Eliška Raiterová introduced the first outlines of her PhD research, in which she has been engaged since 2021. The topic of her dissertation is the archetypal motive of the hero’s journey in contemporary theatre productions and performances. The research is conceived as an interdisciplinary one: it primarily draws on the disciplines of theatre and religious studies, but also includes psychology, and social and cultural anthropology. The questions that interest the author, which are also related to her diploma research about the German-British performance group Gob Squad, are: how the archetypal motive of the hero‘s journey is present in contemporary performances and productions, or, more precisely, how the creators actively work with it – whether intentionally or intuitively – and what this says about the present day and current relationship to mythification. Eliška Raiterová found these questions particularly remarkable in the context of secularization, globalization, and the post-modern era which is seen as the ‘end of grand narratives’. With reference to Mircea Eliade, she argued that the theatre was a refuge in which mythical behaviour prevailed, and she suggested that current immersive and interactive theatre projects were a response to the absence of initiation rituals and the expression of a desire to uncover hidden and unknown meanings and find the initiation gnosis in performances, which are essentially a private world for a few initiates.
Eliška Raiterová graduated from the Department of Theory and Criticism at DAMU (both BA and MA) and is currently a PhD student at the Department of Theatre Studies at Masaryk University. She spent her study stay at the Institute for Applied Theatre Studies at Justus-Liebig-Universität in Giessen, Germany. She has long been interested in interdisciplinary overlaps from theatre studies, especially to cultural studies, anthropology, psychology, religious studies, or urban studies. Her field of interest is theatre criticism, she was editor in chief of the magazine Hybris at DAMU, currently she publishes in the magazine Svět a divadlo / World and Theatre, newspapers Divadelní noviny and on the theatre blog Podhoubí. She also devotes herself to her own work and is active in the theatre group Akolektiv Helmut.
Eliade, Mircea. Myths, dreams, and mysteries: the encounter between contemporary faiths and archaic realities. Translated by Philip Mairet. New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1960.
Eliade, Mircea. Myth and Reality. Translated by Willard R. Trask. New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1963.
Eliade, Mircea. Mýty, sny a mystéria. Translated by Jiří Vízner. Praha: OIKOYMENH, 1998.
Eliade, Mircea. Mýtus a skutečnost. Translated by Milan Lyčka. Praha: OIKOYMENH, 2011.
Etlíková, Barbora. Nízké intenzity, proměny hmoty: ohlédnutí za první sezonou platformy Terén. Svět a divadlo / World and Theatre, 2021, iss. 32, no. 1, p. 89.