Actor and director Martin Huba to receive honorary doctorate from the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague on 22 October

The ceremony of bestowing the doctor honoris causa degree on actor, director and university teacher Martin Huba was originally intended to open the year-long celebration of the 75th anniversary of AMU in October 2020. However, the event could not take place due to the coronavirus pandemic and was rescheduled to the end of the celebratory year (which is actually the 76th year). Following a proposal from the Theatre Faculty, the doctor honoris causa degree will finally be bestowed on Martin Huba at the Martinů Hall of the Music and Dance Faculty on 22 October 2021 at 1 pm. Along with the Professor nomination and the Gold Medal of the Rector of AMU, the honorary doctorate is the highest form of appreciation of lifetime achievements that the Academy grants. Martin Huba will receive the degree for his contribution to developments in the field of acting, drama directing and acting instruction.

Martin Huba is known in Bohemia and Slovakia for his tall and slim figure, a distinguished appearance and charismatic behaviour that have earned him the epithet “an aristocrat of the theatre”. Having graduated from the Academy of Performing Arts in Bratislava in 1964, he became a prominent figure of Slovakia’s Divadlo na korze theatre; he also worked at Divadlo poezie and at the New Scene of the Slovak National Theatre. He joined SNT’s Drama section in 1976 and played countless unforgettable roles in more than 20 years. In 1988, he made his directing debut at the SNT with From the Life of the Rain Worms. Since 1999, he has regularly worked with many Czech theatres, both as an actor and as a director (including at Divadlo Na zábradlí, Divadlo v Dlouhé, Divadlo v Řeznické, the National Theatre and the Summer Shakespeare Festival). He has received several awards for his work; in the Czech Republic, he won the Alfréd Radok Award for his role in Der Theatermacher (1999, Divadlo Na zábradlí) and was nominated for the Thalia Award twice. President Václav Havel 2003 awarded him the Medal for Merit of the 1st degree for excellent achievements in art in 2003. Czech audiences know Mr Huba from many films, such as The Melancholic Chicken (1999), Musíme si pomáhat (2001), Loop the Loop (2004), Obsluhoval jsem anglického krále (2006) and Kawasaki’s Rose (2009). In 2018, he played T. G. Masaryk in a film by Jakub Červenka, a role that brought him the Czech Film Critics’ Award. Martin Huba is also a teacher at the Theatre Faculty of Bratislava’s Academy of Performing Arts.

The Academy of Performing Arts in Prague has been bestowing its honorary doctoral degree on prominent personalities in the fields of theatre, film, music, and dance for 22 years. To date, the school’s Rectors have bestowed the degree on 17 luminaries including Agnieszka Holland, Ladislav Smoček, Jiří Bělohlávek, Václav Havel and Miloš Forman.