Miroslav Bambušek
Guest of the OperaBiography
The dramatist, stage and film director Miroslav Bambušek has over the long term devoted to projects perceiving culture as a platform for political and social reflection. He studied philosophy and translating (French and Ancient Greek) at the Faculty of Humanities of Charles University in Prague. He has written more than 30 plays, two unmaterialised opera librettos (Lenin, Heracles), and screenplays. His plays Písek (Sand, 2002) and Porta Apostolorum (2004) earned him second prizes in the Alfréd Radok Foundation competition for the Best Czech Play. Moreover, he received the 2006 Sazka and Divadelní noviny Award for the Perzekuce.cz project, which he initiated between 2004 and 2006 (the productions Porta Apostolorum, Útěcha polní cesty, Horáková x Gottwald, Zóna), and his play Česká válka (The Czech War) was shortlisted for Best Czech Play within the 2011 Alfréd Radok Awards. In 2008 he received the RWE Film Foundation Prize and the Barrandov Studio Prize for the screenplay for the film Případ Posteleberg (The Posteleberg Case) at the Karlovy Vary Film Festival. Between 2009 and 2013, Bambušek and Ewan McLaren initiated the project titled Cesty energie (The Energy Pathways), encompassing the productions Zdař Bůh! – Michal Mine, Ostrava; Voda – Eco-technical Museum, Prague; Uran – the Drnov Bunker near Slaný; Ropa – Winternitz Mills, Pardubice. For a number of years, he has collaborated with Petr Kofroň, who has created the music for the film Jan Hus – mše pro tři mrtvé muže (Jan Hus - A Mass for Three Dead Men, screenplay and direction: M. Bambušek, 2009) and the plays Na Fidela mi nesahej (Don’t Touch My Fidel, screenplay and direction: M. Bambušek, Roxy/NoD Prague, 2007), Buzní kříž (Fagots’ Cross, screenplay and direction: M. Bambušek and J. Horák, direction: M. Bambušek, MeetFactory, Prague, 2012), Cantos (an adaptation of Ezra Pound’s poetry, direction: M. Bambušek, Na zábradlí Theatre, Prague, 2012), Pevnost Rainalda Goetze (Rainald Goetz’s Fortress, direction: M. Bambušek, MeetFactory, Prague, 2013), etc.
Update: November 2014