Aesthetics of the Dramatic Art by Otakar Zich (1931) in English translation published

The publication of the book Aesthetics of the Dramatic Art by Otakar Zich (1931) holds a special importance for the Department of English and American Studies. It means that a job, which was begun back in the 1980s, is now finished. Three members of the department have worked on the translation over a span of several decades.

The book itself is a unique Czech contribution to the theory of performance art, and theater in particular: "Zich's book is recognised as the foundation of Czech theatre theory," write the editors and translators of the book David Drozd, Pavel Drábek, Tomáš Kačer and Josh Overton. It has been recognized as one of the first holistic texts dealing with the theater performance in all its aspects from a clearly defined theoretical perspective, which is a structuralist-semiotic stance. As such, it is an important milestone of the theory of theater as such. Written in 1931, and richly referred to in the meantime, it finally has an official translation into English.

The first attempt at a translation was initiated by Professor of aesthetics, Ivo Osolsobě. He asked his colleague and friend, Samuel Kostomlatský, to produce an editable translation. Kostomlatský was a lecturer of English and the Department, and he was one of the longest-serving members of the Department. You may read more about him here: Samuel Kostomlatský.

Unfortunately, that translation couldn't be finished and brought to publication for various reasons. It exists as a typescript with Professor Osolsobě's, the editor, hand-written notes. You may learn more about the translation and its ingenious solutions as well as shortcomings here: (Re-)translating Zich's aesthetics into English : a work in progress.

Then, in 2016, the need for producing an authoritative translation of the book that would be available to the general public, was recognized by a research team around David Drozd from the Department of Theater Studies at our faculty, and his project was awarded funding from the Czech Grant Agency under the title Theatre as Synthesis of Arts: Otakar Zich in Context of Modern Science and Actual Potential fo His Concepts (GA16-20335S). This project included production of the translation of the book. Drozd asked his collaborators Pavel Drábek and Tomáš Kačer to perform the task. Drábek is a graduate of our Department and he was the member of the department from 2000 to 2013, when he became a Professor of Drama and Theatre Practice at the University of Hull. He and Kačer decided to produce a new translation of the book, each of them approximately one half, and they consulted Kostomlatský's version in the process while producing a new, up-to-date and original translation. Their work was then meticulously edited by Josh Overton, a theater theoretician as well as practician and author.

In a sense, the current publication of the book is an achievement of the Department of English and American Studied (which couldn't be possible without the Deparment of Theater Studies and the University of Hull). It is a conclusion of a work started by a former Department member, Samuel Kostomlatský, several decades ago, by the recent member Pavel Drábek and the current Head Tomáš Kačer. A "debt" paid, and a contribution to the general scholarly public interested in theater theory made.

The book is published by Charles University Press (Karolinum), and available for purchase at their web site: Aesthetics of the Dramatic Art.