Shooting Hedda Gabler

SHOOTING HEDDA GABLER Henrik Ibsen’s classic drama as retold by British playwright Nina Segal (first performed in world premiere in September 2023 at the Rose Theatre in London) offers a modern reinterpretation of the story. It follows an American actress, a former child star, who comes to Norway to shoot a film adaptation of Hedda Gabler. A director with a strong vision casts her in the lead role, giving her a chance to prove her talent as well as to escape her past. Yet the shooting turns into a psychodrama where the actors’ personal lives and Ibsen’s characters intertwine. The play exposes the toxic relationships on set and explores the boundaries between reality and fiction.

After The Gamblers, this piece is the next in a series of symbolic returns to legendary plays and productions in the theatre’s jubilee season. This production specifically refers to the stage adaptation of Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler directed by Ladislav Smoček in 1996, starring Ivana Chýlková in the lead role.
RADMILA HRDINOVÁ, novinky.cz

Havelka has created a humorous yet chilling drama relying on Ibsen retold in the modern language and the ensemble’s top performance.
TOMÁŠ MACA, seznamzpravy.cz

The exceptional text, which is a cross between an adaptation of Ibsen’s drama and the playwright’s own imagination reflecting the current world, prods the actors to intense artistic expression, for which the Drama Club was renowned in the past.
MARCELA MAGDOVÁ, Aktuálně.cz

 Nina Segal’s text, elaborated direction and strong actor’s performances together make a production that successfully bridges the tradition and an experiment, the past and the present. This piece attests again to the top form of the Drama Club after sixty years of its foundation.
JOSEF MESZÁROS, scena.cz

JIŘÍ HAVELKA (1980) Theatre and film director, playwright, actor and presenter. He is one of the creative artists involved in the VOSTO5 theatre group, renowned for loose-form original productions based on pure improvisation. After finishing the grammar school in Jihlava, Havelka studied directing at the DAMU Department of Alternative and Puppet Theatre. He won the Alfred Radok Award for Talent of the Year 2007. He has worked as a director since his studies for a number of leading Czech and Slovak theatres and is a regular guest at the Divadlo International Theatre Festival. In 2019, he started his film career with the successful Owners, for which he also wrote the screenplay based on his acclaimed production The Fellowship of Owners prepared with VOSTO5. Two years later he made the docudrama Eyewitness and in 2022, his second original film, Emergency Situation, was released, followed by the tragicomedy The Gardener’s Year. In January 2025, he was appointed the new artistic director of Dejvice Theatre, replacing actor Martin Myšička. He has collaborated with the Dejvice ensemble since 2007.

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. The theatre is headed by Tomáš Suchánek since 2022, with Ladislav Smoček, Martin Čičvák and Ondřej Sokol serving as in-house directors. 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 others.