here - Festival Divadlo

PROLOGUE
9th September
19:00 Stavovské divadlo / The Estates Theatre, Prague
1914 (directed by Robert Wilson); NATIONAL THEATRE, PRAGUE; CZ
A coproducton between the Czech Natonal Theatre, the Slovak Natonal Theatre and the Vígszínház theatre in Budapest. It is inspired by
the anniversary of the outbreak of the First World War and by two literary works, Hašek 's The Good Soldier Švejk and Kraus' The Last Days
of Mankind. Director Robert Wilson has joined them into a sequence of stage pictures, typical of the world-famous director's way of seeing.
Performance length: 100 min.
MAIN PROGRAM
10th September
16:00 Divadlo Alfa / The Alfa Theatre
Marek Zákostelecký, Jiří Havelka: GEORGE MÉLIÈS' LAST TRICK (directed by Jiří Havelka); DRAK THEATRE, HRADEC KRÁLOVÉ; CZ
The plot, inspired by the life and work of cinematc pioneer George Méliès, is a mixture of the style of traditonal (brutal) puppet theatre,
silent flm and a number of magically theatrical and simply magic tricks. Audience members young and old alike will be asking themselves
throughout the performance: "How on earth did they do that?"
Performance length: 60 min.
19:00 Nové divadlo / The New Theatre
O p e n i n g c e r e m o ny
Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol: THE GOVERNMENT INSPECTOR (directed by Viktor Bodó); VÍGSZÍNHÁZ, BUDAPEST; HUNGARY
In an ever more desolate Hungarian spa, in which all the water dried up ages ago, the director and his staff await fearfully the day when one
of his superiors notces the fact. When a mysterious foreigner arrives, a wild circus of corrupton ensues that has no chance of ending well...
This wity, politcising update of Gogol's classic comedy had its premiere in Budapest's Vígszínház this January. The famous Hungarian
director Viktor Bodó has created magnifcent comedy, fast-paced with numerous sharp stylistc twists and crisp performances not only in
the two main roles, but from the whole company, which turns the host of strange spa employees into an obscure choir.
Performance length: 130 min.
23:30 Velké divadlo / The Grand Theatre
DOLLS (conceived and directed by Rostslav Novák jr.); LA PUTYKA, PRAGUE; CZ
The doll as a path to ritual, to nature? The doll as a path to the imaginaton, a replacement of reality. The doll as illusion. Doll and man – a
further stage in human development? 20 percent of men in Japan aged between 30 and 40 have a blow-up doll as a partner. Why? The
project seeks new ways in which an object can be manipulated, the relatonship between new circus and the puppet, freedom and limits,
reality and illusion. The actors drew inspiraton from people who devote themselves to rituals, work with animals or perform puppet
theatre, as well as inspiraton from modern technology and flm.
Performance length: 75 min.
11th September
11.00 Divadlo Alfa / The Alfa Theatre
Fred Rodrian - Vít Peřina at al.: THE RAM THAT FELL FROM THE SKY (directed by Michaela Homolová); NAIVE THEATRE, LIBEREC; CZ
A puppet play for the youngest preschool children, with live music and a minimum of words. The simple story is inspired by motfs from the
picture book by German author Fred Rodrian, about a cloud ram that falls out of the sky. He is found on earth by a litle girl, who wants to
help him get back to the sky. Since there is a small funfair in a feld nearby, it is not long before the efforts to transport the ram back to the
blue sky take on a circus character. The strong man, balloons full of helium or being shot out of a circus cannon? Which is the best way to
get the ram safely back to his friends in the sky?
Performance length: 45 min.
www.festivaldivadlo.cz
14:00 Divadlo Alfa / The Alfa Theatre
Alois and Vilém Mrštík: MARYŠA (directed by Lukáš Brutovský); HADIVADLO, BRNO; CZ
This original text from the end of the 19th century has undergone numerous transformatons in its many years of being staged. Brno's
HaDivadlo has decided to go back to the beginning, performing Maryša in its original dialect. With a combinaton of simple, black-and-white
staging and the pointng up of the grotesque moments (the third act, when the Innkeeper cannot chalk up the brandies fast enough, is one
of the high points of the producton), director Lukáš Brutovský has managed to capture the indifference, cruelty and cynicism not only of
Maryša's tme, but of our own.
Performance length: 170 min.
18:30 Nové divadlo / The New Theatre
Elfriede Jelinek: RECHNITZ (THE EXTERMINATING ANGEL) (directed by David Jařab); SLOVAK NATIONAL THEATRE, BRATISLAVA; SLOVAKIA
The orgies of celebraton at the castle of Margit von Bathyány included the massacre of over 180 Jews, who had been engaged in forced
labour in the area. To this day, no one has taken responsibility for the massacre, and the murderers went unpunished. This play by Austrian
playwright Elfriede Jelinek, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, and David Jařab 's producton confront today's people and their view of
history with this tme-barred tragedy that took place just before the end of the Second World War. The producton won a Grand Prix at the
New Drama festval, and a Dosky award for set design.
Performance length: 70 min.
21:00 Kulturní dům Jas / The Jas Hall
Jiří Havelka, Karel František Tománek: BRASS BAND (directed by Jiří Havelka); VOSTO5, PRAGUE; CZ
The story of a litle town where tme seems to have stopped stll. One pub, one event, and people who would rather forget. But the past –
the mob revenge at the end of the Second World War – will not go away, and the town's present-day inhabitants have to take a stance
towards it. Everything takes place in an authentc pub environment, over beer.
Performance length: 75 min.
12th September
9:00 Divadlo Alfa / The Alfa Theatre
Tomáš Jarkovský – Jakub Vašíček: THE DEVIL TAKE YOU! (directed by Tomáš Dvořák); ALFA THEATRE, PILSEN, CZ (Host theatre production)
The ttle of the play evokes the traditonal Czech response to the well-known theatrical expression "Break a leg!" - but this play fulfls the
order literally. The well-known creatve duo presents the seven deadly sins (avarice, sloth, lust, glutony, envy, wrath and pride). Each tme,
an individual sinner signs himself over to the devil, who fulfls his wishes and then takes him off to hell. The individual stories are presented
by two travelling comedians (Milena Jelínková and Petr Borovský) using puppets of every type, from marionetes to mannequins the size
of a person.
Performance length: 60 min.
11:00 Nové divadlo / The New Theatre
Mark O’Rowe: TERMINUS (directed by Marek Němec); KAŠPAR THEATRE GROUP – THEATRE IN CELETNÁ, PRAGUE; CZ
This terse poetcal play from night-tme Dublin, with something of the Master and Margarita in it and something of Pulp Ficton, has been
successfully staged all over Europe since its premiere in 2007. It is directed at the Theatre in Celetná by Marek Němec, who has worked the
play's spartan monologue form into a spectacle that is just as unshowy but is nevertheless directorially strong. With a fne and
imperceptble thread of artstc metaphors and parallels it completes the connecton between O'Rowe's three stories.
Performance length: 120 min.
14:00 Sál Peklo / The Peklo Hall
Philippe Quesne: L´EFFET DE SERGE (directed by Philippe Quesne); VIVARIUM STUDIO, PARIS ; FRANCE
A minimalist producton set in a half-empty room, in which everyday miracles occur. The main character, reminiscent of Buster Keaton,
carefully prepares a show of several minutes for his friends on Sunday evenings, when ordinary objects and small gestures become big
theatre. Director and set designer Philippe Quesne makes references to the style of Jacques Tat, Samuel Becket and Mr. Bean.
Performance length: 75 min.
17:00 Velké divadlo / The Grand Theatre
William Shakespeare: HAMLET (directed by Daniel Špinar); ŠVANDA THEATRE IN SMÍCHOV, PRAGUE; CZ
This formally-inventve producton of a well-known text provides an opportunity for an exceptonal performance in the main role and an
original interpretaton. The emphasis is placed on the theme of Hamlet 's madness, on the situaton of a boy at a sensitve age whose basic
values are falling apart. The updatng and the major diffusion of genre reveals new interpretatons of a well-known text and new solutons
to the situatons involved.
Performance length: 150 min.
www.festivaldivadlo.cz
20:15 Nové divadlo - Malá scéna / The New Theatre – the Small Stage
Yonatan Levy: SADDAM HUSSEIN. A MYSTERY PLAY (directed by Yonatan Levy) HAZIRA THEATRE, JERUSALEM; ISRAEL
Oil is the key to power, the US is planning an atack on Iraq and in an underground bunker Saddam Hussein is meetng his doubles. They
cogitate on war and loyalty sing and dance ritual dances. Metaphysical poetry mixes with pure nonsense, while the acrid scent of oriental
cigaretes flls the air. On the other side of the world, George W. Bush is assuring himself that he is about to wage war not out of a desire for
oil, but out of mercy. One of Israel's most successful productons of recent years, the winner of the Acco festval, it shows war as a clash of
various ways of thinking, as a thing full of impenetrable mystery and as a source of very peculiar humour.
Performance length: 50 min.
22:00 Nové divadlo – zkušebna / The New Theatre – the rehearsal room
Vladimír Fekar: CABARET ASTRAGALE (directed by Anna Petrželková); CITY THEATRE, ZLÍN; CZ
A cabaret producton inspired by 1960s France, and based on Albertne Sarrazin's partly autobiographical prose work about a young girl
who goes off the rails and ends up in prison. The story and the period atmosphere have something of the French New Wave in them, for
example Godard's A Bout de Soufe, but the theatrical form is much more stylised, with the visual imaginaton of director Anna Petrželková
being shown to the full.
Performance length: 95 min.
13th September
11:00 Sál Peklo / The Peklo Hall
Emil František Burian: WAR (directed by Jaroslava Šiktancová); BODYVOICEBAND AND DISK THEATRE, PRAGUE; CZ
War, a musical and dramatc compositon based on the preserved texts and score by E.F. Burian, one of the most signifcant representatves
of the Czech interwar avant-garde, is directed by Jaroslava Šiktancová with choreographer Martn Pacek as theatre that, for all the
entertaining playfulness of some sequences, evokes the cruel fatefulness of war.
Performance length: 60 min.
14:00 Nové divadlo - Malá scéna / The New Theatre – the Small Stage
Jiří Adámek: SAY SOMETHING (directed by Jiří Adámek); BOCA LOCA LAB, PRAGUE; CZ
Another experiment by Jiří Adámek and his company with the principle that the author describes as "theatre bound by music." From the
form of pure voiceband, in which he seeks the rhythm and melody of Czech, here he moves towards a made-up, not entrely artculated
language that imitates the way in which we hear – or fail to hear – other people's conversatons in cafés. We are more likely to hear the
intonaton than individual words, and the stories that make their way to us are all the more atractve.
Performance length: 60 min.
16:30 Divadlo Alfa / The Alfa Theatre
Pavel Juráček, Jan Mikulášek, Dora Viceníková: THE GOLDEN SIXTIES (directed by Jan Mikulášek); THEATRE ON THE BALUSTRADE, PRAGUE
A theatre adaptaton of the diaries of Pavel Juráček, director, screenwriter, Charter 77 signatory and key fgure in the Czech flm of the
1960s. His diary entries capture the rise and fall of a talented artst in confict with the social and cultural circumstances of the period and
his own bohemian nature. The producton won the Alfréd Radok Award for 2013.
Performance length: 100 min.
19:30 Velké divadlo / The Grand Theatre
Lyudmila Ulitskaya: RUSSIAN JAM (directed by Ivan Rajmont); ARENA CHAMBER THEATRE, OSTRAVA; CZ
In this critcal lament over the situaton of contemporary Russia (and not only Russia) the author contnues in Chekhov's stylistc footsteps –
indeed, the Lepekhins could be the descendants of Lopakhin from the Cherry Orchard. The presence of three sisters in the family is also
a more than discreet allusion. The decay of traditonal values and the failure to fnd new ones is a leitmotf, with a wide range of fates and
characters providing rewarding material for the actors of the theatre of the year in 2013.
Performance length: 165 min.
14th September
11:00 Velké divadlo / The Grand Theatre
Nikita Mikhalkov, Rustam Ibragimbekov, Peter Flannery: BURNT BY THE SUN (directed by Natália Deáková); J. K. TYL THEATRE, PILSEN; CZ
(Host theatre production)
The year is 1936. In a relaxed atmosphere, two sets of opinions confront each other. To some, communism has given meaning to their lives,
while for others it has made their lives poorer. The past then begins to intervene dramatcally in the harmonious present. Love, jealousy and
the desire for revenge unleash a tense game, in which the players are going for broke. The play is based on Mikhalkov 's flm of the same
name, which in 1994 won the Jury Prize at Cannes, and an Oscar for its screenplay.
Performance length: 135 min.
www.festivaldivadlo.cz
15:30 Sál Peklo / The Peklo Hall
Farid ud-Din Attar, Jean-Claude Carrière, Peter Brook: THE CONFERENCE OF THE BIRDS (directed by Jernej Lorenci)
SLOVENE NATIONAL THEATRE, MARIBOR; SLO
The text is a subtle allegory describing the initatory journey of a group of birds in search of their real king. There is a permanent confict
between the temptaton to stay in the same place – or even to go back – and the desire to move forward and achieve the impossible. The
12th-century Persian epic poem, as reworked by dramatst and flm screenwriter Jean-Claude Carrière, was made famous by Peter Brooke's
producton of the end of the 1970s. The Slovene version is a modern-day working of a philosophical and highly metaphorical text.
Performance length: 120 min.
19:00 Nové divadlo / The New Theatre
William Shakespeare: HAMLET (directed by Jan Klata); SCHAUSPIELHAUS BOCHUM, GERMANY
Closing ceremony
This Hamlet, staged by famous Polish director Jan Klata at Bochum in Germany, draws on Polish life at the tme of the post-revolutonary
changes and the rise of capitalism. It features the typical elements of Klata 's directon – references to pop culture, music, flm and the
internet – and stunning performances from the whole company. The ghost of Hamlet's father is played by the same actor who played
Hamlet in Klata's famous Polish producton in the Gdansk dockyards.
Performance length: 195 min.
www.festivaldivadlo.cz