Jana Kališová
Biography
Born in 1956 in Prague, Jana Kališová studied theatre directing at the Academy of Performing Arts (graduating in 1980). She has been engaged at a number of theatres: the Workers’ Theatre in Most, the Vítězslav Nezval Theatre in Karlovy Vary, the E. F. Burian Theatre in Prague, the East Bohemia Theatre in Pardubice and the Rokoko Theatre in Prague, and also collaborated as a guest at the J. K. Tyl Theatre in Plzeň, the Reduta, Viola and Pod Palmovkou theatres in Prague, the Činoherní klub in Ústí nad Labem and the Municipal Theatre in Brno. She has directed dozens of productions of Czech and foreign plays (Klicpera, Nezval, Shakespeare, Shaw, Rolland, Goldoni, Ibsen, etc.). Her keen interest in the performance’s rhythmic structure and musical component has led her to direct opera productions as well. Jana Kališová considers especially fruitful in this domain her co-operation with the South Bohemia Theatre in České Budějovice (her adaptations of Mozart’s Così fan tutte and Gassmann’s La notte critica received prizes for direction at the Festival of Czech Music Theatre in 1993 and 1994; her treatment of Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin was shortlisted for the best production of 1995). To date, she has worked on the National Theatre Opera productions of Smetana’s The Two Widows (1996), Verdi’s La traviata (1998) and Mozart’s Don Giovanni (2000).