Jana Svobodová is a theatre director with Prague’s Archa Theatre. She is also the artistic director of Archa.Lab, an ongoing Archa Theatre project aimed at discovering new ways of theatrical communication. Her work attempts to transcend the themes and forms traditionally used in drama. Drawing specific social groups into the theatrical process provides the basis for all of her projects.

Jana graduated from the Drama Faculty of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague. In 1992 she completed dance training in Japan under Min Tanaka. In 1998 and 1995 she prepared solo acts for the Bread and Puppet Circus in the USA. In 1994 she acted as assistant director to Peter Schumann for the B&P production of The Day is Morning, Noon, and Evening, in 1995 as choreographer and assistant director in the performance commemorating the 50th anniversary of the liberation of the concentration camp Dachau, and as a performer in Stravinsky’s Oedipus Rex. With Jan Sedal and Peter Schumann she developed the show They Sat Across the Table and Ate in 1996. From 1997 she has concurrently worked as a playwright, director, and performer with Petr Nikl: Solstice (Johannesburg, Kyoto, London, Brussels, Belgrado), In the Mirror, Through the Mirror, Secondhand Dreams. She is the co-author of the script for Archa Theatre’s Vainly Questioning Heaven, for which she also worked as choreographer and assistant director to J.A. Pitínsk. She further directed for Archa Theatre: Ark 2000-Theatre in Motion (2000), The Good Anna (2000), Tender Buttons (2002), Chat-Dangerously Easy Liaisons (2003), KarMa Tearoom-A Spiritual Horror (2004), Second Hand Twilight (Bloemfontein, South Africa; Summer 2004). In the summer of 2005 her show Chat-Dangerously Easy Liaisons was presented in Tokyo. In 2005 her show At 11:20am I Will Be Leaving You! performed at a refugee camp featuring residents of the camp alongside professional artists; 8 performances of the show attracted an audience totaling 1600. She is now directing the play Dreaming.Andersen, which features street artists alongside a Chinese singer and one of the most impressive contemporary Czech composers.

Between 1997 and 2006 she created a number of performances that served as a reflection on the social problems in the Czech Republic, which after the historic changes of 1989 continues to exist in a state of flux. In 1997, together with visual artist Petr Nikl, she initiated a series of projects that developed cooperation between Czech and South African artists who live and work in the townships outside of Johannesburg. Across the cultural and social divide, they discovered experiences that they had in common as people living in societies undergoing severe social and political changes.

Since this cooperation began, various shows have been developed and presented in the Czech Republic and South Africa, where the work was notable for the fact that it was deliberately performed for black audiences, who normally do not attend theatre. This project was documented in Pavel Kouteck’s television film ‘Come Closer, Candy’.

Jana considers it crucial to such projects that everyone works together in the development of a performance, because it results in a situation where the audience cannot recognize who of the performers are professionals and who are not.