Martin Kukučka and Lukáš Trpišovský

Biography

SKUTR is made up of the stage directors Martin Kukučka (born in 1979 in Martin, Slovakia) and Lukáš Trpišovský (born in 1979 in Prague, the Czech Republic). They began working together during their studies at the Theatre Faculty of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague (with Prof. Josef Krofta and Prof. Miloslav Klíma).

Their student performances met with positive critical and audience responses and after graduating from the Academy they were invited to collaborate with and offered creative residence by Ondřej Hrab, Director of the Archa Theatre in Prague.

SKUTR productions have been staged at festivals in Serbia, Poland, Lithuania, Italy, Germany, Romania, Slovakia, China and South Korea. Their work abroad culminated in a month-long residency at the 2008 Fringe Festival in Edinburgh, where their piece The Weepers was performed 22 times and shortlisted for the Total Theatre Award. Their production JokeKillers, created together with Adéla Laštovková, represented the CzechRepublic at Expo 2010 in Shanghai.

SKUTR’s original multi-genre, or crossover, performances combine dance, movement, acrobatics, puppet theatre, projections, light design, text and sound. In addition to their own works (Nickname, Petit Mort, La Putyka, The Rite of Spring), Martin Kukučka and Lukáš Trpišovský have also directed productions on prominent Czech (the National Theatres in Prague and Brno, the Na zábradlí Theatre, the Petr Bezruč Theatre and HaDivadlo) and foreign stages (Pozoriště FDU in Belgrade, Serbia; Lubuski Teatr in ZielonaGórza, Poland; the Miasto International Festival in Legnica, Poland).

SKUTR have of late increasingly focused on combining music and theatre. For the Strings of Autumn festival in Prague, they and the Berg Orchestra created a music-theatre adaptation of Heiner Goebbels’s Schwarz auf Weiss and a stage version of Honegger’s Le roi David.

Their most recent projects include the productions of W. A. Mozart’s Don Giovanni for the National Theatre in Prague, Julius Zeyer’s Radúz and Mahulena for the National Theatre in Brno and, together with Adéla Laštovková Stodolová, the performance Men for the Ponec theatre (nominated for the Dance Production of 2011).

Martin Kukučka and Lukáš Trpišovský lecture in stage direction, dramaturgy and acting at the Theatre Faculty of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague. They have received numerous accolades for their works, with the most noteworthy being the Grand Prix at the FIST international festival in Belgrade in 2007 and the Audience Prize at the same festival in 2007 and 2008, the Evald Schorm Award and the Josef Hlávka Prize, a nomination for the Total Theatre Award for the production The Weepers at the Edinburgh Festival and a nomination for the Henrik Ibsen European Theatre Award for the production Schwarz auf Weiss. They have been shortlisted three times for the prestigious Czech Alfréd Radok Awards in the Talent of the Year category and in 2010 for La Putyka in the Production of the Year category. They have also received several nominations for the Sazka and Divadelní noviny Award. 

Current productions at the National Theatre:

• A Bouquet (National Theatre, 2019)