Jana Zbořilová

Biography

Jana Zbořilová studied at the Václav Hollar Art College in Prague, and subsequently took a degree in stage design at Prague´s Academy of Performing Arts. After graduation, she worked as a free-lance set designer (1977–1984). From 1984–1989 she was engaged as set designer and head of stage design with the Western Bohemia Theatre in Cheb. Since 1990 she has held a teaching post at the Stage Design Department of Prague´s Academy of Performing Arts (in 1994 she was made associate professor, and three years later, professor of stage design). She has to her credit over 500 set and costume designs for drama, opera and ballet productions in this country and abroad (Germany, Finland, Poland, Hungary, Greece). She has made an extensive body of combined set and costume designs for numerous opera and drama productions mounted by the National Theatre in Prague (Puccini: Il Trittico; Stravinsky: Firebird; Pavel Kohout: Cyanide at Five; Peter Maxwell Davies – Leoš Janáček: Insanity and Passion; Miloslav Klíma – Zbyněk Srba – Vojtěch Ron: The Passion; plus costume designs for Smetana´s The Bartered Bride; Bohumil Hrabal: I Waited on the King of England; Ronald Harwood: Scale Balance; František Hrubín: A Romance for Flugelhorn; Dostoevsky: The Idiot; Janáček: The Adventures of the Cunning Little Vixen). She has worked regularly with the National Theatre in Brno (Thomas Beckett; The Taming of the Shrew; The Death of Tarelkin; Don Carlos; The Brothers Karamazov; The Furies; Maria Stuarda; La traviata; Salome; Káťa Kabanová). She is signed under a formidable number of further set designs, for the Husa na provázku Theatre of Brno (King Lear; The Fool and the Queen; With Me Come Death and Horse; Gallows Songs; Cathy of Heilbronn; The Song of Viktorka), the Činoherní klub of Prague (Ivanov; A Midsummer Night´s Sex Comedy; The Audience; The Beggar´s Opera), Theatre Na Vinohradech of Prague (Le Misanthrope; The Merchant of Venice; Insect Play), Theatre Pod Palmovkou of Prague (Platonov; Jacques and His Master), the Western Bohemia Theatre of Cheb, the J.K. Tyl Theatre of Plzeň, and others. She has worked with many stage directors, including Eva Tálská, Zdeněk Kaloč, Ivo Krobot, Jiří Menzel, Otto Ševčík, Pavel Šmok, Ivan Rajmont, Jaroslava Šiktancová, Miloš Horanský, Jan Grossman, Pavel Pecháček, Vladimír Kelbl, Zbyněk Srba, and Radek Balaš. She has created numerous costume designs for film and television (Ballad for a Bandit; Blues for E.F. Burian; How Poets Lose Illusions; Glass Menagerie, and others). In 1981 and again in 2001 she won gold medals at the Novi Sad Triennale.