Host Magazine Masterclass: Jiří Havelka – Point zero, I don't know the state
The artistic director of the Dejvice Theatre, director Jiří Havelka, will present in his masterclass the gradual stages of creating a theatre production using the ‘devising’ method. The next installment of the Host Magazine Masterclass series will take place on Monday, 15 September 2025 at 19:00 at the CED Cellar Stage.
CED Cellar Stage
15. 9. 2025 19:00
The program is in Czech without translation.
Collective authorship as a path to creative freedom. In his masterclass, director Jiří Havelka will present the gradual stages of creating a theatre production using the "devising" method. The process of stage rehearsals as the application of the five "n"s – listening, chance, naivety, uncertainty, incompleteness. (In Czech: naslouchání, náhoda, naivita, nejistota, nedokončenost).
Jiří Havelka (*1980), born in Jihlava, co-founder of the International Festival of Documentary Films in Jihlava, graduated from DAMU, where he later headed the Department of Alternative and Puppet Theatre, member of the original generational theatre group Vosto5, collaborated with many Czech and Slovak theatres, currently artistic director of Dejvice Theatre.
From the beginning, he has focused his theatre work on collective improvisation as a method of creating original productions. He has collaborated with most professional theatres in Prague, Brno and Slovakia, and his productions have been awarded many times both in the Czech Republic and abroad. During the lock-down, he transformed an originally intended production for the National Theatre about the post-war massacre at the Swedish Chance into an audiovisual anatomy of mass murder for 34 talking heads called Eyewitness (2020). In the autumn of 2021, he wrote and directed the audio series Agent for platform Audiotéka, charting day by day the 23-day long dying of former FSB agent Alexander Litvinenko (1st place in the Audiobook of the Year competition). The texts of his plays The Elites and The Company of Owners have been performed on other stages across Europe. Based on his stage play The Community of Owners, he made his film debut The Owners (2019 winner of the Czech Film Critics Award and three Czech Lions). His docudrama Eyewitness was among the selected films screened at the Ji.hlava International Documentary Film Festival in 2021. Another feature film was Extraordinary Event (2021), which won 5 awards at the Film Comedy Festival in 2022. His most recent film directorial effort so far is The Gardener's Year, which was awarded the Trilobit Prize in 2024 and turned one of its four nominations into a Czech Lion. Jiří Havelka has been the screenwriter of all his films, and also co-wrote the screenplay for Duchoň (2025, directed by Peter Bebjak).
Host Masterclass is designed as a series of lectures in which prominent figures from cultural life talk about their profession and life. The event is organized with financial support from the State Fund for Culture.
Admission: CZK 200 / students CZK 100.