Dad Takes a Shot

Premiere: Sat Oct 30 2021

To take a shot: to try something, to hit at something, to propel a ball toward a goal, to make a hurtful remark, to drink hard alcohol, to fire a gun. All of these happen in Dad Takes a Shot.

The play was written by Jiří Pokorný and is dedicated to Brno’s famous HaDivadlo director Jan Antonín Pitínský. It won the Alfred Radok prize in 1997. Czech Theater is using the translation by David Short (some slang vocabulary was adapted from UK English to make it accessible to the audience, many of whom do not speak English as their first language). The play’s language – rough, crude, poetic – is one of its appeals, and this poetry comes through in the performance.

The play is not as well known as some plays Czech Theater has done, but it is recognizably Czech in tone. It starts as a naturalistic story of a group of drunks at a non-stop pub and then escalates violently into a pitch-dark comedy.

A Look at the Show