Forty-five years after co-founding the Wilma Theater, guiding its transformation from an avant-garde space on Sansom Street to a renowned institution on the Avenue of the Arts, Blanka Zizka—Producing Artistic Director of the Wilma—decided it was time for a break. She longed to explore the world again, reconnect with family in her native Czech Republic, and rediscover her artistic vision beyond the theater she had helped shape.
In 2020, Zizka stepped back, transitioned the theater’s artistic leadership to a four-person cohort, took on the role of Artistic Director Emeritus and advisory council member, and moved forward.
“I attended playwrights’ festivals, traveled through Africa and went on safari, saw my 98-year-old mother and my grandson – all things I didn’t get the opportunity to do while steadily running the Wilma,” says Zizka. “I even sold my house in the Philadelphia… I’m a nomad now. It’s exciting.”
This Spring, however, Blanka Zizka is back behind the Wilma’s directorial lectern — actually, she moves around too much to behind anything — for an incendiary adaptation of playwright Rajiv Joseph’s ‘Archduke‘ – with members of the Wilma’s HotHouse Acting Company that she founded – from April 15 through May 4.
Zizka was a part of playwright Joseph’s ‘Archduke’ process from its earliest previews, suggesting second act re-writes. “The first act was genius,” she says.
“Like he did with the fake news of ‘Describe the Night’, which I directed at the Wilma in 2020, is make history contemporary… find the simplest words to describe its reality, the daily occurrences.”
Joseph’s newest dramatic history lesson takes its cues from the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the heir to the Austro-Hungarian empire, whose murder brought about World War I. In the here and now of ‘Archduke’, Joseph and Zizka ask of the starving young Belgradians who assassinate the archduke and his wife – along with the audience of 2025 – what will someone do when they have nothing left to lose?
“What methods are acceptable in the fight against oppression?” is questioned. And what reward is worth the bloodshed? Money? Freedom? A sandwich?
Playwright Joseph poses these questions and satirically toys with its solutions in poetic language that is steeped in dark humor and raw emotion, then shakes-and-stirs engagingly pragmatic metaphor and meticulously researched facts into a compelling, satirical creation called ‘Archduke’.
“Joseph goes back into history, but this is not an historic play,” says the director. “He’s showing a mirror, reflecting who we are now. Joseph looks at the three, 19-year-old assassins of whom we know nothing about. History books never told us. So what Rajiv is doing is imagining what were their thoughts, their feelings, where they were coming from. Here, they are poor, sickly boys… are encountered by bombastic nationalists, and seduced by notions of glory. The rhetoric of nationalism in ‘Archduke’ is meant to echo, very much, that of the MAGA movement… a masculine, misogynistic culture full of grievances.”
What Joseph does best, however, is make his information both horrifying and hilarious by Zikka’s account.
“It’s an absurd, absolute comedy that takes on difficult topic,” she says.
Added to ‘Archduke’s’ absurdity, to further poke at its rabid misogyny, is the fact that Zizka cast HotHouse actresses Suli Holum and Sarah Gilko as two of Archduke’s three destitute boys (Brandon J. Pierce plays the third).
“I nearly made these Belgrade youth all women actors, as there is a femininity to their youth,” Zizka says with a laugh.
“There is no through-line, only that which excites me. The times are changing. I am changing. I guess that I just react to that change of time and place.”
What Zizka can reflect on is how, in the five years since her departure, the Wilma’s new artistic directorial cohort has thrived—and how the theater she nurtured for decades was honored with the 2024 Tony Award for Best Regional Theatre.
“I am very proud and excited by what is going on at the Wilma, especially what is happening with the HotHouse company actors – they have truly grown as creators,” she says. “By bringing several artistic directors together to take over the Wilma allows them to bring varied life experiences into discussion and create a new aesthetic for the Wilma. And while I was there for the first three years as a consultant, now it is running at full speed without any of my input.
“I still come in from time to time, but now it is all theirs… And I can see that the Wilma has grown into something new and exciting.”
‘Archduke’ will be on stage at the Wilma Theater from April 15 through May 4. For information and tickets, visit wilmatheater.org
