Summary 3/2014
The issue opens with an essay “The Mystery of Evildoing, the Enigma of Murder” by Miroslav Petříček, accompanied by a further translation of an excerpt from a work by Luc Boltanski, this time entitled “The Scandal of Crime”. The section “The Effulgence over Kladno Town” consists of an extensive interview with Daniel Přibyl, literary manager and artistic director of the Municipal Theatre of Kladno (“It Must be Great to Work as a Literary Manager at the Vinohradské Theatre”), and Michal Zahálka’s review of their production of Ibsen’s Ghosts (“Where the Walls are Bleeding”). In the section “Even an Uproar of Goddesses” Kateřina Veselovská reviews Much Ado About Nothing, staged at the Divadlo v Dlouhé by the director Hana Burešová, and Marek Lollok writes about an adaptation of the book Žítkovské bohyně (The Goddesses of Žítková), directed by Dodo Gombár at the Municipal Theatre of Zlín (“Theatrical Žítková – A Witness of One Tragedy”). The section “Standards with Confusions” is dedicated to formally non-traditional theatre and Radka Kunderová writes here on Lucia Repašská and D’Epog Theatre (“In Search of a New Theatricality”), Dominika Široká introduces theatrical re-enactments by Milo Rau (“Ceauşescu and Other Trials by Milo Rau”) and Lukáš Brychta reviews The Drowned Man project by the Punchdrunk group (“London Immersion”). In the section “The Balance of Imagination” Vladimír Mikulka writes about new circus productions Fet and Mà by the duo Cru and #File_Tone by the ensemble Subliminati Corporation (“We Will Tell It to You through a Picture”) and Jana Návratová about the production Imagine toi by the mime Julien Cottereau (“Imagine”). In the section “Heroines” Michaela Mojžišová reviews the production of Janáček’s Jenůfa at the Opernhaus Zürich and Opera National de Paris as well as Konwitchny’s production of the same opus at the Slovak National Theatre (“Two Theatre Legends”) and Dana Silbiger-Sliuková writes on an adaptation of Jane Eyre at the Bristol Old Vic (“An Old Story Full of New Passion”). The section “Murdering…” consists of Karel Král’s review (“Amadeus - Too Much Art") of a Mozart project by the Husa na provázku Theatre: Morávek’s production of Shaffer’s Amadeus and Uhde’s and Štědroň’s apocrypha Too Much Art, and an interview with Terrence Crowhill entitled “The Cryptic World”. The section “…and the dramatic Radoks” includes the results of the annual competition for the best Czech and Slovak original play, and Jakub Škorpil’s essay “There and Back Again (and Again and Again)” in which he compares the style and poetics of the winner of that contest, writing under the penname S.d.Ch., to those of Milan Šotek, the award holder for the best new Czech play staged in 2013. We publish both S.d.Ch.’s winning play entitled Spiritual Death in Venice and Uhde’s text Too Much Art, or Grasp All, Lose All. In another instalment of Comedy Mix Martin Švehlík introduces the comedian Antonio Albanese, and the third part of Hynek Dřízhal’s and Petr Vodička’s comic strip “Morcec & Hádry” is titled “The Naughty Piggy”.
The Alfréd Radok Award for the Best Original Czech and Slovak Play This anonymous contest is annually organized by the Alfréd Radok Awards Foundation in collaboration with the Aura-Pont Agency. This year 66 texts were submitted. The winner is the same as last year – Miloslav Vojtíšek (nom de plume S.d.Ch.) and his text Spiritual Death in Venice. Second place was taken by Peter Pavlac with his drama Einstein’s Wife and the third prize went to Zdeněk Palusga with his Taxis Jump. The Czech Radio Special Prize went to Jiří Suchý from Tábor for his play The Rivers of Speech. In his essay “There and Back Again (and Again and Again)” Jakub Škorpil compares the style and poetics of S.d.Ch. and Milan Šotek, author of the text Finback, winner of the Best Newly Staged Czech Play of the Year category of the Alfréd Radok Awards. Škorpil also observes that although both authors write comedies and work mainly with puns and language games, allusions, quotations and variations, they differ fundamentally in their respective author’s gestures. S.d.Ch. builds his texts primarily on long monologues, ironic tirades in forms of associatively diverging stream of speech. The style of his texts (alike his artworks) is a distinct collage, he makes use of well-known pictures and traditional patterns but he associates them non-causally, wildly and even anarchically. He is playful in a substantial way while he makes relatively high demands on the spectator/reader, rewarding him or her with an adventurous fanciful atmosphere – a “ride” where each and every turn is risky and startling. Milan Šotek, an admirer of Czech pre-war literary cabaret and the artistic director of his ensemble Cabaret Calembour, an attempt at a modern variation of these, is known primarily for his taste in the poetic play of words (most frequently puns). He literally floods his sketches and shorter texts with them so that they break them into pieces, becoming closed and pointed segments that do not allow for further development and thus the only possibility is to pile them up. Although the author of the essay does not question Šotek’s ability to write a very skilful gag or a ravishing pun, he criticises him for his fascination with his own gift to the extent that he disregards a good option in the desire to come up trumps. He also describes Šotek’s work as a distinctly cautious “safe play”, accommodating the audience and trying hard to succeed at all cost.
D’Epog Theatre In her essay “In Search of a New Theatricality” Radka Kunderová introduces the work of the Brno based D’Epog Theatre, productions by Lucia Repašská. The young Slovak director tries to emancipate the spectator and she emphasizes the laboratory character of her work. An experimentation with space has played a prominent role right from her first production Heteronym Nin (2010). It is set in a gallery where the actress “personifies” as an exhibit the writer Anaïs Nin, a woman whose life was blended with the art. The next project was titled Di_sein (2011) and took place in a factory condemned to demolition. The commotion of participants and allusions were in contrast with one element of the text, Petr Maška’s farce Twice Crowned Titus. In it, the author entwines the life stories of poor Czech actors with those of “celebrities” – tired Casanova and Mozart. The Garden Crim (2011) came out of the post-war atmosphere in Germany and Czechoslovakia, combining texts by Heinrich Böll and Jan Zahradníček. The place chosen for the production was a dilapidated church. Participants in the roles of husbands and wives were huddled into a pen made from a cardboard box. The setting of the next project Ninivea (2012) was the socialist building of a municipal swimming pool: the themes are “purification, intimacy and taboo”. The director places six actors together with a couple of dozen spectators on a spacious terrace. The actors balance on plastic chairs. The responses include some excerpts from the story of Jonah and the motif of the Pied Piper legend. The next project 121 (2013) is set in an industrial vacancy of the art nouveau train station warehouse. The production is close to a performance, the clichés of which (nudity, sex, violation of taboo) are also thematically described in a humorous way. The latest project so far, titled ∞ (Horizontal Eight) (2014), was set in the industrial hall of a former factory and recent gallery. Among the panels with grotesque pictures by the German figurative painter Christian Macketanz there is a small terrace with a stage in front of it, in this context resembling an installation-exhibit. The theme of the actions is the cyclical nature of the relationship between a parent and a child.