ABSTRACT
The decline of the psychological drama and of the political drama of the Brechtian mold was accompanied by the rise of the Czech drama of the absurd. Besides the drama of the poets, only the drama of the absurd had the scope and intensity of a movement and included an identifiable group of playwrights with common artistic goals. The reasons for the lateness in arrival of the absurd drama on the Czech stage were several. The absurd drama of the West was naturally well known to the leading men of the theater in Czechoslovakia long before it began to be produced. The core of the repertoire of the Ballustrade Theater until Vyskocil's departure in 1963 consisted of new plays of Czech authors, tailor-made for the specific objectives of the theater. Most of them were a montage alternating dramatic dialogue, a brief narrative, poems, and songs within a very loose structural framework.
