After graduating from grammar school in 1982, she worked as a wardrobe mistress at the Janáček Theatre in Brno in 1983–84 and collaborated with the Children’s Studio of Divadlo Na provázku. The next twenty years of her life, from 1984 to 2004, were connected with HaDivadlo, where she worked as an actress. She appeared in Daughters of the Nation and Stars on a Willow, and played Olga in Three Sisters, Yza in Ivona, Princess of Burgundia, Muriel in Incident, Adél in Herons, and others.
In her artistic life, she gives preference to original work. She first attracted attention with the text of the play All Saints (1997). In the Alfred Radok Foundation’s playwriting competition, her texts repeatedly placed among the top entries:
1998: finalist with the above-mentioned play All Saints
2000: 3rd prize for the trilogy Minach
2001: one of the 2nd prizes for the play Cramped
2002: 3rd prize for 3 Sisters 2003
2006: finalist with the play How the Leaves Rustle in Sisters
The award-winning texts have been staged in a number of theatres. Other texts of hers have also been brought to the stage, for example The Gain of Pleasure (staged reading in Ústí nad Labem, 1999), Barbies (written together with V. Schulczová, staged by Divadlo Na zábradlí, 2005), Benefit Performance (Činoherní studio Ústí nad Labem, 2005), Standa Has a Problem (Divadlo v Dlouhé, 2005), My Country (Rokoko Theatre, 2006, Alfred Radok Award: Czech Play of the Year). For Czech Radio, she prepared the plays Fourth Floor (2001) and The End.
In 2004, she became dramaturge of the Drama Company of the National Theatre. Even before that, her play Cramped 22 premiered there in 2003, and the following year the National Theatre’s opera company presented P. Smutný’s opera Mysterium fidei, based on her libretto. With director Michal Dočekal, she adapted Bulgakov’s novel The Master and Margarita for Vígszínház Theatre (directed by M. Dočekal), and Kafka’s Amerika for the Hungarian Theatre in Cluj (directed by M. Dočekal). The Slovak National Theatre presents her adaptation of Flaubert’s Madame Bovary (directed by Eduard Kudláč).
She collaborates with various television companies. For HBO, she worked as dramaturge on the miniseries Burning Bush, wrote for the series Terapie I and Terapie II, contributed to the series Mamon, and together with Tereza Dusová adapted the series Až po uši. She also collaborates with TV Nova on Ulice.
Contact:
Tel.: +420 283 011 130
E-mail: iva.klestilova@podpalmovkou.cz