ABSTRACT
The Czech drama of the late 1950's and early 1960's changes as rapidly as the entire character of the Czech stage. The changes are wide-ranging in theme as well as in technique. A theme either directly or indirectly related too many of these plays are the generation conflict. It ought to be pointed out that Stalinist dogmatic esthetics tended to exclude the generation conflict from literature, regarding it as unessential and distracting from other more important ones. The radical shift in the thematic orientation of the drama in the second half of the 1950's is accompanied by an even more radical expansion in form. Experimentation becomes the rule of the day, and playwrights are engaged in what appears in retrospect as a frantic search for new techniques. The general trend of the Czech drama after 1956 is toward the destruction of the classical linear structures that had been prevalent during the dogmatic period.
