Jan Štěpánek

Biography

Jan Štěpánek works as a set and costume designer and pedagogue. From 1981 to 1992 he lived in Austria and Germany. After returning to his homeland, he studied set design at the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague with Profs. Jan Dušek and Jana Zbořilová (1992–98). In the mid-90s, he began regularly collaborating with the stage directors Jiří Pokorný and Jan Antonín Pitínský, designing for the former the sets for the production of Wedekind’s play Spring Awakening at the Činoherní studio in Ústí nad Labem, and for the latter the sets for the production Eight and a Half (And a Half) at the Municipal Theatre in Zlín. As for the other set designs he has created for Jiří Pokorný, the most noteworthy include for the productions of Marius von Mayenburg’s play Fireface at the HaDivadlo in Brno, Gabriela Preissová’s The Farmer’s Wench at the Na zábradlí Theatre in Prague and J. K. Tyl’s Bloody Christening, or Drahomíra and Her Sons at the National Theatre in Prague. He has also worked with J. A. Pitínský on the productions of Preissová’s Jenufa at the Municipal Theatre in Zlín, the first Czech staging of J. W. von Goethe’s novel Elective Affinities at the  Dejvice Theatre in Prague, the Mrštík brothers’ Maryša, Jaroslav Durych’s Wandering, Vladislav Vančura’s Markéta Lazarová and Božena Němcová’s The Grandmother at the National Theatre in Prague. Another stage director with whom Jan Štěpánek has regularly co-operated is Jan Nebeský, participating in his National Theatre productions of Schiller’s tragedy Intrigue and Love and Molière’s Don Juan. He has also frequently designed stets for the Petr Bezruč Theatre in Ostrava. Jan Štěpánek teaches at the Janáček Academy of Music and Performing Arts in Brno, serving as head of the set design department. Moreover, he devotes to painting, with his pictures having been on display at exhibitions in Cheb, Prostějov, Brno and elsewhere.

Updated: February 2015