Jana Vaverková and Robin Mayer: A Discussion of the Play – The Dramaturg Intervenes: Man, Word Order Bad
Witty jabs, casino aesthetics, and a deconstruction of the detective genre. Audiences can look forward to all this and more at the staged reading of a new play by the writing duo Vaverková and Mayer, which HaDivadlo will present as part of its theatre season finale on June 20, 2026. Read on to find out how they collaborate and what inspired them to write the play.
Jana Vaverková: Robin, we met in French class at JAMU. But talking about croissants and Charlotte Gainsbourg wasn’t enough for us. Can you describe how our creative collaboration began?
Robin Mayer: We started working together about four years ago. At the time, I was working on a documentary called Asisovina, aneb… about petty theft in the countryside, and I cast you in it. Jana had—and still has—a knack for stealing.
J: That’s true—to write a screenplay or a play, we both need to have lived through something. Our collaboration on the play The Dramaturg Intervenes: Man, Word Order Bad began over a glass of espresso martini, which we used to enjoy together regularly after school. What were we talking about back then?
R: I think that right from the start of our careers, we both quickly encountered an excessive caution on the part of the cultural community, which we find annoying. This went hand in hand with the gradual decline of public media, which we noted in our writing at the time and which has become even more pressing today.
J: Then I went on Erasmus, and for The Dramaturg Intervenes, we wrote it by calling each other every other week and typing the dialogue into a shared document. In the end, it turned out to be a pretty well-structured piece of work, considering our circumstances. Robin, where do you get your inspiration?
R: I steal plot ideas from old cartoons. What about you?
J: Wow, I’m more into the newer ones. I haven’t yet experienced a creative process where some Shrek motif didn’t pop up. By „old cartoons,“ do you mean something like Tom and Jerry?
R: I mean Scooby-Doo. How could you even ask that?!
J: What a dummy I am, haha.
Jana Vaverková and Robin Mayer, photo: HaDivadlo
R: The play The Dramaturg Intervenes was originally written as a radio play—isn’t that a bit old-school for you?
J: It is, but fortunately, none of the radio producers were exactly thrilled by our snarky jabs. And to think we chose such a traditional genre as the detective story! In the end, though, it turned out for the best, because adapting the text for the stage pleasantly deconstructed and revitalized it. I really enjoy this ongoing process—what about you?
R: What I enjoyed most about this project was sharing my inner world with someone who sees things in a similar way. It’s not about mutual reassurance or comforting each other, but about laughing together and developing ideas.
J: Yeah, that's true—we really had a great time. What can the audience look forward to?
R: Audiences can look forward to a radio studio, a noir-style casino, and a Father Brown mystery featuring Oscar Wilde on a T-shirt.
J: We also decided that a season titled The Collective could be beautifully rounded out by blurring the lines between the director and the actors. The play has a ton of characters, so we’ve agreed with Justina and Honza—who, along with me, make up the artistic leadership of HaDivadlo—that they’ll play the roles of a croupier and a soccer player, so there’s plenty to look forward to. Can you sum up the play in one sentence?
R: It's a play about a world where the loudest voice wins.
Stage reading of the new play The Dramaturg Intervenes: Man, Word Order Bad will wrap up the HaDivadlo theatre season on Saturday, June 20, 2026, at 7:30 p.m.