Jan Novák

Jan Novák was born on 19 April 1947 in Velké Losiny, a spa village in the Šumperk district of northern Moravia, then in Czechoslovakia. He studied at the Secondary Industrial School of Film in Čimelice and went on to study theatre directing at DAMU, the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague, in the class of the director František Štěpánek. He graduated in 1971.

Novák began on regional stages, directing at the Horácké Theatre in Jihlava, the theatre in Hradec Králové and the Oldřich Stibor State Theatre in Olomouc. In 1982 he moved to the S. K. Neumann Theatre in Prague.

In the 1985 to 1986 season he was engaged by Zdeněk Míka, director of the Divadlo na Vinohradech, as head of dramaturgy and director. In the autumn of 1986 Míka appointed him artistic chief of the company, a new post that he held for the 1986 to 1987 and 1987 to 1988 seasons. With him came a new dramaturgy team, Jan Vedral, Roman Císař and Zuzana Sílová, who pursued a civic and topical programme. Under his leadership the theatre staged widely praised productions such as Jan Dudek's adaptation of Chingiz Aitmatov's The Day Lasts More Than a Hundred Years (1986) and Jan Kačer's production of Vedral's Urmefisto (1988).

His own Vinohrady productions in this period were A Month in the Country and Alexander Volodin's Blonde (both 1985), Rolf Hochhuth's Lawyers (Czechoslovak premiere 1987), Gerhart Hauptmann's Thieves' Comedy (1987), Ray Rigby's The Hill (1988) with Jiří Plachý, Martin Stropnický and Ladislav Frej, Karel Čapek's The Robber (1988) and Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz's Summer at Nohant (1990). After František Laurin became director in 1988, Novák stayed as a resident director until 1991, and then worked at the South Bohemian Theatre in České Budějovice.

He returned to Vinohrady as a resident director from 2001 to 2009 and staged ten productions, including Oldřich Daněk's Trojhvězdí, King Rat after James Clavell, Patrick Marber's Howard Katz, Othello, Jean Anouilh's Becket, Ken Ludwig's Lend Me a Tenor, Charlotte Jones's Humble Boy, Paul Claudel's The Exchange and the Čapek brothers' The Fateful Game of Love. He also directed as a guest at other theatres and taught directing at DAMU.

Little about Novák's private life has been published. The theatre's tributes described his humble relationship with the text and his care in building detailed scenes between characters, through which he led actors to bring out ethical themes. Information about his death came from his family through the theatre.

Jan Novák died on Wednesday 21 October 2026, aged 79. The Divadlo na Vinohradech announced his death, saying it had received the news with sorrow, and Zuzana Paulusová confirmed the family's information to the Czech News Agency (ČTK) on 22 October. Novinky, CNN Prima News and the Arts and Theatre Institute's portal divadlo.cz reported the news. The cause of death was not made public. The theatre said it was waiting for the family's decision about any final farewell.

Theatre historians have described Novák's productions as standing somewhat in the shadow of more striking directors, but as an inseparable part of the Vinohrady company's artistic profile in the late 1980s. As artistic chief he opened the theatre to a new dramaturgy that spoke to the growing public discontent before November 1989, and The Hill is regarded as the strongest expression of it. His work is the subject of a chapter by Tatjana Lazorčáková in the 2024 book Vyvětráváme..., a history of the theatre in the normalisation era.