PEER GYNT The classics in an unorthodox interpretation. Your favourite antihero is coming, let’s make some spiritual Peer-porn! A dreamer, a narcissist and an adventurer. A master of the art of excuses, communication detours and spiky imagination. But woe betide those who would invade his “comfort zone”! Peer Gynt – on social media, in spiritual porn, in the realm of self-image and self-presentation. Peer Gynt to himself. Peer Gynt slamming. Peer Gynt procrastinating. Everything and nothing. Anything but mediocrity, ordinariness, commonness. The ride begins. Backwards and on is as long a gait; – out and in, it is just as strait! Wherever I swing! No sooner I’m out than I’m back in the ring. Your name! Let me see you!
In his stage adaptation, the director tears down the ego as a relic, soaks it in a shaky cocktail of alienating effects, and all it takes is for him to exploit the canonical classics. The Drama Studio confirms its position as a distinctive and non-conform platform.
– MARTIN MACHÁČEK, Divadelní noviny
Peer Gynt in Ústí is a firmly grasped production rich with expressive performance and interpretation in all respects. The audience gets on board of a crazy ride that carries them on the wave of sophisticated bizarre action to the very end.
– LUDMILA ZAJÍČKOVÁ, divadelni-noviny.cz
Dim orange light and omnipresent smoke. On the left microphone stands, double bass, accordion and guitar. On the right drums, synth keys and computer. In the centre of the stage a simple structure made of light unvarnished wood, consisting of a raised platform and two back walls. From behind one of the walls, Kryštof Bartoš emerges into the hall that is falling silent and dark, and with a sly smile sets on his energetic, spectacular, extreme, exorbitant, extravagant and fascinating portrayal of Peer Gynt.
– TOBIÁŠ WALLER, divadeni-noviny.cz
MICHAL HÁBA studied directing under Miroslav Krobot at DAMU in Prague, worked as assistant director for Dušan Pařízek and A. Riemenschneider at the Komedie Theatre, and completed internships at Volksbühne am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz and Maxim Gorki Theater, both in Berlin. He works mainly with the Lachende Bestien theatre group, where he is engaged as a director, writer, actor and producer. He performs with the travelling theatre Divadlo koňa a motora, which tackles social and community issues. As a guest director, he has explored various theatrical territories, from theatre for children and youth (the productions Huckleberry Finn, Cipísek, The Snow Queen) through original theatre (Opletal at Divadlo na cucky) and interpretation drama (Black Water or The Miser at the Klicpera Theatre) to deconstructive theatre – the productions of the Lachende Bestien group (Ferdinand!, Sezuan, The Mission), as well as e.g. The Gambler based on the Dostoyevsky’s novel at the Goose on a String Theatre. In 2018, the Lachende Bestien group started to collaborate with the Prague City Theatres and prepared an original adaptation of Ibsen’s drama An Enemy of the People for the Komedie Theatre. In 2019, Hába directed a critically acclaimed production The Glory and Fall of King Otakar and Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People, and in 2020, a dramatisation of Saša Uhlová’s reportage The Heroes of Capitalist Labour. He has also worked for the Klicpera Theatre in Hradec Králové and the Petr Bezruč Theatre in Ostrava (A Midsummer Night’s Dream, 2022). For the Drama Studio in Ústí nad Labem, he staged Peer Gynt in 2023 and Molière’s The School of Wives in 2024. From the 2025/26 season, he will serve as its artistic director. At the Divadlo festival, Michal Hába presented his production 120 Days of Freedom (based on Marquis de Sade’s book, the Lachende Bestien group) in 2012.
DRAMA STUDIO IN ÚSTÍ NAD LABEM has long been recognised as a progressive Czech scene. The theatre was founded in 1972 and its first managing director, Jaroslav Chundela, sought collaboration with leading theatre artists, especially those who had been banned from the stage by the communist regime after the violent suppression of the Prague Spring, such as Jan Grossman, Evald Schorm and Jan Kačer. The dramaturge, translator and later actor Leoš Suchařípa also worked there. Director Ivan Rajmont became the head of the theatre in 1975, and many actors who would later become stars of the Czech theatre performed on its stage, such as Jiří Bartoška, Karel Heřmánek, Pavel Zedníček, Marie Spurná, Tomáš Töpfer and others. The development in the Drama Studio after 1989 was just as dynamic; among the many creators, we should mention at least Jiří Pokorný, whose dramas, representing the Czech version of the ‘in-yer-face theatre’, were staged at the Drama Studio in Ústí in world premiere (Dad Shoots Goals, Rest in Peace). The theatre has had a turbulent period marked by changes in the ensemble and management, as well as disputes with the municipal authority in 2014 and it had to temporarily relocate to another address. The theatre has never strayed from the focus on serious dramaturgy and (mostly successful) stage adaptations of inspiring texts. Director David Šiktanc has led the ensemble in the recent years, with Michal Hába taking over from the 2025/26 season onwards. At the Divadlo festival, the Drama Studio presented Homo Faber (2018) and The Dining Car (2023), both directed by David Šiktanc.
