Josef Krofta Sold at Auction Prices

b. 1943 - d. 2015

He came from Uherské Hradište. He studied at a secondary school in Nymburk and then he was an apprentice mechanic in Prague. Here he enrolled in the Theater Faculty of the Academy of Performing Arts . In 1966 he graduated in directing and dramaturgy from the Department of Puppetry. In his own words, however, he lacked the defense of the thesis. Due to the designation of politically undesirable, he received his university degree only in 1989.

During his studies in the 1960s and shortly thereafter he worked in Czechoslovak Radio . Then he entered basic military service in a military art ensemble in Bratislava. After returning from the war in 1968 he moved to the radio studio in Ceské Budejovice.
Director

Since 1968 he has worked as a director at the Small Theater in Ceské Budejovice . Three years later he began directing at the Drak Theater in Hradec Králové , where he became artistic director in 1981. He also worked as a director at the Spejbl and Hurvínek Theater in Prague, at the Beseda Studio in Hradec Králové and at the Odense Theater in Denmark.

Among his most outstanding works on the stage of the Hradec Králové Theater are the productions Enšpígl , Sleeping Beauty , Petruška , Unikum - today for the last time! , Song of Life , A Midsummer Night's Dream , The Bartered Bride or Pinokio . He presented Matej Kopecký , Jirí Vyšohlíd and Zdenek Ríha as his puppet role models in an interview for Reflex. In his productions he shifted the emphasis from the literary component of the work to the stage means of expression and functionally used the interplay of a puppet with a live actor. "Maybe I was lucky that I couldn't learn the classical puppet theater," Europeans explained in the Czech Television documentary series.

In March 2013, the Actors' Association awarded him the Thalia Award 2012 for his long-term championship in puppet theater. He became the first laureate of this prize (together with the Spejbl and Hurvínek Theater ), because it was awarded for the first time in this category.


In 1990 he was habilitated at the DAMU as associate professor of dramatic arts - directing and from the same year he worked as a teacher and head of the Department of Alternative and Puppet Theater. In 1994 he received a professorship. Between 1993 and 1998 he was Vice-Dean of the DAMU for Foreign Affairs. [6] He has also taught in France and Norway.

In 1993 he founded the International Institute of Figurative Theater in Hradec Králové.

For the conception and implementation of the project of the Department of Alternative and Puppet Theater, DAMU was awarded the UNIMA Prize from the Czech Center of the International Puppetry Union UNIMA as the first laureate in 1991 .
Politician

In 2010 he became Deputy Mayor of the City of Hradec Králové for Culture, Sport and Tourism as a non-partisan candidate for the Election for the City .

He was married, had two adult children and four grandchildren. His son Jakub Krofta also studied at DAMU and later collaborated with his father on the production of the circus musical Pinokio.