ANDREA BURŠOVÁ (* 1982) is a Czech actress, singer, and university teacher. She studied at the Masaryk Grammar School in Příbor, the Acting School in Zlín and the JAMU in Brno in the Drama Studio of Prof. Nika Brettschneiderová. Most of all she feels like an actress, but she loves chanson and poetry and teaches acting at the JAMU in Brno. Immediately after graduating in 2006, she started acting at the Husa na provázku Theatre, where she stayed until 2014, when she became a member of the Švanda Theatre in Smíchov, Prague.

In 2012 she released a song album entitled Knife for Silence. On the album she collaborated with composer and pianist Zdeněk Král and the Indigo Quartet string quartet. In a musical-dramatic performance entitled Heavy Seas of Andrea Buršová (premiered on 24 February 2017 at Švandovo Theatre), she offered original songs enriched with a theatrical dialogue that blurred the boundaries between the spoken and sung word. For these purposes, she created the imaginary character of the Doctor, a worldly, highly confident expert in theatre and song, who Andrea also clownishly "transforms" into during her concerts and other authorial performances. In a musical-dramatic performance entitled Heavy Seas of Andrea Buršová (premiered on 24 February 2017 at Švandovo Theatre), she offered original songs enriched with a theatrical dialogue that blurred the boundaries between the spoken and sung word. For these purposes, she created the imaginary character of the Doctor, a worldly, highly confident expert in theatre and song, whom Andrea also clownishly "transforms" into during her concerts and other performances.

In 2016, Andrea Buršová graduated from the JAMU Theatre Faculty with her dissertation which was published in book form two years later under the title Actress Nika Brettschneiderová in Exile or Portrait of Theater Brett until the fall of the Iron Curtain. Nika Brettschneiderová was an actress, director, university teacher and co-founder of Theater Brett who died in 2018 at the age of 67. With her passing, Theater Brett, to which she devoted a large part of her life and creative energy, has definitively ended its activities. This important theatre personality pedagogically influenced Andrea Buršová in a substantial way. Out of a need to document her artistic activities and to pay tribute to her work, Andrea Buršová began to write a history of the theatre and subsequently spent several years researching it. The book was published six months after the death of Nika Brettschneiderová, and for Andrea Buršová it marked the end of one long and important phase of her work. At the same time, her dissertation also opened the door to her pedagogical work, and since 2018 she has been working at the Theatre Faculty of JAMU as a teacher in the Drama Studio, together with Igor Dostálek.

Artistic research? I started my doctoral studies without any previous, I would say deeper, theoretical training. As a trained actress I didn't have "that much" theoretical background. Basically, I didn't really know what I was getting into. But I was driven by a great desire to work on a subject that became my own, that inspired me so much that I fell for it completely, which was only good for the work itself. That desire opened the door to the very field of artistic research. I started my postgraduate studies at JAMU in 2009. I was learning how to scientifically research and process a topic related to performing arts. My goal was to map the development of a Viennese theatre called Theater Brett. At that time I was quite busy as an actress at the Goose on a String Theatre, where we often worked three shifts a day. With my studies, something like a "fourth shift" was added to my daily schedule. As a result, I didn't have as much time for deeper self-study in certain fields that were offered to me, and I relied more on my own sharp mind and a kind of natural insight in the seminars and courses I took. But I learned to think about topics, to ask questions, to reflect and to seek out the information I needed. From the beginning, I found my own way of writing and researching, first intuitively and then by following the guidance and advice of teachers. Basically, I was stubbornly going after writing the paper, after working out my topic. And what was on the way, I accepted and tried to give my best to the work. Perhaps it can be called artistic research.

Through Professor Nika Brettschneiderová, whose studio I joined in 2002 as a student of acting. At that time she was teaching together with director Vladimír Kelbl. She was an excellent actress, a wonderful teacher, director and all-round theatre person. She opened up horizons for us students in various areas of theatre and was happy to take us, when there was time, to her theatre in Vienna, Theater Brett, which she founded with her husband Ludvík Kavín. I first visited their theatre in 2003 and that's where it all started! At that time, like Alice in Wonderland, I really walked through the theatre, which interested me immensely. It was a kind of studio-type theatre for 90 people. As I learned later, they built it with their own hands out of an old furniture factory. And as I kept asking questions, the history of its creation gradually began to unfold. I was fascinated by the strong will and determination of those two people who signed Charter 77, were forced to go into exile the same year, and there, in Vienna - after six years, after a period of nomadism, when they travelled with their theatre works throughout Western Europe - they built the Theater Brett in 1984. Wanting to learn more, I continued to go to the Theater Brett after I graduated from the JAMU during my "string" acting engagement. And one day, when I was again ridiculously chafing at the fact that nothing had yet been written about such a wonderful theatre, Nika Brettschneiderová took a drag from her cigarette - she was a heavy smoker - and in her calm, steady voice said: You write it. Within a month, the plan or idea to apply for a PhD at the JAMU was born from this impulse. Then the preparations were made, I turned in a draft and in 2009 I was accepted to study with the idea that I would indeed write a publication about the Theater Brett based on real events. I knew I wanted to write a testimonial about this theatre. I was interested in the life story of its founders, Nika Brettschneiderová and Ludvík Kavín, and all the facts connected with it. At first I set out to record the history of the entire period of the Theater Brett's existence, but then I had to narrow it down to avoid being superficial. In the end I threw myself into covering the first thirteen years, from its foundation in 1977 to the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989.

I would say the primary interest was human. It was really born out of a deep desire that there should be a publication from which others could learn about theatre, about which not much had been written, and which was almost unknown until then. And yet for me it was something fascinating! The fact that a theatre was founded by two Czechs in exile just because they wanted to do free theatre in a free country! That was the first impulse that I followed. I think that even in the scientific field it makes sense, too. My supervisor, Professor Cejpek, said that this work fills a kind of white space on the map of Czechoslovak theatre abroad in those years. For me, the book remains inspirational and I believe it can be an inspiration for others in their approach to theatre making. 

I think this was nicely expressed by Professor Plešák, who wrote the opponent's review of my thesis. "Andrea Buršová, as an actress, applies her own gift of inner tactile perception (Oskar Zich) in her analyses of Nika Brettschneiderová's acting, which allows her to understand and express the meaning of the means of expression and actions better (at least differently) than a theatre theorist could." I have already said that I approached my research very intuitively at first. And then it turned out that I would still need that intuition, when the structure of the whole thesis was being developed and I had various voluminous piles of collected and written material for the individual chapters, or better, for the characterizations and analyses of the individual productions. It depended a lot on the quantity and quality of the material, which I found mainly in the archives of the Theater Brett and which I had at hand during my analyses. It was a constant journey of searching for me. On the one hand, I was working with printed documents that belonged to the past, and on the other hand, I constantly had access to live interviews with the theatre's founders and even their former collaborators. And here, those two sources, whether the written documents related to the time, place and specific productions, or the present interviews, live testimonies and memories of contemporaries, helped me to create a very interesting combination of information material in the book.

No, they weren't. Certainly not... but I am a person who is used to the idea that if there is no path, there is no problem to make one, to find one or to break through. I often take it as a rule of thumb. The fact that - let's say - the absolute majority of my classmates didn't take that path was no obstacle for me. I told myself that I would just give it a try, because the way I was beginning to think about things at the time defied the traditional humanities. And at the same time, I told myself it was okay. I'm pursuing the theory: "What you make it, you get it." And it was no problem. At least nobody was blocking me, nobody was blocking the path I wanted to take. It was unexplored, but there was no sign saying FORBIDDEN. 

Because I had a lot of lively discussions with the founders of the theatre before I started working on my dissertation, and I was interested in their theatrical journey and asked for details, it can be said that my writing was preceded by a deep interest and curiosity. I was thrilled that they had dared, thanks to a certain amount of their own stubbornness and perseverance, determination and courage, to make a new theatrical start in Vienna, when they did not speak the language, were without a social background, almost destitute and with a two-year-old son. Imagine that she was an actress, he was a trained historian and philosopher, and they were actually embarking on a complex theatrical work, which they had to discover from the beginning, whether it was directing, dramaturgy, acting, technical support, promotion, just everything! Isn't that fascinating? Then, when I seriously started thinking about starting a PhD, I thought, why not gather as much courage as they had at the beginning of their journey in Vienna? To take the path of science was also a big step for me. I would never have thought of going back to school before. All this writing and research was sparked by my question, Why hasn't anyone written anything about you yet?, and Nika Brettschneiderová's answer: You write it. So at some point I thought, if they had made it and had built a theatre abroad, I would do it too and write a paper about them and their theatre so that it would be known in this country too!.

It has, and there are many. I'll start with how it's enriched me as an actress. The fact that I teach at JAMU is a result of my doctoral studies. And it has influenced my approach to acting and thinking about theatre. When I finished my dissertation, before the 2016 holidays, I took it to the press. Then I sat down with a sigh of relief in a Prague café and wrote the first pages of the script for my musical theatre evening, which was to feature only me and maybe an imaginary character. And that character was formed in a few hours. It had to be "Mrs. Doctor" so that the degree I would get would be meaningful. Because for an actress, a degree can be good just for playing with it, I thought, laughing. And a few months later, I had the opening night of a monodrama with songs at the Švanda Theatre in Prague, called High Seas of Andrea Buršová, and it was the Doctor who performed with me. A stylized figure with glasses who knows everything, has a patent on reason. She is a great authority in the field of music and theatre, she is well-known and respected, she is engaged in analyses of theatre and musical plays and she knows Andrea's songwriting perfectly... This double role, when without glasses I am Andrea and with glasses I am the Doctor, works perfectly on stage. My lovely "Mrs. Doctor", who I am happy to "reincarnate" into, enhances practically all my song concerts to date. I see her as a gift for finishing the book. It makes me improvise and brings joy not only to me as an actress, but also to the audience, according to their reactions, because when one can transform oneself in a flash into something so pompous and egotistical, which is a kind of small or bigger mirror for all of us, it brings laughter and amusement. I've long joked that the character of "Mrs. Doctor" was the main reason for writing the book. However, it soon became clear that the real reward was my teaching job at JAMU. I have now been teaching for the fourth year and working with students is an unspeakable inspiration for me.

For me, it was that as an actress I had a greater tendency to evaluate and experience things from inside. But because I started to study and suddenly theatre started to show itself to me in other contexts and from many other sides, I started to think about it a bit more broadly. Writing reflections, papers, and various characterizations of productions based on working with documents and video recordings, seeing theatrical works in their entirety and then replaying them in parts for analysis, trying to describe or analyse them, taught me to better and more thoroughly name details within the whole. I think it has honed my ability to think in broader contexts and to be able to better articulate things. It also pays off in my communication with students, but also with the director and the dramaturg when a theatre performance I am involved in is being created. I think it has enriched me with some more courage to ask questions. Gradually, when you start to ask, you start to know how to ask questions. And that can then be of great benefit to one's own artistic practice.

For the first two years of my studies I foolishly thought I would write an entire history of the Theater Brett, from beginning to end, preferably by the year of my dissertation defence. In short, I wanted to cover everything, to give a complete account of the theatre. But in order to give it the depth and immersion it deserved, I decided in the end to write, as I mentioned, about the early years of the theatre's existence up to 1989, not least because until 1989 Czechoslovak citizens had no way of knowing what was happening across the border. From that point on, I spent a lot of time researching in the archives of the Theater Brett. It soon became clear that there were many documents there, but that they were not systematically organized, on the contrary, they were scattered and in various states of disarray. My work began by collecting this material relating to individual productions over the years and it had to be gradual, painstaking and took lots and lots of time. I worked with programmes for productions, trailers for performances, reviews mostly from Germany, Austria, Switzerland, France, etc., various articles, interviews, correspondence, video recordings of productions that I had gradually transferred from VHS to DVD, photographs and posters, etc. I conducted countless live interviews with the founders and their collaborators, which I also interviewed by phone or email. After that, translations of the documents were necessary, with which Lukas Kavín, the founders' son, helped me. On the basis of this material, which I organized for all the productions - forty-two of them over thirteen years - the individual chapters and subchapters of the book were created, structured differently according to the quantity and quality of the material I had tracked down. The work was very tedious. I was making up both the time I could devote to writing, which had to be divided into hours spent at school and my own research in the archives, and some time for myself. It was a very challenging period. After those seven or nine years of doing this work, I necessarily had to get out of all those difficulties and other efforts at scholarship and research. I just wanted to play, sing and learn to teach. Only now, after four years of necessary "repose", am I coming back very slowly, even with joy, to things of perhaps a similar type, we will see. But it's wonderful that the book is out in the world! You know, I wouldn't trade one moment on the road to it for any other. And I'm so glad for this interview, too. I feel like this retrospective is actually healthy for me.

The main phase of the book took place from summer to winter 2018, soon after Nika Brettschneiderová's death. Among other things, I rewrote the whole book in the past tense and I was already working on the visuals after that. It was a very important farewell for me and a kind of in memoriam tribute to this great woman and my great friend. So, there is this overlap, too.

Nika Brettschneider was born in 1951 and was actually ahead of her time. For example, with the workshops, which only came to us in the 1990s, Nika had already been doing them in the free Europe since 1978, and then when she started teaching at the JAMU in 1990, she already brought all this knowledge and experience with her. Her teaching method is progressive in that it is based on a true collaboration between the teacher and the students. And on kindness, respect and tolerance. Because she and her husband had come to a free country and were carrying their scars with them from Czechoslovakia, specifically from the persecution by the Secret Police after the signing of Charter 77, they brought the theme of power and powerlessness with them to Austria and often acted about it. . I think that because they had experienced the helplessness and oppression firsthand, they knew how not to behave, how not to teach and not to act, for example. And the first important thing that Nika brought to the lives of those of us who met her was that it is possible to turn basically everything that happens to us and that we perceive as blocking and wrong, whether in theatre rehearsals or in life, into an opportunity or a challenge and to "take on" every incompetence! To be inspired by the mistake, to work with shortcomings without blaming ourselves. Not to shy away from obstacles! To seek opportunities for free expression as an actor, because what is possible in certain circumstances is true.

Yes, that's right. I started by saying that Nika Brettschneiderová was ahead of her time and that her methods were unpopular at that time, especially in this country. And today I see that we are leaning more and more towards collaboration as a society. It's just that we often don't know yet exactly what that means and how to do it practically. Nika was basically already living for collaboration fifty years ago, and she showed those principles and rules by her approach to those of us who met her. She wasn't the type to explain things too much. She just did things. And if you were a good observer, you could see that she said and did what she thought and that she taught what she lived. There was a kind of complexity in her approach to life, but also to work, to creation. And that was extraordinary.

Yes, the principle of collaboration has become the main principle in our studio. Igor Dostálek and I form a pedagogical tandem and, for example, we don't deal with comments and remarks about acting work with students behind closed doors, but we share and say almost everything openly. We discuss things with students. It's more time-consuming and mentally challenging to communicate something in a group and to expose yourself to questions and confrontation than to command something. But once students understand and agree to open and honest communication, it makes your job a lot easier as a result. It then really becomes a joy because people trust you. It's mutual and you have "partners" that you continue with all the way to Studio Marta. We follow their development throughout their studies. We are kind of guides on their journey of search, as Nika Brettschneiderová, who called her theatre "searching", essentially handed it down to us.

In the near future, together with Igor Dostálek, we are going to start writing a textbook on acting pedagogy. It will be based on Nika Brettschneiderová's method, but we will also draw on our own experience when writing it. I am grateful that we, as her students, can continue what Nika started and created. However, the method of teaching acting based on the principle of collaboration, "partnering" and joint search is not a suitable "toy" for everyone. I think that a "power-oriented" teacher would not be able to cope with it at all. It wouldn't serve him or her well, even though it is a sophisticated and wonderfully variable set of simple acting exercises and improvisational assignments that offers an incredible number of creative possibilities. A teacher who does not have enough patience and enthusiasm for the slow path of gradual search and discovery, who is not interested in the process and development in the first place, who is not playful and free-thinking enough, who clings to the result and works for performance, who wants to determine and manage things in his or her own way, would probably not know what to do with the method. It is more for individuals who are sensitive to this kind of pedagogical creativity and want to take the journey. You see, my pedagogical journey, as I now realize, actually began with the writing of my dissertation, which I saw from the beginning as a potential book. I was very careful to speak factually and to the point in my future book, and not to impose my interpretations of facts in it. Gradually, my language and style were honed. Flowery sentences disappeared, I learned to write in simple and understandable sentences, right to the point. I learned to work with what I had available. I mean the found material. If I didn't find more, I had to accept that there simply wasn't more, and I had to humbly work with what there was. The structure of the individual chapters and the entire work was ultimately determined by the collected material, and the style of writing, in turn, by not yielding to the centripetal force of the truth of the text. The only thing that really mattered to me was to create an account about Nika Brettschneiderová's work and, in a way, about her life, and to make sure that the book about the Theater Brett was an image that corresponded to the truth.