Soon after it was established in 1958, Divadlo Na zábradlí became a seedbed for the Czech theatre of the absurd thanks to director Jan Grossman and dramatist Václav Havel. Several film directors of the Czech New Wave who were banned from making films during the Normalization era found their creative home there, such as Evald Schorm. Behind the iconic era of the theatre in the 1990s stood its artistic director Petr Lébl.
Since the 2013/2014 season, the theatre has been led by Petr Štědroň, the former artistic director of Brno’s Reduta Theatre, who brought his creative team with him – dramaturge Dora Štědroňová, director Jan Mikulášek, and stage designer Marek Cpin. Together they create the unique and characteristic poetics of the ensemble. They systematically reflect on the burning topics of the day and at the same time examine the timeless phenomena of human life. They emphasise a non-conformist dramaturgy going in the direction of original auteur productions, dramatizations of novels, and radical interpretations of classic as well as current dramas. Space is also given to prominent artists of “Generation Y”, such as Petr Erbes and Boris Jedinák with the 8lidí ensemble, Anna Klimešová, Jan Frič, Anna Davidová, and filmmakers Jan Prušinovský and Jiří Havelka.
The work of this theatre has been regularly featured at Flora. In 2015, the festival presented a cross-section of their work as part of the program section “Profile: Divadlo Na zábradlí”, and then regularly hosted many of their notable productions, such as The Hedonists, Hamlets, Obsession, Macbeth – Too Much Blood, The Woodcutters, the diptych Zdeněk Adamec + Self-Accusation, and About Pavel (part of the autumn Epilogue of the 27th Flora Theatre Festival), God in Las Vegas, and Mikulášek’s adaptation of Bergman’s Persona, referenced by the current production of Knausgård’s My Struggle: A Man in Love.