HISTORICAL CONTEXT
After the Second World War, the Czechoslovak Republic became part of the so-called Eastern Bloc (coalition of communist states that were aligned with the Soviet Union and existed during the Cold War. From the beginning of the 1960s, a slow change in social discourse took place in Czechoslovakia, which resulted in the removal of high-ranking communist officials, who rigidly rejected this change (January 1968). The Prague Spring was a phenomenon whose reforms were an attempt to loosen the communist regime and speed up the process of democratization.
National Moravian-Silesian Theatre: WHEN SPRING IS OVER
When Spring is Over was created during an intensive week-long creative workshop in August 2023 under the guidance of mentors. The starting point for the work was the historical events surrounding the Prague Spring in 1968. We narrowed and refined this theme dramaturgically at the outset, and the sociological research and the mentors' preparation had a more specific starting point, which was the act of resistance by Jan Palach, a student at Charles University, who burned himself to death in January 1969 in protest against the occupation by the Warsaw Pact troops.
