feelings and the narrator of their own stories, indifferently perceiving and describing themselves from distance […] The multilayered structure of the production – conceived to reflect the complex ‘anatomy’ of human perception – seems completely natural and goes virtually unnoticed by an average viewer, who is captivated by the intense atmosphere and exceptional plasticity of the actors’ performances.
MARIE RESLOVÁ, Divadelní.net

Klimešová and Součková’s production indirectly invites the audience to mutual sensitivity and to acknowledging that the inner lives of others may be just as vivid, rich, and contradictory as ours and that we inevitably see the others through the prism of our present state of mind. (…) Mrs Dalloway in Klimešová’s direction, imbued with a highly melancholic atmosphere disturbed by ironic hindsight, captures the feelings of the audience, leading them to experience, in multiple ways, a single day in a person’s life, the delicate fabric of mundane life that nonetheless encompasses our whole existence. No symmetrical bulbs, but a semi-transparent packaging.
ESTER ŽANTOVSKÁ, Svět a divadlo

 The production confirms the first-class form of the Theatre on the Balustrade’s ensemble. Mrs Dalloway is a very demanding piece in terms of concentration but it offers a stunning spectacle. The production brilliantly brings to life the almost century-old original novel and presents it with chilling topicality. Her acting mastery is an encore.
MARCELA MAGDOVÁ, Aktuálně.cz

ANNA KLIMEŠOVÁ (1990) is a Czech theatre director whose work combines professional and community art. She perceives theatre as a space for common encounters, shared experience, and collective creation. Her productions often explore the topics of memory and its loss, the intergenerational transmission of emotions, decision-making, the desire for change, and the relationship to landscape and identity. She completed the Drama and Education study programme at the Academy of Performing Arts in Brno, where she focused on working with non-professional actors. She has developed her original style during her scholarship at Universität der Künste Berlin and further deepened it while studying directing under Jiří Havelka at the DAMU Department of Alternative and Puppet Theatre. She has collaborated with a number of major theatres, including the Theatre on the Balustrade, National Theatre Prague, Prague City Theatres, Goose on a String Theatre, Minor Theatre, the Terrain platform, Landestheater Niederösterreich, and Vzlet Prague. She heads the Zapětdvanáct company (11:55) together with Petr Erbes. She co-founded the 8people experimental collective, which focuses on performative and cross-genre projects. Anna Klimešová was born in the Krkonoše region, where she founded the community cultural platform Horní Maršov – Open Museum which connects locals and artists – land artists, illustrators and theatre makers – to provide a space for community theatre projects. Her artistic style is characterised by a high degree of imagination, associative flow and personal thematic input. Her recent works include Greetings and Kisses to All of You (Goose on a String Theatre, 2023), About Pavel (Theatre on the Balustrade, 2023), The Declaration of Dependencies (Masopust, 2023), Dodgeball (11:55, Vzlet, 2023), One More Minute (NT Drama Prague, 2024), Bigfoot (Naive Theatre Liberec, 2024) and Mrs Dalloway (Theatre On the Balustrade, 2025). She is currently preparing an original version of Tartuffe for the Slovak Chamber Theatre.

THEATRE ON THE BALUSTRADE Theatre on the Balustrade’s long tradition has involved a number of distinguished figures, with those who have passed through the theatre including Václav Havel, Ivan Vyskočil, Jan Grossman, Evald Schorm and Petr Lébl. Since its creation the Theatre on the Balustrade has played a significant role in the country’s social and cultural context. It has created numerous productions that have represented the Czech Republic abroad and is home to a pleiad of notable actors. Since the 2013/2014 season, the theatre has been headed by Petr Štědroň, Dora Štědroňová and Jan Mikulášek, who are inclined towards irregular dramaturgy and original theatre. After 2017, following a successful renovation, the Theatre on the Balustrade continued to produce work that has met with acclaim from both audiences and critics. In the 2023/24 season, Anežka Kubátová won the Theatre Critics’ Award and the Divadelní noviny Award for her role as Pavel Juráček’s wife Daňa Horáková in the production of About Pavel. In the last season, the Thalia Award went to Kateřina Císařová (for the role of Katerina Maslova in Resurrection) and Miloslav König (for the role of Michel Houellebecq in Public Enemies). In addition to intensive touring across the Czech Republic, the theatre has conducted successful foreign tours all over Europe (United Kingdom, Colombia, Germany, France, Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, etc.).