Actor and director Tomáš Dianiška spent seven years at the FX Šaldy Theater in Liberec. Although he then left for Prague’s Palmovka in 2014, he still returns to this “second home”, as he calls it. “It was my first job, I have a lot of friends here,” explains why he has now written a crime comedy with horror elements called The Mysterious Mr. Zet for the Liberec scene.
The novel, directed by the author, will have its world premiere this Friday, October 6, at the Little Theater. The nearest reruns follow on October 8 and 19.
When writing, Dianiška uses the fact that she knows actors from the Liberec scene for a long time. The year before last, he created a play about Vlast Burian for the local FX Šaldy Theatre, which was nominated for production of the year. Veronika Korytářová won the Thália for her portrayal of the title role. In the current project, the author and director cast the recent winner of the same award, Karolína Baranová. Filip Jáša, Jana Hejret Vojtková, Jana Stránská, Jakub Albrecht, Kateřina Kornhäuserová, Zdeněk Kupka and Stavros Pozidis also perform in Tejemné pan Zet.
The author describes the first play in this season of drama at the Liberec theater as a combination of detective story and horror, i.e. genres that he has glimpsed from television and movies. He likes to play with both of them. “The detective genre has been pouring into us since childhood. So I thought it was quite fun to make fun of it, until it’s such a parody. I hope the audience will have fun. I tried to fit as many jokes as possible into it as little as possible area,” says Tomáš Dianiška.
The story, in which you can recognize familiar elements from, for example, Agatha Christie, takes place in a mysterious place. “For example, I can reveal that it’s about a group of people who get into a house. There’s a storm raging outside, suddenly a corpse appears there, and they’re trying to figure out who is the killer. I always enjoy that concept – finding out how it was, ” suggests the author.
The theater hopes the production could attract students. “We would like to achieve what Dianiška was able to do here years ago, which is to bring the younger generation of viewers here. We hope that university and high school students will be able to listen to this performance,” says dramaturg Jiří Janků.
Tomáš Dianiška has been a member of the Theater under Palmovka since 2014. | Photo: Miloš Skácel
The author of more than twenty texts, Dianišek in Liberec has so far created the production Googling and Fucking, which he made his debut as a twenty-four-year-old playwright, as well as Pippinky z poklatar, Mickey Mouse is dead, LSDown or the sci-fi farce Atomová kočička. In his subjects, he often goes back to modern history, such as when he told the stories of the people who participated in Operation Anthropoid in his typical way in the play 294 Braves on Palmovka.
In recent years, among other things, the artist has celebrated success in Ostrava’s Petr Bezruč Theater with productions of Transka, points of the second about Czechoslovak athlete Zdena Koubková, who became a man, or Špinarka, a portrait of a former rock star. “Dianiška knows how to tell stories, he cares about the audience having fun. Also in Špinarka, he masterfully alternates brutally grotesque gags with scenes in which his heroes impress even hardened audiences,” wrote Aktuálně.cz. Dianiška is going to the cinema in the near future. On December 21, movie theaters will start screening the film Lítá v tom, directed by Tomáš Juríček’s script.
Video: I’m making a theater pop, says Dianiška
I don’t use big theatrical metaphors, I go towards the audience, director and actor Tomáš Dianiška told DVtv the year before. | Video: Daniela Písařovicová
