Jaroslav Bönisch

Biography

Born in 1978 in Prague. From 1997 to 2003 he studied set design at the Theatre Faculty of the Academy of Performing Arts in the classes of Prof. Jaroslav Malina and Prof. Albert Pražák. In 2003 he received the Josef Hlávka Award. In 2002 and 2003 he attended summer art workshops at the Watermill Center (New York), led by the world-famous stage director and designer Robert Wilson. Between 2000 and 2003 he was operations architect of the National Theatre, cooperating on the opera productions of Janáček’s Fate (sets by R. Wilson) and The Cunning Little Vixen (sets by Šimon Caban), Mozart’s Don Giovanni (a remake of the 1969 production, sets by Josef Svoboda) and Viklický’s Mácha’s Diary (sets by Jiří David), on the drama productions of Osborne’s The Entertainer (sets by Daniel Dvořák), Bernhard’s Portrait of the Artist (sets by Jiří Sternwald) and on the Shed I project with the set designer Petr Matásek. Between 2004 and 2006 he was a permanent set designer of Prague’s Rokoko Theatre. As a set designer he has collaborated with numerous Czech theatres including the National Theatre Prague (Black Milk, Personkrets 3.1) and Švandovo divadlo (The Threepenny Opera, Elton John’s Glasses, Passion as Ice), theatres in Uherské Hradiště (Little Murders), Ostrava (Marysha), Ústí nad Labem, Olomouc, and others. In 2004 he cooperated with Robert Wilson on the production 2 Lips and Dancers and Space for Netherlands Dance Theatre (NDT III) in Amsterdam; in the spring of 2008 he designed sets for Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice for Krakow’s Teatr Ludowy. As an architect and designer he has also collaborated with film companies creating advertising spots. Update: February 2009