He is currently at a somewhat ‘split-personality’ stage in his life: in three years, he will become the head of the National Theatre in Prague. Until then, he will continue helming the National Theatre in Brno. “I am currently experiencing a wonderful period in Brno, both personally and professionally. The paradox is that I will be leaving Brno,” says Martin Glaser. In our exclusive interview, he reveals what working in Brno feels like, what he is preparing for Prague, what he believes is the purpose of theatre, and how he remembers his alma mater AMU, which currently celebrates 80 years since its foundation.
He wanted to be a scientist – a chemist. Being an introverted child, he was always studying things and his high school teacher adored him because he always wanted to experiment.
Then, when he was actually studying chemistry at Charles University’s Faculty of Science, he applied to study at DAMU. Prague and its limitless cultural options literally intoxicated the smalltown boy, and he discovered a new and intensive passion: theatre. He has stuck to it ever since.
What was your first ever play back at DAMU?
We genuinely loved each other in our class, we couldn’t wait to stage a play, but it was during that somewhat unfortunate period when there was no DISK for DAMU. There were a few dates available in Celetná, but that belonged to the Kašpar company really. We wanted to create but had no venue to do so.
Then an unexpected offer came – to play in the Žižkov Theatre where the Jára Cimrman company was working, having been at the top of their game for a long time.
My schoolmate Olga Šubrtová and I dug deep into the library, and two weeks of reading and debating later, we emerged with Goldoni’s rarely staged comedy, The Lovers. We wanted to stage a play about love.
We got our schoolmates on board, a colleague who studied theatre management even raised some money for costumes, and we rehearsed in the barn of Olga’s country house during the holidays. Lovely. We went swimming, rehearsed in the morning and evening, and partied late into the night. It’s just what you need when you’re 20 years old and want to do theatre…
This sounds great. What was the premiere like?
It went surprisingly well – they were thrilled at school. The manager was happy and told me after the premiere that I could stage another premiere in December, two months later. We did Josef Topol’s An Hour of Love. It came out wonderfully. My graduation show was a disaster, though!
How come?
It was The Suspect Truth, a Spanish baroque comedy in verses. I overestimated my skills; it didn’t work. We overthought it; it was overwrought. Objectively speaking, it was an awful play, really dumb. I was afraid no one would hire me for a job anymore after that.
Luckily, my take on An Hour of Love was still on, so was one smaller original piece staged in Řeznická, and so I persuaded the [Department] leadership to withdraw my graduation play after a few reruns so no one could see it.
The leadership honoured my pleas, and I was grateful.
This is part of self-reflection. You will make a mistake now and then; that happens. You just have to acknowledge it and learn your lessons.
One day, I complained in the presence of my favourite teacher Ms Kudláčková that someone didn’t give me enough praise for something, and she said: “Martin, you will become a director only after you mess up ten plays and still get to continue working with the same people.”
She was utterly right. When you do something wrong as a director in the theatre, it’s crucial to convince people to stay with you.
You are currently in a special, somewhat ‘split-personality’ situation. You know that you will become the head of the National Theatre in Prague in three years, but until then, you will continue at the helm of the National Theatre in Brno. You still have to give everything to Brno while also focusing on Prague intensively, is that right?
That’s correct. This is a revolutionary achievement in the Czech environment: the manager of the National Theatre has actually been appointed four years before the beginning of their term of office. This is something that the Czech cultural milieu is not very good at; what happens often is that people come to the theatre one day to find there is no manager, and then everything runs on provisional terms for 18 months before someone new is found…
This must obviously be a big burden for a person, mostly in emotional terms.
I will keep saying goodbye all three years. I wish that we could enjoy the lovely wave we are currently riding for the full three years, surfing and staying on top throughout all three seasons.
At the same time, my colleagues and I must use the opportunity we have to really prepare for Prague. We must know how our country’s premier scene works so that, on 1 September 2028, we don’t need to resort to excuses and explaining why we didn’t manage something. We must immediately start to pursue our vision, which is what got us selected for the job.
I fell in love with Budějovice, then with Brno, and now I should build the most intensive relationship I can with the National Theatre in Prague.
Was Brno a love at first sight twelve years ago?
No, not at all. Brno was not part of the plan. I was experiencing my first ‘European style’ exit from my first job at the South Bohemian Theatre in České Budějovice at the time.
I had come to the realisation that if I wanted to continue working at that theatre, I would first have to break things down rather than build them, and I don’t like doing that.
So, I made an arrangement with the manager at the time to the effect that I would quit the artistic director position in two years, giving them ample time to find my successor. I would look for another job in the meantime. I was ready to go freelance.
But then Brno called.
Yes. That was not in my sights at all. I had never dreamed of being the manager. I thought about it for a long time. Brno was not in its best condition at the time, and that was a challenge for me. I said I’d give it a try.
It proved to be one of the luckiest decisions in my life.
Iam currently experiencing a wonderful period in life in Brno, both personally and professionally. The paradox is that I will be leaving Brno.
I was forced to learn everything from scratch in Brno. I found out what my manager in Budějovice had shielded me from when I was a director and then artistic director.
I really appreciate that in hindsight – and I try to give some of that back to my colleagues and shield them from various things – but that also meant I didn’t earn an insight into certain affairs and had to learn by trial and error.
We all had to work hard and fire up our colleagues across the theatre. I feel that the past years’ investment is now bringing fruit. The snowball effect is working – one success generates more options and opportunities. This is nice. Yet, I am currently beginning to leave this behind.
You studied directing theatre, but you are self-taught as a manager...
Two-thirds of Czech theatre managers are in fact also directors – it’s part and parcel of the job.
As a director, you try to connect everybody and everything including opposing interests and needs; as a manager, you do the same, only on a larger scale. With that said, I obviously had to learn many hard, procedural, as well as human and communication skills. Despite that, my journey here has been fortunate.
You enter an arena that is different from art and you perceive many things from a different angle. I can understand a hysterical director who wants something really badly and all they see is their point, their tunnel vision. I need to understand them and create an environment for them to fulfil their vision. At the same time, I must take into consideration human resources and economy.
In hindsight, you often get to see how unnecessary all that rage was.
When you are a director, you’re in charge of a team of collaborators; as an artistic director, that team is bigger; and when you are the manager of an institution, it is even larger and you have the responsibility towards viewers. In Brno, the team is some 650 people, plus a quarter million viewers who come to the theatre annually. There will be twice as many in Prague…
You said in an interview that Czech audiences long for the recreational function of theatre. What do you do to make sure that your theatre does not pander to viewers while remaining attractive for them? I guess this is more difficult for major venues than for small ones.
At the beginning, both parties need to be open towards the idea of experiencing meaningful time together. Your task is to fulfil this essential requirement in a way that will make them want to come back. You don’t want to hurt viewers. Art should go against the grain, but should not alienate viewers by systematically pretending to be greater than them.
If we want to be relevant for society, we need to speak to people. We can try to be as original as we can with every play, but when the majority of viewers in an auditorium with a thousand seats do not understand us, the effort is pointless.
You cannot fight people’s desire for recreational theatre – you need to work your way through it. I believe in diligent, systematic work. You can teach an audience to accept you and guide them where you want them, but I prefer doing this the non-violent way.
Sure, we cannot do in Brno what they have been doing in Hamburg or Warsaw for a long time because our viewers do not know the right vocabulary or mindset. But if you don’t pretend to be better than them and do your thing well, they will get used to watching plays that force them to think and respond, plays that ask questions without necessarily giving definite answers.
More importantly, things are changing quite rapidly; that statement of mine is actually outdated. Also, the current generation of viewers have never seen The Water Sprite with paper mache prop stones and ‘curtain cloth’ costumes. They want something different by default.
I have never thought about whether I staged plays for the elderly or for the young. By the way, today’s elderly people will not settle for a paper mache Water Sprite either.
I feel obligated to offer theatre for everyone. This held even truer in Budějovice where there was a single theatre in the entire region. If I did theatre for my peers or for people who perceive it the same way I do, we’d be alone in the house, and I’m happy when the house is sold out.
I hope our viewers in Brno come home from our shows with a powerful experience, even though the play may have been different from what they are used to. I hope to do the same in Prague.
The principal impulse for our conversation is the anniversary of foundation of the Academy of Performing Arts. DAMU, your alma mater, is part of the Academy, so let’s get back to it. Do you remember any powerful sensation when you first came to the school?
I do. For me, the unforgettable moment was when I brought my application in. I was studying chemistry at the Faculty of Science at the time.
Oh, I must have overlooked that in my research!
I wanted to be a scientist, a chemist. I competed in Chemistry Olympiads. I had a wonderful teacher who allowed me to experiment. I was this introverted child, always reading and studying stuff. It was clear-cut: go study chemistry after high school. It seemed like I would become a scientist.
But?
The Velvet Revolution caught me in second year in high school. Finally, even the cinema in Sokolov started showing the New Wave masterpieces as part of its cineaste club screenings. It really engulfed me. I had been a bookworm, and then I got enthralled by film.
Suddenly, I felt I loved art as well as chemistry. There was no artist in my family; as a boy from a small mining town, I could never fancy becoming a film director. Up until age 19, I had only been in theatre about three times, and the pieces were not that great really.
So, although the world of art was luring me, I went to study chemistry; it was an obvious choice. Then, a universe of options opened up for me in Prague. Our smalltown cineaste club showed a film once a fortnight, whereas Prague’s Atlas cinema screened three to four films a day in two rooms. I went to the cinema, exhibitions, concerts… and, piece by piece, I was discovering…
Theatre!
Theatre. Also, I saw how obsessed my schoolmates were with science. They would sit in the lab late into the night, but I suddenly didn’t want to because there were films and theatre shows to see in the evening.
Then a warning light started blinking in my head: ‘Watch out!’ If you don’t feel the passion, you cannot succeed in your filed. And I have always been competitive.
So, you said, I’ll try an art-related field?
Yes. But I’m this scientist type, so a plotted a table of options. I found there was film science, theatre science… At a glance, it seemed like a viable compromise: I’ll still be a scientist, only I’ll be studying art. But then I thought that might be boring.
I was thinking about directing films. I added it to the table, but then I did some research and read interviews with film directors. They said the prep work for filming could take years, only to be halted just weeks before the beginning if the producers so decided. I couldn’t bear that. I am a somewhat impatient person.
So, then I toyed with my table and the point scores. The outcome was that I would try directing dramatic theatre at DAMU. I applied for the programme.
You delivered your application form in person…
It was surreal. I was wandering inside the building in Karlova. The guard sent me to the third floor to see Ms Vránová, the fabled secretary of the Department of Dramatic Theatre. In the corridors, I could hear the sounds of people behind closed doors while passing very artist-looking young people in the stairwells. I felt like a little boy with a piece of paper in his hand.
Then Vladimír Franz suddenly walked out of one of the offices. Back then, I had no idea at all that Vladimír Franz existed. My guess was, this is a higher-year student wearing an extravagant mask. I said, “Hi, got any idea where Ms Vránová’s office is?”
You didn’t!
I did. He told me very sternly not to address DAMU teachers with a ‘hi’. Then he seriously pointed to a door, in fact one that I was about to knock on…
I filed my application. The admission procedure followed. My memory of that is still blurred; I still cannot grasp how it happened. I had recurring nightmares where I was only admitted by a clerical error; I felt I didn’t belong for a long time. The talent tests were so vastly different from what I knew at the Faculty of Science… I didn’t understand much of what they were asking me about, what they wanted from me, what the deciding factor was…
In addition, I never told my parents about the application. When they received the telegram that said I had made it to the second round, it caused a big stir at home.
But it happened. I passed through all the rounds, got in, and am really happy it happened the way it did.
Did you leave chemistry behind in your second year?
Yes, but I felt a bit sorry about it later on. Martin Myšička was studying at DAMU too, two years ahead of me, and he actually completed his studies at the Faculty of Mathematics and Physics as well. I could have tried both.
Did you fall for theatre fast?
Yes, and completely.
Who of your classmates are popular today?
My classmates were Dušan Pařízek and Olga Šubrtová; Olga and I went to Budějovice after graduation. For actors, there’s Vasil Fridrich who is now a rising star in Činoherní klub, and Marika Procházková. Our class teacher was Jan Burian, and Ms Hlaváčová, Ms Kolářová and Svatopluk Skopal taught us acting. Ms Kudláčková taught us dramaturgy, and I also witnessed Professor Königsmark, Mr Císař and Mr Vostrý. Our class existed in a sort of in-between period while the system of instruction was being overhauled.
What was the overhaul about?
Directing students like me used to start studying in the same year as acting students. Later on, they implemented this model where directors started studying alone in the first year, and actors joined them one year later when the directors were already in their second year.
But we all started from scratch together – directors, dramaturges, and actors. I found that really nice, with everybody being together at once.
I’d had no previous experience with theatre. I could see right from the start how difficult it was: for the director to actually invent what they wanted to say, and for the actors to bring the director’s idea or the actual story to life. That is, unless the director was brimming with ideas and spouted out like 22 fabulous options right away.
We worked together intensively and were a great team. I believe the Department of Dramatic Theatre is still like that to this day. Teachers really try hard to put people together so that the teams mimic small theatre companies.
What did theatre mean to you at the time?
My idea was totally naïve at the time: I wanted to tell stories and elicit emotion in people.
I don’t find that naïve – I actually think it’s fitting.
You’re right. Naïve or not, this is what I have been doing all my professional life. Whenever I read a book or saw a film that really hit a chord with me, I kept pondering whether I would be able to treat that work of art so that my viewers would feel what I felt experiencing it. You know, it’s about being able to make people laugh or fear whenever you want them to feel like that.
I devoured the school; I was like a sponge. I discovered stuff, learned new things and went to theatres. I was drawn mainly to classic dramatic theatre. I think I saw the National Theatre’s entire repertoire at the time, and some pieces I saw three or four times.
At the same time, I discovered Petr Lébl and Divadlo na Zábradlí, maybe a bit schizophrenically. Our teachers used him as a bad example – ‘this is not how you do it’ – but I was fascinated.
I loved it deeply even though you couldn’t immediately analyse and decipher everything that was going on there. I saw The Seagull maybe eight times. I wrote an essay about it; I felt like I had cracked all the riddles one by one.
I was somewhere in the middle between classic dramatic theatre of the Rajmont, Krobot and Kačer school and Lébl’s postmodern theatre.
Do you view anything differently now, 30 years later, than you did in your time at DAMU?
I guess I’m a bit simple-minded in this respect. I still find theatre to be a wonderful way to live. Doing theatre is je amazing. That still holds true.
I just do it less myself nowadays; I make sure that others can do it well. Nothing profound has changed. I just have more experience: I am better at telling tinsel from something that has depth to it. I enjoy meeting pure talent more. And I still love being surprised.
I love the moments when I enjoy theatre as a viewer, without analysing how things are done, who I want for the company, or whether I would invite a particular director for collaboration.
Unfortunately, such moments are rare now. Leisure time is scarce; I choose very carefully where to go, but I can perceive a powerful experience just as intensively as I did 30 years ago. Plays, films, books, TV series and concerts can still awe me into oblivion.
Looking back, I keep realising how lucky I was to choose Brno, and Budějovice before that. Had I not been admitted to DAMU that first time, I would probably not try again. I would most likely be a chemist in a plant somewhere in Sokolov, cooking up stuff in a lab.
Have you lost any illusions along the way?
I don’t know if I lost any illusions. What I have been feeling recently is that the world is getting more selfish, or maybe I’m getting more sensitive to that. I take issue with people breaking deals. When someone promises to do something, they should not simply say: “Sorry, I’m going somewhere else, somewhere better” just because they receive a different offer two weeks later.
I understand that there is a vast array of opportunities, especially for actors, but I also believe in long-term collaborations. I like building things; I like continuity, and you cannot do that without sacrificing something. Every adult knows you cannot have it all.
It’s usually gaining something in exchange for losing something else. Sometimes you make a bad decision. Maybe people today throw away things that are not utterly necessary with too much ease – things that do not yield profit immediately.
Is this what you see as a manager? Do you encounter this in your company?
I do, though luckily not often in Brno. We maintain a fragile balance; I try to be a reasonable boss. An opportunity to work somewhere else with someone else is good for everyone – it is refreshing. Then you come back home and realise that the grass isn’t always greener on the other side of the fence. Things you take issue with at home can be dealt with.
I believe in theatre companies and repertory theatre. The farther from Prague you get and the less accessible other opportunities are, the easier it is to build a company and give it energy and meaning.
That will be tough in Prague.
That’s true. It will be increasingly difficult to keep together people who are willing to commit to being here now and give it their all.
This may require radical changes over time. Or artistic directors will have to reinforce and redefine the rules of the game, because you cannot be the member of a company while also working on ten other projects.
That being said, I understand why actors want to play in TV shows and films. Having popular actors in the troupe who will draw audiences is also good for the company. There has to be balance, though. When it’s lost, you will notice.
In opera, international artists will arrive and rehearse intensively for six weeks, then perform. During that period, they have no other commitments, focusing exclusively on the piece being rehearsed. Czech colleagues tend to juggle multiple jobs at once. It shows in the work.
I really wish for us to learn how to better focus on one thing. That may be a naïve idea, but achieving it would be great. A bit like it used to be at DAMU back in the day.
I read somewhere that the members of one company at the National can go without meeting each other at work for two or three years, and I also know that a lot of what I learned in a small regional theatre and even in a big theatre in Brno will not be useful in Prague. I will have to learn to work with that, but I will use the tools I have to fine-tune that machine so that it runs well to the best of my own belief.
Along with managing the Brno theatre, you also directed plays actively and even refocused on the opera. Will you be able to enjoy directing in Prague too, or is it out of the question?
The price of this experience will be that I will not direct any plays, at least for a few initial years. It is quite possible I will direct no plays anymore. If I see that this cannot be reconciled without short-changing one or the other, I will have to make a choice. I have made the decision to take charge of our country’s premier theatre, which is a commitment for the full term of office.
Directing was one of the things I considered a lot when making my decision. I enjoy it. I used to joke that if someone put a knife to my throat and asked: “Manager, or director?”, I would reply “Director!”
See, the opportunity to manage and shape the National Theatre is a chance that only one person in a generation gets. Some generations are even skipped. This is a huge gift from destiny, so even though I conclude that I have fared quite well as a director in Brno, it would be a pity to not try this. It was tough; there were quite a lot of pros and cons, but all the pros prevailed eventually. But, of course, I would be sad if I could never direct a play afterwards.
I get it. Opera directing has opened an entirely new book for you after years of dramatic theatre. It is an entirely different discipline to you, or is it all about the principle, and that remains the same?
You still tell stories. You still want to elicit emotion. I choose very carefully what I do, and I have always insisted that I wanted the artistic director to ask me to take over the directing reins: I needed them to be convinced that I was the right man for the job, that my input was valuable.
An opera means a year of preparations to me. Earlier on, I loved listening to all genres of music, drifting through the musical world and getting lost in those endless musical libraries especially in the cyberspace.
When preparing an opera, I listen to that specific music most of the time. As of now, I have been listening to Händel for a year and a half.
There are times when I listen with full concentration while contemplating. Other times, I will play it in my headphones when raking the leaves, walking outside, or going to bed.
I always choose a topic that I currently find relevant; something of interest to me that I feel I can convey to people who spend eight weeks rehearsing with me, and then to the audience.
This is the same with dramatic theatre in many respects, but you gradually add ‘craftsmanship’ aspects as you learn over time. Anyway – to mention the school again – I immensely appreciate the school for having taught me the craft so well that I can use it regardless of the form or genre.
I am conservative in this respect. In order to be any good in any art, you need to master the craft. I really love genre pieces. Here in Czechia, we tend to mock genre purity – rather than making a purely detective or horror story, we will make a parody of those genres. We sometimes produce comedies that aren’t funny. I love comedies. I love it when people laugh their way through to learning a lesson, to a final slap in the face showing them they shouldn’t really have laughed.
It’s not uncommon to see authors who are ignorant of the elementary principles of their craft. Art critics tend to belittle genre pieces because they lack a ‘singular artistic viewpoint’.
Still, I am convinced that if I want to paint, I need to master colours, perspective, and technique. Then I can do whatever I want as long as I’m a genius. If I’m not, I can stick to my craftsmanship and still make something that is solid and makes sense.
Did you learn your trade well at DAMU, then?
I did. I got the foundation to build on, and I keep building on it. We learned the laws of the trade and got a sophisticated toolkit with which we can make any type of theatre we wish.
What story will you be telling with Händel’s music?
Agrippina is a baroque opera with a story rooted in the antiquity, and we will play it in the 21st century. We were seeking a means to overarch those three eras. We are headed towards a cynical political cabaret, because those amazing arias are largely sung by characters who just want two things: power and sex. Only a few long for pure love, and that’s what makes the world around them all the more crushing.
It’s fascinating how these things remain the same throughout time. Aside from other things, my managerial work has offered me a closer look at politics. I got to know politics a different way than you do from the media, and much better than I’d like.
Are you referring to the struggle for the Reduta, the small venue of Brno’s National Theatre which the city wanted to use for different purposes?
It was the struggle for the Reduta and the controversy involving the show Our Violence and Your Violence. The latter revolved around the basic principle of the freedom of art.
Had we withdrawn the play just because someone disliked the depiction of certain characters, I would have failed miserably as the manager of an art institution. There was no other way to go – I had to defend the elementary principle that politicians have no say in theatre programming.
The Reduta case was more complicated. There were far too many opposing interests clashing, and many of them were not mentioned publicly, just shrouded in lofty language. I was unable to fire heavy artillery either, so to speak, while knowing all too well that if matters turned out good for the theatre, there would be consequences for me personally. There is no forgiveness in Czech politics. We won, but I know that it’s over for me forever in certain circles.
Speaking of difficult decisions, how did your personal life affect the process? I gather from my research that you do not have a family…
I don’t have a family. My brother with his three children visited me some time ago. We had a wonderful week together, but I realised that if I had children, this type of job would just be so much more difficult to do.
It would still be possible.
Yes, I believe it would. Most theatre directors have children, but my life had different plans.
I wanted children, but when it got ever so slightly topical, my then partner didn’t want them. In fact, our government does not even allow us to legally raise children. The train has gone and I’m too old now. You always win some and lose some.
Right now, I share my life with an amazing partner and don’t want to lose him. It was imperative that we would move to Prague together. It was key. In Brno, I initially thought I would manage to maintain a long-distance relationship. But I failed and the relationship fell apart. My priority now is my need to live and stay together.
You know, I had set quite a lot of both internal and external conditions for myself to even start to pursue the job. When they were all eventually met, I couldn’t say no anymore.
What will you miss the most once you are in Prague?
I won’t find out until I move to Prague. I will miss certain people here in Brno, for sure. I have grown really fond of them in the twelve years. I got to know them in many ‘character-revealing’ situations. You become close when rehearsing – it’s no longer just ‘the manager is here’.
I try to always be polite to people. I treat them the way I want others to treat me, but I do realise there will be twice as many people and much more work to be done in Prague. I will no longer be able to come to the set once or twice a season. It’s more like I will be this suit who comes to a meeting or to a premiere. Building intensive relationships will be more difficult. On the other hand, I have three years to prepare – I won’t be coming to a house in which I don’t know anyone.
I will most certainly miss Brno as such. I love the city; it has wonderful theatres and excellent companies. I will miss Janáček Theatre sorely. It’s the best opera house in the country.
Author: Lenka Vrtišková Nejezchlebová
Photo: archiv Národní divadlo Brno a archiv Martina Glasera
14. October 2025
