The Good Soldier Švejk
A modern stage adaptation of Jaroslav Hašek’s novel
by Carol Dance
Artistic Director of Scene Theatre Sydney
Who is Josef Švejk ?
The fictional character in the novel. He is cheerful, unshakeable, unpredictable and seemingly simple - yet somehow, he survives (and quietly subverts) a world gone mad around him. He is the ‘everyman’ who reminds us of the resilience of the human spirit. So beloved is Švejk that there are many statues of the character in Europe.
When the Soviet Union invaded Czechoslovakia in 1968, Švejk’s spirit was recalled when the ‘Švejkites’, as the resistance fighters were called, fought and won.
Švejk’s legacy has spread throughout the world.
What is to švejkovat? To make mockery of the authorities by obeying them completely.
Who was Jaroslav Hašek?
He was a Czech who lived from 1883 to 1923. He was at various times a soldier, an anarchist, a Bolshevik, an itinerant, and always a writer. He wrote short fictional stories about Soldier Švejk that were eventually published as a comedic satirical anti-war novel of 700 pages in 1921.
Švejk follows every order to the letter, so precisely that the system begins to unravel.
A comedy about obedience gone terribly right.
The war machine meets the loose screw.
Glorious ineptitude
The illustrator, Josef Lada
Josef Lada was a friend of Jaroslav Hašek. He was commissioned to draw 540 pictures of Švejk for the Sunday Supplement of a Czech newspaper.
Three sources were used to create this stage adaptation: the translation of the novel by England’s Paul Selfer (1930), the translation of the novel by England’s Sir Cecil Parrot (1993) and the partial stage adaptation of the novel by Canadia’s Michael John Nimchuk (1974).
Previous Australian productions: The only known previous stage productions of the novel in Australia were at the Q Theatre (Penrith) in 1979 and as The Good Soldier Schweik at Victoria College, in Victoria in 1991 (according to Australian Stage archives).