Kateřina Rudčenková (born 1976) is a Czech poet, prose writer and playwright. She graduated from the Jaroslav Ježek Conservatory (Writing Lyrics and Scripts) and the Faculty of Economics and Management at the Czech University of Life Sciences in Prague. She has published four poetry collections Ludwig (1999), Není nutné, abyste mě navštěvoval (2001), Popel a slast (2004) and Chůze po dunách (2013), for which she received the 2014 Award for poetry, the collection of short stories Noci, noci (2004) and the play Niekur (2007) for which she received the Alfréd Radok Award 2006 and Ungelt Theatre in Prague staged in in 2008. The stage reading of the play Times of Cherry Smoke was also staged by Immigrants’ Theatre in New York in the very same year. In 2003, she received the German Hubert Burda poetry award. In 2007, she undertook a one-month residential stay for foreign playwrights in Royal Court Theatre in London. She has participated in many international literary festivals. Her straightforward and sensual poems with frequent autobiographic connotations have been translated in twenty languages, book selections of her poetry were published in German as well (…nicht nötig, mich zu besuchen, Klagenfurt: Wieser Verlag, 2002, in Czech-German)
“Times of Cherry Smoke" Why does the word genius have no female version? And what does Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty or Little Red Riding Hood have to say to today’s women? Three generations – mother, daughter and grandmother – meet in the play and confront each other with their own life journey. The author uses her playful language full of poetic images to talk about the social pressure on women, who should yield to social and cultural patterns. Apart from real events, there are also dreamy scenes, in which the protagonists wait for their marriage (as a reference to Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot”) and acquire the attributes of classical female fairy-tale characters.
The festival also hosted a seminar and workshop with the topic of contemporary Czech drama and its translation. The workshop for students of the Czech language was led by Barbora Schnelle, Lydia Nagel and Henning Bochert. The seminar was organized by Drama Panorama, Czech Centre Berlin and the West Slavic Language Department at the Humboldt University in Berlin (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Fachgebiet Westslawische Sprachen) supported by the Embassy of the Czech Republic in Berlin.
An anthology of German translation of works by Czech authors is going to be published in autumn by Neofelis Verlag GmbH.
Kateřina Rudčenková: 1. Times of Cherry Smoke (Čas třešňového dýmu) (will be translated by Barbora Schnelle and Lydia Nagel)
Roman Sikora: 2. Confessions of a Masochist (Zpověď masochisty) (already translated by Barbora Schnelle and Kathrin Janka)
Eva Prchalová: 3. Vertigo (Závrať) (partially translated by Doris Kouba, only in extracts)
Anna Saavedra: 4. Secret Report from the Planet of Mothers or Mamma Guerilla (Tajná zpráva z planety matek aneb Mamma guerilla) – 33.325 (already translated by Doris Kouba)
Tomáš Vůjtek: 5. The Hearing (Slyšení) – 83.816 (already translated by Mirko Kraetsch)
David Drábek: 6. The Ball (Koule) (will be translated by Doris Kouba)
Petra Hůlová: 7. Cell Number (Buňka číslo) (already translated by Doris Kouba)
David Zábranský: 8. The Actor and Carpenter Majer talks about the State of his Home Country (Herec a truhlář Majer mluví o stavu své domoviny) (will be translated by Doris Kouba)
S.d.Ch. (Miloslav Vojtíšek): 9. The last roast goose (Poslední husička) (will be translated by Doris Kouba)
Editor/Anthologist: Barbora Schnelle
Editor: Henning Bochert
Other editors: Lydia Nagel (by Times of Cherry Smoke)
Translators: Doris Kouba, Kathrin Janka, Barbora Schnelle, Mirko Kraetsch
Further Contents:
Introductory Essay - Barbora Schnelle
Portraits of the playwrights - Barbora Schnelle