ABSTRACT
Among most theatre followers throughout the world, Josef Svoboda is the best known and most highly regarded Czech theatre artist of the past half-century. 1 Born in 1920, he is now among the most senior of major Czech theatre practitioners, one of the dwindling number of those who launched their professional careers in the 1940s, during or immediately following World War II. Despite stresses and pressures of many kinds, he is probably the sole leading artist to have worked without interruption in Czech theatre since the 1940s. Like a self-regenerating natural force, Josef Svoboda not only survived the strains and traumas of his homeland in those years but also achieved a world reputation.
