Theatre and Film Culture in the Czech Lands

The Theatre and Film Culture study programme at the Faculty of Arts at Masaryk University combines the shared history of the two art-science disciplines with research targeted at the history of theatre and film culture in the Czech lands with a specific focus on Moravia and Brno and an overlapping view of the Central European region. A research paradigm called ‘new history’ is the key to current research. It is based on a shift from studying the text to studying the context, meaning an exploration of the history of theatre and cinema in its broader social, economic, and cultural contexts. This is mostly primary research based on the study of archival sources.

Interests and methods

Theatre science focuses mainly on research into the coexistence of Czech and foreign language theatre in the Czech lands from the early modern period to 1945, with an emphasis on German-speaking theatre. The study monitors the specific characteristics of the Czech theatre culture that was shaped as an inseparable part of the ethnically, socially, and culturally varied region of Central Europe. The interests and the methods of film studies include reception studies, oral history, production studios, the history of nonfiction forms, poetic fiction, exile cinema, and spiritual films.

Participation in international research

Research is conducted in close association with leading domestic and international research groups and centres, especially from Austria, Germany, and the UK. The results are distributed in prestigious publications and at national and international conference platforms. Students are, through special seminars and projects, very much involved in the research and the publication output. They make the research findings available to the general public by creating popular texts, by working as script editors of festival retrospectives, and by curating exhibitions.

Further Research Topics