The issue opens with Miroslav Petříček’s article “The Spirit of Anarchism in the Twentieth Century” which is a commentary on an excerpt from Michel Foucault’s essay “Punishing Society”. The section “Anarchy… and Nothingness” there includes a radical statement by the gallerists Baker and Bruce entitled “Facebau” and Sergey Nechayev’s commentary “So Long, Venice! (Contemporary Art Trends: Anti-body Art, Lastartism and Nothingness)”. In the section “With Mystique… Life and Death” Karel Král writes (“… Isn’t She Pretty”) about productions based on texts from Ladislav Klíma’s Human Tragicomedy (Divadlo v Dlouhé) and Edgar (Divadlo U stolu). The section “Where… Ústí Burani” includes an interview with Vladimír Čepek, former director of the Činoherní studio Ústí nad Labem (“My Directorship was by Virtue of Necessity”), Tatiana Brederová’s essay “Three Forms of Ústí” on three productions by the Činoherák Ústí, created by the ensemble of the former Činoherní studio after it was disbanded by the municipal government, and “six mini-reviews” about productions by the Buranteatr of Brno (Lollok: “Credibility with Surpassing”), which was abandoned by its founders at the end of season. In the section “Slovak… Drama” Jakub Škorpil’s essay “The Drama of Stage Forms” looks back at this year’s Bratislava festival New Drama, and Jan Šotovský writes (“Memphis-Saigon-Madrid”) in the section “London… the City of Musicals” about productions of Memphis, Miss Saigon and Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown. Selected productions from Theatertreffen 2015 are introduced in the section “Theatertreffen… and Kennedy” by Barbora Schnelle (“Theatre as a Political Happening”) complemented by Dominika Široká’s essay “Amok (and Other Adventures of Everyday Life)” on the director Susanne Kennedy’s productions. The section “In Vienna… Around the World” is generally dedicated to this year’s Wiener Festwochen: Martin Ulmanová writes about the productions That Hopey Changey Thing and Sweet and Sad (“Richard Nelson’s American Family”), The Seagull (“Playlet by Bobo Jelčic”), Heroes Like Antigone (“Cuban Flavour by Carlos Díaz”), Dead Souls (“Serebrennik’s Russia”), Kings of War (“Van Hove’s Regal Dramas”) and Noise (“Leftist-Anarchistic Nübling”); Michaela Mojžišová writes about the productions Jephta (“Metaphysics of Sacrifice by Steier & Junghänel“) and Bluebeard’s Castle/Gaistervarioten (“«Psycho» by Nagano and Breth”), Soňa Šimková about Go Down Moses (“SOS by Romeo Castellucci”), Marek Lollok about The Hour We Knew Nothing Of Each Other (“Morality Play with the Duo Ojasoo–Semper”) and Jana Wild about Edward II – I am the Love (“Nora Schloker’s Sated Desires”). In the section “UFF… Clown Doctor (Red Noses International)” Vladimír Mikulka reviews two productions from the contemporary circus festival CirkUff Trutnov (“On Opposite Poles”), Lukáš Houdek introduces the profession of a “Clown Doctor” (“Clown Therapy”) and three hospital clowns answer the SaD survey (“The Most Wonderful Work in the World”). The play of this issue is Above All, Don’t Laugh! by S.d.Ch., the “Comedy Mix” introduces the work of Martin J. Švejda and the tenth instalment of “Morcec and Hádry” comic strip is entitled “Münchhausen”.
…Isn’t She Pretty Karel Král’s text on new productions of plays by Ladislav Klíma, a philosopher from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, is a follow-up to the article dedicated to Masonry and alchemy. Klíma was a keen playwright in his declining years. The main themes of these plays are the interchangeability of reality and dream, life and death, with an overriding immaterialism, a strong belief that if detached from material existence the will would become absolute and divine, and a subsequent negation of this belief when the burden of “weight” led Klíma to a sense of slavery. However, neither of these mindsets, either victorious or defeated, evaporated entirely, but indeed ultimately reached a mystical reconciliation in nothingness. That is not to say that there was any placid recovery. The world observed by Klíma was ridiculous and productions of his plays are also comedies. Hana Burešová draws on the dual nature of The Human Tragicomedy in which the author combined a comedy of manners with a mystical knockabout farce. While the trajectories of many of the former classmates – a nouveau riche, a scholar and a womanizer – since high school have moved from rise to fall, the poet and drunkard has avoided this decline. His helper in this is a classmate philosopher who turns into a ghost and in the end even into a divine being. The morality play surprisingly results in an amoral instruction to the poet to drink himself into early grave. In the production by Prague’s Divadlo v Dlouhé (Theatre in Dlouhá Street) a comedy of characters is combined with expressive farce and in the process the pothouse or bawdy house where the poet is heading in the end becomes a grave. František Derfler at the Brno Divadlo U stolu (Theatre at the Table) combines Klíma’s last work Edgar with excerpts from his prose Jak bude po smrti. Both texts have the same theme: the difficulty of distinguishing reality from dream and life from death. The hero, haunted by his grandfather who made him burglar and murderer, is unable to differentiate between ghostly delusion and reality and he shoots his – presumably unfaithful – lover and then himself. However, this is not a tragedy since the dying man is aiming at the point where dream and reality merge. His dwelling was, from the outset, a grave.
Clown Doctor Lukáš Houdek, chairman of the Czech organization Clown Doctors (a partner of Red Noses International), founded by a Californian naturalized in Europe, Gary Edwards, discusses this profession in his article Clown Therapy. Candidates for clown doctor jobs must pass through a multi-round recruitment. This seeks those who have acting and improvisational talents, those who are sensitive, emotional and able to laugh at themselves. Clown doctors work in hospitals, mostly in pairs, except possibly for some geriatric visits when the programme is created by a bunch of clowns, or a project in which clowns, this time one by one, accompany children through their operation day and stay by their side almost to the threshold of the operating theatre. Clown doctors stylize themselves into characters of doctors and nurses because it is the identification with the environment and highlighting at its comic potential that can serve to free patients of fear. A different approach to the one at children’s wards is needed on visits to geriatric wards, where costumes from past times are often used, participants work with memories, music or for instance with scents. The goal of the clowning is to make the audience laugh, often together with family members and hospital staff, everybody you can meet in a hospital. The work of a clown doctor demands psychological strength. Clown doctors know that if their work is to be of assistance, they must resist the sorrow, even if they are fully aware of the grievous destinies of their spectators. These questions are also pursued in the interview with three clown doctors: Lucie Dlabolová-Bulisová, Adéla Kratochvílová and Hana Malaníková. But their essential feeling is expressed by the quote used in the title: The Most Wonderful Work in the World.