Summary 6/2014
The issue opens with the final selected excerpt from Luc Boltanski’s work annotated by its translator Miroslav Petříček. At the same time, the title “From Bohemia to Anarchy” foreshadows the theme for the next year. The following section offers an assessment of the past season at the HaDivadlo from Brno by Jitka Šotkovská (“HaDivadlo /Non/Classical” – q.v.) and an extensive interview with Jan Šotkovský, the literary manager of Buranteatr and the Municipal Theatre Brno (“To Rise Director’s Head above the Surface”). The section “William Drábek” is dedicated to the director of the Klicperovo divadlo of Hradec Králové, David Drábek: Jana Machalická writes about his productions of Richard III and Romeo and Juliet (“With a Teddy Bear and a Locomotive”) and Marie Reslová about his own play The Big Mermaid (“A Fairy Tale for (Non)Adults”). In the essay “Not New Circus (Commentary from Normalization Period)” Karel Král reflects on the “ageing of the new circus” on the basis of selected productions from the Letní Letná and 4+4 Days in Motion festivals. The text is accompanied by Jean-Claude Impoli’s essay “Is It True? Is It a Lie? (Thus Spoke Curtois)”. The section “Site Deviation” contains reviews of site-specific productions: Šárka Mattová (“The Classic and Experiment in a Space”) writes about Horváth’s Judgement Day staged by the Tygr v tísni (Tiger in Trouble) ensemble at the Prague Nákladové nádraží (Goods Station) and about the project Against Progress. Against Love. Against Democracy. staged by the Letí Theatre at the DOX Gallery; Jakub Škorpil (“The Second Second City”) reviews the production staged under the direction of Jiří Havelka and the Vosto5 ensemble on Wenceslas Square in Prague, and Rita Sebestyén (“Routes Inside and Outside Our Heads”) looks back at the productions Fénix and In the Field presented as part of the Nordic Performing Art Days 2014 in Aarhus. The section “Woman in Slovakia” consists of Martina Ulmanová’s essay “Actresses (Emilía Vašáryová, Szidi Tobias, Jana Oľhová, Petra Vajdová and Kristína Turjanová – Notes on Portraits)”. The section “From Wonka to James” is dedicated to Anglo-American theatre. Jan Šotkovský (“Wonka, Hansard and Pajamas”) writes about London musicals Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Once and The Pajama Game. Dana Silbiger-Sliuková reviews three productions – The War, Ganesh versus the Third Reich and SmallWar – staged in 2014 at the Edinburgh festival (“The War in a Title Role”) and she returns in more detail to the production of The James Plays by Rona Munro, premièred as part of EIF 2014. Diana Damian Martin writes on the production Adler & Gibb by Tim Crouch, staged at the Royal Court Theatre (“Non-objectified Theatre in Objectified Times”) and Laura Collins-Hughes (“Exclusive Shots without Effects”) on world premières of LaBute’s works The Money Shot and The Mulberry Bushin New York. In the section “Maxim from Berlin” Petr Štědroň (“Migrants and Post-migrants”) writes about the 2013/2014 season at the Maxim Gorki Theatre of Berlin, named as the Theatre of the Year by the magazine Theater heute. The essay is accompanied by Barbora Schnelle’s article (“Theatre Politically Non-correct”) which takes more comprehensive look at a local production – Small Town Boy by Falk Richter. The play of this issue is Sibylle Berg’s And Now: The World! or Whatever is Outside I Don’t Care translated by Jitka Jílková. The play was premièred at the Maxim Gorki Theatre and has become the German Play of the Year. The traditional Italian “Comedy Mix” this time introduces “a feminist comic actress” Lella Costa and the next instalment of the “Morcec and Hádry” comic strip is titled “Christmas on the Earth”.
HaDivadlo /Non/Classical Jitka Šotkovská writes about the HaDivadlo of Brno celebrating its fortieth anniversary in autumn 2014. However, the season leading up to this anniversary was not so much one of remembrance, but ofa a distinctive dramaturgical gesture. That is to say, the artistic director Marián Amsler and the literary manager Anna Saavedra decided to test their abilities with both home and world classics. The season was opened by Amsler with his production titled You Will Eat Yourself (Platonov). It is not a fundamental re-interpretation of Chekhov as much as an adaptation to the staging and acting style of the HaDivadlo, which is distinguished by its “restrained, self-ironic reserve, but combined with distinct grotesque overstatement”. Platonov (Martin Siničák) is in the centre of events and a range of more or less caricatured characters mill around him on a narrow elevated jetty. The production puts more emphasis on teamwork and shows how strong an ensemble Amsler has been able to bring together in just three years of his direction. Lukáš Brutovský builds his production of the Mrštík brothers’ Marysha in a similar way, which is based primarily on actors’ performances and a certain mild detachment. He frees the traditional realistic drama from all psychologizing and folkloric poeticization, builds up “simple, genuinely confrontational mise-en-scènes” and succeeds in creating a “strong picture of a cruel cynical world”. Petra Tejnorová has approached a classical Shakespeare drama in a completely different way and she has expressed her idea in its title: A Midsummer Night’s Dream. It is a radical deconstruction, built upon genuinely post-dramatic principles: it combines three translations with a new text, it disrupts the author’s structure of the storyline, it merges characters and due to involvement of set designer Jaro Viňarský motion becomes a significant constituent of the play. Though the production has a “very strong and disturbing atmosphere” its impact is often rather confused and many ideas seem to have been introduced on purpose. Ivan Buraj, too, has not approached Kafka’s The Castle with reverence. He augments the subtitle “(The Effulgence of Integration)”, he brings the text up to date, transposing it into the present, and in K.’s destiny he strives to capture problems of contemporary (constrained) conformity. However, his interpretation often weakens the impressiveness and unique atmosphere of the original and leads to excessive simplification and drabness. Despite everything, the last season showed that “HaDivadlo is in outstandingly good shape” and it seemed to promise a new era. So it is a pity that even before the end of the season, the main pillars of the acting ensemble, Martin Siničák and Erika Stárková, had left and even the artistic director Marián Amsler announced his departure at the end of 2014.