Tag: national theatre prague

THEATRE OF DIVERSITY

THEATRE OF DIVERSITY

When it comes to continuous activity, the Czech theatre represents one of the relatively young members of the vast and diverse European theatre structure. Beside a long-lasting tradition of puppet and folk theatre, its beginnings extend to the second half of the 19th century, a period when the first thoughts on constituting the independent Czech State were formed. Since then, professional theatre has gone through major progress depending on geopolitical changes. First, there was the fall of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, followed by the era of Nazi occupation throughout World War II. Then the socialist political turnover, lasting more than four decades, replaced by the long awaited process of democratization and the opening to global multicultural trends. These are significant factors that have influenced and shaped Czech culture into a blend between western and eastern ways of staging and artistic approaches. Now, current alternative theatre freely follows post-dramatic principles, whereas numerous theaters of public service continue to benefit from the classical repertory.

“Manon Lescaut”, National Theatre Prague, directed by Daniel Špinar © Patrik Borecký

Once we leave out qualitative evaluation, the National Theatre in Prague is one of the most frequently discussed theaters in cultural and social areas. This is due to several mutually connected factors: the national-constructive function, which was fulfilled mostly at the begging of the Czech National Revival in 19th century; its complicated history throughout the first half of the 20th century, facing the changes of economic and ideological character; and last but not least, the artistic work of various figures (directors, actors, playwrights, set designers).
Nowadays, the National Theatre is defined in this multifunctional way even by law. It is classified as a symbol of national identity, a holder of national cultural heritage and a space for free artistic
work. Its focus is not just theatrical, but also on exhibitions and educational activities, with a need to succeed in a Czech and a European context alike. Regarding its connections abroad, the National Theatre became part of the Union des Théâtres de l’Europe — the international theatre organization that initiates work partnership among mostly European theatre creators, an exchange of and reflection on contemporary methods of staging, as well as a long-term intercultural dialogue with emphasis on young creators.

From the public’s perspective, the role of the National Theatre is a bit more problematic. It stands for an idea, where many spectators (or even citizens with little theatre experience) can project their frequently distorted visions of the National Theatre’s role. This issue is related to the mythical origin of the theatre in the era of the Czech National Revival. The infamously fixed idea, in which the newly formed Czech nation financed the rebuild of the national symbol (the first building burned out shortly after its opening) contrasts not just with historical facts (the contribution of the common people was merely symbolic, according to one from the emperor or a dominant German nobility), but also with the theatre’s official status itself. In fact, the National Theatre was a private capital company lead by wealthy members of the association who were deciding the repertoire.

Today, the National Theatre is the only Czech theatre financed by the state. It is often mistaken for a traditional platform that is supposed to stage only the classics (that suit the majority).
Looking at this issue of how to perceive and evaluate domestic theatre work, it is crucial to describe Czech theatre structures of the 20th century in general.

“Pride and Prejudice”, National Theatre Prague, directed by Daniel Špinar © Patrik Borecký

Throughout the era of socialism (1948-1989), all theaters were founded, controlled and shut down by the state. Art was censored by two institutions — the Ministry of Culture and Enlightenment and local authorities —, and officially stood for spreading the propaganda and strengthening the socialistic conviction. Fortunately, these restrictions were not manifested consistently in real life, but mostly during certain politically escalated times, especially in the mid-50s, when the socialistic idea was strictly established, and throughout the years of normalization during the 70s that lead back to tightened censorship and reinforced totalitarian regime. The Warsaw Pact Invasion of Czechoslovakia in August 1968 demonstrated violent suppression of the creative expansion in all fields of art during the 60s, as well as paralyzing the multicultural development for another two decades.
1989 brought the long-desired democratization of society, the possibility of private enterprise and of course the logical consequence of restructuring of the Czech theatre system. Most of the existing theaters, aside from the National Theatre, fell under the administration of municipal authorities. Next to these nonprofit theaters with a general cultural and educational mission, entrepreneurial theatre productions and theatre associations (incorrectly labeled as “independent”) started to evolve. They considerably enriched the cultural supply, even though they partly destabilized previous dramaturgical methods and lead to a general audience crisis. The 90s opened up space for experimenting with new forms (that were, at that time, already mainstream in the Western part of Europe; such as site-specific, immersive theatre, performance art, forms combining several genres and narrative methods), brought a commercialized type of theatre production (such as huge musical houses or stand up comedies), and general freedom of creative (self)expression. On the other hand, it also questioned previous methods of staging in the area of drama theatre, based on shared knowledge of togetherness between creators and spectators against the totalitarian regime, common understanding of performance, which was perceived primarily as an interpretation of the theme contained within the play. It was due to this destabilization of current staging principals that the new wave of directors and playwrights (Petr Lébl, Vladimír Morávek, J.A.Pitínský, Jan Nebeský) was enabled to profile themselves. Thanks to these creators, whose work was based on postmodern narrating principles, the ‘new’ vision of theatre started to be acknowledged by the public. Repertory theaters adopted — to a certain degree — alternative methods of staging that were previously typical of theatre studios and experimental stages, where these creators mostly debuted.

During the 90s, a festival network started to establish along with individuals, such as for instance, the Tanec Praha (since 1989), the International Theatre Festival Pilsen (since 1993), the Theatre European Regions (since 1994) or the ‘Prager Theaterfestival deutscher Sprache’(since 2000), with the aim of presenting performances from domestic and foreign creators on an international level. Festivals such as Skupa’s Pilsen or One Flew Over the Puppeteer’s Nest, organized by UNIMA (Union Internationale de la Marionnette), reflect an area of the puppet theatre. There are also shows (Přehlídka ke Světovému dni divadla pro děti a mládež) that are strictly concentrated on a children or adolescent audience of different age, which have been regularly organized since 2001.

“Phrasing the Pain” by 420PEOPLE, choreographed by Ann Van den Broek © Pavel Hejný

Theatre censorship—typical of the years of socialism—ceased to exist once the new democratic government was established. Despite this welcomed turnabout, theatre struggled and still struggles with several limitations, however they no longer have a form of ideological restrictions. For example Ovčáček Čtveráček, an incorrect political satire presented in the city-run theatre Zlín, stands for an example of quite free self-expression on stage. Its creators were explicitly mocking spokesmen of the Czech president by assembling his own statements into a compact scenic form; other real-life political figures and cases were not left out either. Despite its regional background, this particular piece of theatre successfully gained national reputation, thanks to its aim to target contemporary phenomena. The success was so huge (also due to its uncritical support of the media) that the last performance was broadcasted live in selected cinemas.
Today’s creators are facing a different kind of restriction, an economic and financial one.

The transformation of the Czech state from a socialist to democratic one, on the one hand, lead to decentralization of the theatre monopoly and the strengthening of an autonomy of the troupes across cities (Ostrava, Brno, Hradec Králové, Plzeň). On the other hand it also contributed to poor financing conditions and the already problematic maintaining of theaters in low cost regions that were no longer predominantly supported by state budget.
The increasing demands on high-quality art projects—one of the crucial, yet very subjective criteria to grant particular theatre activity from regional or state funds—accentuated the lack of resources through the following years. Nowadays, there is no real law that would clearly define ways of supporting production from public funds.
Nonprofit organizations providing public service (museums, galleries etc.) have to apply for grants in various intervals, mostly every few years. Such processes come with certain difficulties, as long as managing public funding depends on non-objective reviews of committees which consist of experts of various specializations. This wide range of professions guarantees that not only aesthetic criteria are taken into account but also economic ones when it comes to subsidizing the cultural field; however it doesn’t necessarily apply to the impartiality of particular individuals and their personal interests. Only recently, in February 2017, did we see such an example, when the City of Prague decided not to provide a four-year grant to DOX, the Centre for Contemporary Art, one of the most progressive nonprofit institutions outside the historical centre, without providing any reasonable argument.

Nonprofit theaters of public service as well as independent theatre groups are similarly subsidized (systematically/on one-time basis) with public municipal funds, by higher regional units or even European Union institutions. Sponsors also play a significant role in the process of funding since they support public theaters as well as private and independent theaters. In addition, “independent” theatre groups derive their sources from a richly structured grant system. In general, multi sourcing is the most common method of funding, guaranteeing regular theatre activity and all kinds of productions.

“Events Horizon”, Scenic reading in Divadlo Letí, directed by Martina Schlegelová © Alexander Hudeček

Basic framework of the theatre system:
• Theatres established and run by state or self-governing institutions.
• Theatres of public service (mainly former regional theaters consisting of several departments like drama, opera, light opera and ballet: a model adopted from the German speaking area).
• Private theatres.
• Theatre groups (mostly amateurs, although current legislation doesn’t legally differentiate amateur theatre from professional theatre, since both types benefit from nonprofit support. What really distinguishes them is their functions).

The Czech theatre structure is dominated by drama theatre with a permanent casts. Most ensembles consist of permanent employees of various ages, assigned equally in a sense of collectivity. It also provides a chance to regularly or once host visiting creators with no permanent engagement. This kind of freelancing relates mostly to young directors, dramaturgs or actors, who are mostly invited to regional theaters based on their previous school and extracurricular work. These occasional projects enliven the rather traditional repertory of public theaters, oftentimes made of classical pieces with little space to experiment.
Young creators frequently enrich the conservative programme of contemporary drama with unusual interpretation of classics or their own works. The repertory frequently includes plays of team members, mostly by dramaturgs and directors.
The phenomenon of ‘author’ projects, i.e. the staging of texts that are written in the process, is mostly concentrated in Prague where the strong theatre alternative started to evolve throughout the 90s and is still going on. Nevertheless, the term alternative has more than one meaning: the non-profit type of theatre that provides public service and is run by cultural interests; it also relates to innovative, nontraditional theatre methods that go beyond the standard.

Such a structure naturally correlates with a diverse audience taste and therefore different aesthetic demands. In this regard, the Prague theatre network represents an example of great theatre diversity, thanks to its high concentration of productions in one place. Each stage has its own established base of audience that either increases or decreases, depending on specific dramaturgical choices, creators or economical factors.
Stages like Studio Hrdinů, which occupies the vast underground space of The National Gallery, and Divadlo Letí, located in interiors of the Štvanice Vila, are the very inspiring examples of marginally defined dramaturgy, which attracts the attention of a wide audience thanks to their location. The aesthetics of these spaces as such fundamentally influence the final scenic form.
The creative collective of Studio Hrdinů, mainly constituted of directors and set designers Jan Horák, Michal Pěchouček and Kamila Polívková, focuses on the synthesis of drama with visual arts and multimedia devices. Through what are mostly ‘author’ projects, they are trying to disrupt common and standardized theatre forms, as well as the borders between theatre and art installation.
Together with the Divadlo Letí—despite their diametrically different aesthetics—they are examples of the contemporary theatre that plays an integral part in the social-cultural progress.
The repertory of the Divadlo Letí, which is lead by director Martina Schlegelová and dramaturg Marie Špalová, primarily consists of contemporary plays that have not yet been staged (for instance, Letí introduced the work of Mattias Brunn, Martin Crimp, Anna Saavedra or Lenka Lagronová). The programme is complemented by dramatic readings that are mostly focused on dramatic text, their structure and regular interpretation.

“Small Town Boy”, Divadlo Letí, directed by Marián Amsler © Dorota Velek

Even the National Theatre, which has been mentioned so many times, belongs to contemporary theatre, striving to deliver a theatrical experience that goes beyond the standard. Its artistic management has gone through fundamental changes in the past few years, and has successfully attracted vast media attention. It has been mainly after Daniel Špinar—a longtime freelance director who has worked for various regional stages—became artistic director of drama, that the attention of critics and a wide audience has been attracted. The new artistic department of drama with its programme ‘New Blood’ has brought a series of modifications, such as opening up the backstage area, accompanied with scenic action, and a radical opening of the ensemble to young actors and actresses, as well as a strictly formulated dramaturgy of each stage (the National Theatre consists of 4 ensembles; drama, opera, ballet and Laterna magika, occupying 4 different stages).
The dramaturgical selection for the historical building targets the conventional spectator, for whom it tries to provide modern art and a complex theatre experience (the one that is not associated with any famous star or any prestigious feeling). The repertoire of the main stage consists of classical pieces and adaptations of popular titles (e.g. Manon Lescaut by Vítěszlav Nezval or Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen).
The Estates Theatre features a high standard technical background, suitable for much more inde-pendent and courageous dramaturgy, which does not necessarily rely on a long-term viewers’ success.
The New Stage focuses strictly on a younger audience, attempting to attract them through the concept of the ‘alive building’: in addition to the stage, there are numerous venues like a café, gallery and a store, that promise potential attractiveness to those who associate the National Theatre only with the historical building and its history. The space is therefore full of projects of experimental character (The Mouse Experiment by the collective of authors, The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry) with a stress on contemporary drama.

“Lessons of Touch”, Teatro NoD, choreographed by Miřenka Čechová and Jiří Bartovanec © Vojtěch Brtnický

Czech contemporary theatre is also made up of strong representatives outside the dramatic area, who try to explore the edges of (live) artistic expression. The experimental studios such as Farm in the Cave, based on the synthesis of the physical, dance and music theatre, or the dance company 420PEOPLE; they have both achieved considerable international acclaim and audience affection, mainly due to their systematic attempts to surpass theatre borders and their precise work on body language.
On the other hand, artists like Radim Vizváry (the performer responsible for the renaissance of mime arts) and Miřenka Čechová represent the leading figures in the field of physical theatre. Together, they established Tantehorse (the theatre company known for its strong physical articulation); they work either together or separately.
The Forman Brothers theatre, the nomadic fellowship with irregular ensemble, and Cirk La Putyka lead by Rostislav Novák, represent two aesthetically different forms of Czech contemporary circus.
The art group Handa Gote Research & Development holds a unique position when it comes to alternative methods, since it systematically explores the concept of post-dramatic and post-spectacular theatre, using all kinds of materials, both old and modern technology, the visual arts, as well as contemporary dance and music.

All examples mentioned in this article aim to outline the diversity of the performing arts in the Czech Theatre, combining traditional forms with more progressive, mainly Western European narrative methods.

 

NEKOLNÝ, Bohumil a kolektiv. Divadelní systémy a kulturní politika. Praha: Divadelní ústav, 2006.
DVOŘÁK, Jan. Kapitoly k tématu realizace divadla. Praha: Akademie múzických umění, 2005.

 

 

Published on 3 April 2017 (Article originally written in Czech)

Voices at the Crossroads … or the Soul after Victory II

Voices at the Crossroads…
or the Soul after Victory II

© Herwig Lewy
The Mouse Paradise Experiment, directed by Jiri Havelka. Národní divadlo, Prague. Photo © Herwig Lewy

A love letter at Národní divadlo: To Havel with love. In honor of Václav Havel, the Prague National Theatre’s festival Prazské krizovatky / Prague Crossroads (October 4th to 9th) presented 80 hours to celebrate the late theatre-maker and President of the Czech Republic’s 80th birthday, 27 years after the start of the Velvet Revolution: 22 events over the course of seven days; winner of the Nobel Prize for literature Svetlana Alexievich in a discussion with Jáchym Topol; the theatre’s own production of The Mouse Paradise Experiment; guest performances from Belarus, Russia, and the Ukraine.

Built between 1977 and 1983, next to the National Theatre on the banks of the Vltava hangs the glass encased Nová Scéna, dark and cubic on four cement stilts. Inside are the green slabs of marble across four floors that create, strangely enough, a sacred atmosphere. The Crossroads Festival took place in the courtyard in front of the theatre (Piazzeta), in the mezzanine, in Café Nova, and in the foyer, which leads to the main hall, and which also serves as home court for the world famous avant-garde theatre group Laterna magika. The festival honoring Václav Havel felt in a symbolic way like a crossroad, at which many spirited voices proclaim their doubts about the present.

The Mountain Giants

For Luigi Pirandello it’s the rejects of society that meet a company of actors in the villa “Misadventure” and who, without props, attempt to perform the piece with the help of their imagination. Václav Havel brings together both sides of this coin and an exhibit in the mezzanine pointed it out. On the walls hang posters with documents from Amnesty International. In the case of Jirina Siklóva, Petr Uhl, Ivan Martin Jirous and Václav Havel, human rights offences were made public. The date on all of the posters: 1989. It is important to know that Václav Havel could not follow his classmate Miloš Forman (One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, 1975) to film school because he did not meet the requirements for his secondary school examinations after finishing his compulsory education in 1951.
He worked as a taxi driver in order to pay for his night classes, completed two years of military service and in 1954 he began working as a stagehand at the ABC Theatre and at the Theatre on the Balustrade. He began to write plays in the absurdist style, including The Garden Party, The Memorandum, and The Increased Difficulty of Concentration.
Culturally and politically, Havel appeared at the 9th Writers’ Congress in Prague and openly criticized the censorship of the communist party. As head of the “Club of Independent Writers” he supported the reforms initiated by Alexander Dubček in 1968 which were repealed during the Prague Spring. In 1977 Havel was one of the three main initiators of the Charter 77 manifesto. Because of this, he was arrested three times and spent a total of five years in prison. After international protest in the early 80s he was released, but in January 1989 was jailed again for nine months for “disturbing the peace.” As candidate for the Civic Forum Občanské fórum (OF) Václav Havel was elected President of Czechoslovakia on December 29, 1989.

In light of this background, we have to ask this question: Which form of language is attached to this exhibit? It’s too naïve for “(Anti-)Communism in Museums”; much too concerned about facts for an artistic installation; the sounds from the foyer make their way into the exhibit. There, Marek Hejduk’s adaptation of the production of Protest, one of Havel’s best known pieces around the world, Protest/Rest (Theater Švandovo, Director: Daniel Hrbek) is being played. The sounds are evocative of a chorus and one floor further probably call to mind a tradition of collective passion in the Stalinist papal state. A sonorous illustration of the heartfelt matter in the mezzanine, it takes on a perspective of hero worship. As if to confirm this, a TV documentary with and about the man in his mid-fifties, with a rather anti-hero-like impression: “Go Havel! Go Havel!” can be read in the surtitles on the screen showing a mass rally. Above the screen, pictures flash of Havel in his robe (yawning) with his morning coffee, Havel in a suit (formal) performing a bodyguard’s salute. Pictures that show him with friends and artistic colleagues and companions, how they opened the locks of the atomic bunker left from his predecessor, Gustáv Husák, deep underneath the palace. “They really were afraid that war could break out as they stood in the reception and toasted; that someone would say, ‘The war has started!’ and they would push a button and ride down eleven stories!”, Havel recalled laughing, only “The elevator wasn’t ready!”

The atomic bunker was the most expensive investment in the history of the “Villa”, the Prague Castle on Castle Hill. The abys of the Cold War is sometimes considered the inheritance left from World War I, when Woodrow Wilson and Lenin tried to outdo each other concerning which political system was best able to help the people get back on their feet: With private ownership of resources or without. How should we go about shaking off the chasm?
Here it’s also important to know that Czechoslovakia came out of WWI as an independent state from the Habsburg Monarchy and existed until the Munich Agreement in 1938, with which Hitler-Germany took over the parts of Czechoslovakia containing ethnic German speakers and made them a part of the “Greater German Reich”, hereby creating the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. The first president was the philosopher and writer Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk who served until 1935 and later died in Lány.
At this point, Havel’s life as a theatre person is required, as the TV documentary asks about his skills as master of ceremony and Havel responds: “If the first elements of a market economy should decisively and lawfully enter into our lives today, then we will also have to keep in mind in the following days, that a nation is an entity also made up of a spiritual component.” Borrowing from radio broadcasts with Woodrow Wilson, the Talks from Lány were born. The president needed a channel of direct communication. The idea came from the former ambassador in Washington and London, Havel biographer, and current director of the Václav Havel Library in Prague, Michael Žantovský.

The Space-Time in Secondhand Societies

A foray into the festival programme reveals a central focus on current events and present aptness in East European bordering countries. Voices questioning the present came to honor Václav Havel from Belarus (Belarus Free Theatre, Time of Women, Director: Nikolai Khalezin), from the Ukraine (DAKH Theater Kiev, Dreams of Lost Roads, Director: Vladyslav Troitskiy), and from the Russian Federation (Teatro di Capua, A Life for the Tsar, Director: Giuliano Di Capua). These productions show that the “happy fracking” that Lev Dodin started in Gaudemaus has since differentiated itself in the last 27 years. A wider attention for these works would be desirable, attention which recognizes their formal language and content related characteristics in relation to social coherency in their respective societies.

Maybe a guest performance from Poland could have added something to this central focus. Current developments in Poland show perhaps symbolically, through the hero worship for General Józef Piłsudski, political objectives diametrically opposed to those of the artist-president Havel.
The situation in the Baltic States is similar. It doesn’t hurt to know about the constant conflict zone in the space-time continuum of spiritual border conflicts in the eastern part of the European Union: Created in the inheritance of the Romanov Monarchy — because in 1918 the Bolsheviks were supposedly waiting on a socialist revolution in Germany — these countries were united in their search for “identity” following the fall of their shared past in the Stalinist Papal State.
One doesn’t have to be surprised about the extreme nationalism that has taken hold since changes in 1989/1992, the sometimes racial and Christian fundamentalist tones. The German Heer (military) went forward with its regime on Romanov territory — despite the peace treaties of Brest-Litowsk (March 1918) — and capitulated on the western front (failed spring offensive), and Woodrow Wilson must have forgotten to negotiate a border by the end of the First World War (November 1918). This led to a civil war against Soviet Russia (1919 – 1921) after the start of General Piłsudski’s “preventative war”, supported by Great Britain and France.
The arrival of the Cavalier Budjonnyjs led to the complete recapture of the Ukraine (1920) but also to Crossing the River Zbrucz in the first chapter of Red Cavalry by Issak Babel, the literary man from Odessa, as if paying homage to Caesar’s crossing of the Rubicon.

On the other hand, in literature, like in theater, it’s the interpersonal relationships in this space-time continuum that counts, not the dates or schemes of political or historical developments. In her novel Second-hand Time, Nobel Prize winner Svetlana Alexievich traces this axis of conflict. Like Issak Babel once did, she lends a voice to stories that have been ground down somewhere between Raison d’Etat and individual emotions, wishes and hopes.
On the stage of the sold-out theatre hall of the Nová Scéna, she spoke with the iconic Czech author Jáchym Topol, famous for his theatre piece The Journey to Bugulma. In this piece Topol deals with the open secret of Czech literary history, according to which The Good Soldier Švejk by Jaroslav Hašek has to do with his activities as a political officer without a weapon on behalf of the Red Army in Bugulma during the civil war. Topol makes Bugulma into the iconic embodiment of the Stalinist gulag system where any thoughts of a communist utopia crumble into a dystopia and end in a pile of corpses. Alexievich deals with the past, the effects of which are still felt today, in a similar way. She once stated that she has now been working for nearly forty years on a single book, a kind of Russian-Soviet chronicle: Revolution, gulag, war, Chernobyl, and the fall of the “Red Imperium.”

After a short but heartfelt greeting Topol leads us through the period of the Soviet Union, the time of Glasnost and Perestroika, through the time of a reconstruction of society. Excerpts from Second-hand Time are read. It is a panorama of fates after the collapse of the Stalinist structure. At one point Jáchym Topol speaks about being Czech in Prague. He expresses his surprise at the Russian, Slavic patriotism, which for him was no issue. Topol asks where this love of the Fatherland comes from, which allows one to die for Stalin (meaning Iosseb Dschughaschwili) although he stands for the destruction of culture?
Alexievich answers him in two respects: on the one hand, she is interested in literature and not in patriotism. She is interested in the mentality, for cultural codes that are hidden behind people’s fates. She is not interested in people as a part of a contemporary process, but instead in concrete individuals in space, who exist in the world. On the other hand, one could examine Stalin in this way. The people who lived in Stalin’s time were dependent upon him. And, Alexievich adds, Russia was always a totalitarian country and the Russian people had again and again attempted to free themselves from this totalitarian chain, but always in vain. This is the movement that defines Russian culture, which is also frustrating, because it never brings its ideal to fruition. Alexievich gives an example from her first book, The Unwomanly Face of War, and also mentioned that it will soon be available in Czech. In the book there is a woman who knows she is going to die soon. Fascism is the enemy. The woman didn’t really want to die in the spring. Suddenly she hears bird singing. She starts to see everything around her. She sees a flower blossoming. She sees colors. This woman begins to cry, in spite of her fate that she cannot change. And this is where literature is created, according to Alexievich.

As if there were no nationalism in the Czech Republic, which was familiar with the category of “ethnic purity”, someone in the audience whether it wasn’t an ethnical question of whether or not nations exist “that have a tendency towards totalitarianism, where the people themselves wish to be dominated” — She wouldn’t know, Alexievich answers. One could not say that the Germans are a country with fascist tendencies. There is however a moment of tendencies in which a mind forms opinions that might lead to totalitarianism. When she reads in newspaper about how Lukashenko is a dictator or how Putin is a dictator, she sees just the tip of an iceberg, under which a whole people is hidden, a whole nation. And these words are raised up in each of her books in order to test what is stable and what is not. Second-Hand Time is a collage of everyday voices, separate from the banalities of a political search for confrontation, which Alexievich attempts to give a metaphysical outlet.

Her books follow an aesthetic which she has perfected over time. First she wrote I’ve Left My Village which was not published in 1976 and which Alexievich herself considered too journalistic. She tried again, wrote short stories and essays, traced the voices around her. These are the voices at the crossroads which fascinate her. She met with a Belarusian writer Ales Adamovitch. He was dealing with a new literary model which he called “Collective Novella.” The two were brought together by a desire for the greatest possible convergence with real life. While receiving the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade in 2013 she gave the audience this message: “Flaubert called himself ‘a man of the quill’. I can say for myself: I am a person of the ear.”

Should the Numbers Count?

The humor and biting play on words in the theatre pieces of Václav Havel could be found all throughout the festival. Under an open sky the Theatre Husa na provázku gave a guest performance of Havel’s piece The Pig (Director: Vladimir Morávek) on the Piazzeta. The piece Redevelopment resonated in two different interpretations in the theatre hall, the guest performance from Hradec Králové (Director: Andrej Krob) and the guest performance of the Ivana Franka Theatre (Director: Břetislav Rychlík). Two different performances of Unveiling were interpreted in the foyer by Studenti DAMU (Director: Miroslava Pleštilová) and by První část projektu (Director: Ivan Buraj). Comparable to a reenactment, the Petra Bezruče Theatre attempted Audience (Director: Stepán Pácl) in the style of socialist realism. The inclination to stay true to the originals was obvious in a few pieces, as well as a conscious decision, which protected the absurdities put there by Havel. Twenty-seven years later the communist-bashing is however still funny, but also somehow boring as a spectator.

Looking for contemporary dissonance, the theatre’s own production of The Mouse Paradise Experiment by Jiri Havelka (Director), Martina Slukova (Script), and Marta Ljubkova (Dramaturg) stood out. It handled totalitarian world relations in contemporary scientism and thereby fit better into the central focus of the programme. Going into the theatre, the audience members were each given a mouse mask made of PVC. Taking part in a scientific conference, the theatre is rearranged into a meeting room. On the stage lie half-visible disembodied mice tails at the edges of the carpet. A lectern on the right, behind it an oversized mouse wheel. In the middle there is a green marble conference lectern for three scientists: sociologist, psychologist, biologist. Directly behind them the same conference lectern for just one scientist: the philosopher. A chair on the left, stairs, and a feeding trough, out of which fall croissants. Behind the trough hangs a curtain, to the left and to the right of which monitors have been attached. Visible between them and authoritative for all: the UN symbol, with the addition of a mouse head. We are now part of a mouse society, that seems to be clear. The basics of life together are going to be examined, based on numerical values: birth rates and demographic changes, social behaviour and suicide rates, social stress levels and freedom, how younger and older members of society interact with one another …

The conference starts with an excerpt from a documentary [view here] about the Mouse Utopia Experiments performed by American ethnologist and behaviourist John B. Calhoun. Back in the 60s the National Institute of Mental Health recruited Calhoun to place a few mice in a habitat which provided the perfect conditions for their survival. The result was simple: the greater the security for providing basic needs thanks to external factors, the faster the population lost their social competencies, became violent towards one another, or removed themselves from society, until the population reached a maximum for demographic expansion and finally died out. These characteristics from the mouse species have been compared to the human species. The scene is set.

We mouse-scientists know about the dramatic situation of our species and attempt at this conference to together figure out how much happiness is required to motivate us to live a life of purpose. Amusingly, qualitative questions are posed in a dialogue between the audience and the stage, which are then quantitatively evaluated. It makes for a fantastic parody of views from surveys, studies or even think tanks that operate on the basis of numerical values, often also containing recommendations for political developments and which are spread through radio and TV.
The cynical climax unfurls with a chorus of We Shall Overcome, the classic hymn of the American Civil Rights Movement, which also found its place in the repertoire of symbolic forms in the Czech Republic, the spiritual consequence of building a nation since 1989. However, the performance doesn’t go beyond this cynical commentary. But: the last representative of our species to die is the philosopher and president of the conference. An homage to artist-president Václav Havel, maybe? No one thinks to take a look at the trough. Would that be sacrosanct? Just one misadventure remains. It doesn’t get more humorous than that, at the crossroads between ideal and reality. Czech culture is known for such sharp-witted details, it’s a certain lightness of being. Havel would have been pleased!

 

 

Published on 28 October 2016 (Article originally written in German)

Václav Havel. A history of mentalities?

Václav Havel. A history of mentalities?

In their work on the revolutionary magazine of “microhistory” Annales, Marc Bloch and Lucien Febvre outlined the principles of the Nouvelle Histoire movement, demanding that a historian collects the facts of the past society, trying to draw a “history of mentalities”. The current European set-up seems to challenge a cultural journalist in the very same way: after many discussions, the most successful approach in exploring the notion of “international theatre” is proved not to consider this as a static concept, but rather like a complex maze made out of fragments of different imageries.

We spent three days in Prague for a sort of “pilot edition” of the Crossroads Festival, created by stage director Michal Dočekal, director of the Czech National Theatre Drama and UTE President. As written in the booklet, the festival is dedicated to Václav Havel: “As an intellectual and politician, he strove to tell apart the fair from the foul and stood firm, espousing his knowledge of the fair.” Crossroads is a very sharp curatorial action: alongside a series of stagings of Havel’s plays, the first part of the festival invited theatre groups from countries which are dealing with severe political shiftings: Belarus (Belarus Free Theatre, Yuri Khaschevatsky), Ukraine (Dakhabrakha, Theatre for Displaced People or a debate with Nobel Prize laureate Svetlana Alexievich) and Russia (Teatro Di Capua, Viktor Shenderovich).
We attended some of the performances, but above all discussed the very aim of any networking programme in Europe, and how important it is to gather a group of people with different national backgrounds in order to, first of all, tackle different topics from different points of view.
When one tries to engage in a discussion on issues of global interest, it’s evident how often certain positions come from a perspective which is not always shared. This is because the history of a nation shapes the history of the thought of its people.
On the one hand, the very same topic can be addressed from a radically distant perspective from country to country—not all of them easy to understand for a foreign point of view—, on the other hand it’s evident how a vision of “international theatre” would be merely composed of a selection of few “samples” of national aesthetics and artistic trends, out of a much longer list of groups, artists and theatre companies.
This is in fact the basic strategy of the Conflict Zones Reviews editorial project: to keep its writers on the move both in metaphoric and actual terms, to let them visit foreign countries in search of those particular traces of a common thought around major topics. A key might be to look at them using comparative tools, each writer being aware of his/her own background and, at the same time, finding a way to put it to the test.
Amongst the most urgent questions in the nowadays shifting trans-national panorama is the one of national identity, a virtual umbrella which is very hard to keep on everyone’s head. The Crossroads Festival, hosted by the Czech National Theatre in Prague at the Nová Scéna playhouse, was held in the name of Václav Havel. It’s hard to detect at what point Havel’s devotion and talent for drama and his political career met, as hard as it is to define the nature of his status as an intellectual, his strong political activism and the extent of his power in the changing landscape of a Europe in the second half of the 20th century. The decision to dedicate the whole programme “to Havel, with love” is a statement by itself, it demonstrates the profound gratitude of the Czech people to their compatriot playwright and essayist, who had also been the ninth and last President of Czechoslovakia and the first of the Czech Republic, and who passed away in December 2011.
After a selection of eight plays (Havel authored a total of 22), the festival also presented Velvet Havel, a production by Divadlo Na zábradlí company, written by Miloš Orson Štědroň and directed by Jan Frič.
This performance can be used as a tool to shape out some considerations on the role of Havel in drawing a national identity.

Štědroň’s staging (Best Performance of the Year in 2013) is a vaudeville-like pastiche of humour and satire most likely serving as a very subtle tool to praise and, at the same time, to criticize such an extraordinarily charismatic and influential political figure. In absence of a coherent plot, the performance devises a crazy cabaret in which Havel—portrayed as a young man with rockabilly hair cut—is brought to life in a sort of purgatory, where he is asked to revise some of the key events of his private life in front of his uncle Miloš Havel, a very well known film producer.
Life is a cabaret!; In kino veritas!”. Dialogues, monologues, dance, songs and live music mingle up on stage creating a colourful variety show, really hard to follow for those who are not familiar with trivia about the former president’s life as a writer, lover and incurable smoker, always dividing his time between the responsibility of his  political engagement and his artistic career .

It must indeed be remembered how unique the journey to independence from the Czechoslovakian communist regime was; that “Velvet Revolution” which also finds its echo in the title of the play. In only a month (November 17 to December 29, 1989), the former sovereign state of the Soviet bloc gave birth to a parliamentary republic, with absolutely no violent resistance opposed by the Communist Party, whose top leadership resigned after only one week of demonstrations and a general strike. Václav Havel, as one of the nine founder members of the text of civic initiative Charta77, played a key role in gathering the consensus around the independence from the Soviet Union, and a deeper attention to human rights. His service as President of the Czech Republic, although widely supported by the people, didn’t fail in receiving also some harsh criticism, especially with respect to certain foreign policy decisions.

Talking with some members of the audience after Velvet Havel, the impression is that such a humorous attitude in describing a popular figure and its influence on people is quite typical of the Czech. Jakub, a Slovak young professional based in Prague, tells a curious story: Největší Čech (The Greatest Czech) is the name of a television poll lunched in 2005 by the national broadcaster Česká televize through which the populace was asked to name the greatest Czech personality in history. The winner was Jára Cimrman, who couldn’t actually accept the prize; this anecdote perfectly captures the Czech sense of humour since Cimrman is actually a fictional character. Created by Jiří Šebánek, Ladislav Smoljak and Zdeněk Svěrák for the radio programme Nealkoholická vinárna U Pavouka in 1966 as a caricature of the Czech people, Cimrman ended up being recognized as one of the strongest Czech symbols, with books, plays and movies featuring him as main character or even as “putative author”.
Jakub’s opinion is that Czechs are not very politically involved and that the sense of humour shown in Velvet Havel is a trustful representation of a sort of national spirit, that—focusing more on the form than on the content—in Frič/Štědroň’s play finds a very subtle and respectful balance between criticism and apology.
In 2011 in Riga, the major Latvian director Alvis Hermanis presented Ziedonis and the Universe, a play which was both a homage and a critical response to the intellectual and political activity of Imants Ziedonis, the “national poet” who died not long after, universally recognized as the most representative icon of Latvian culture throughout the Soviet Union period and beyond. Here too, the play conveyed a mixture between revealing someone’s social influence and praising it. In both cases, the act of unveiling the contradictions of a society resulted in awakening a socio-political conscience. Facts and figures from the past (in the case of Czech Republic and Latvia: the Soviet political and economical influence, as well as the following cultural revolutions) appear to play a crucial role in terms of how people carve out the tools to tell their own collective history. As a matter of fact, such kind of satirical use of performing arts is strictly connected to the sense of community that reunites the conscience of the individuals.

Going back in 2016 Prague, a reflection that challenges this discourse can be found in the preface texts that introduced the Crossroads Festival booklet. The one by Michael Žantovský—director of the Václav Havel Library—summarizes Havel’s thought in a distinctive way: “Unlike all the other politicians, [Václav Havel’s] philosophy did not bear on an ideological doctrine and the necessity of power to apply it, but on the essential need of individuals to live an authentic, meaningful life, part of which is the awareness of being co-responsible for that which is around them and for the fates of other human beings.”
From this perspective, Havel wanted to engage the Czech people’s interest not so much through a strictly political propaganda able to foster an active intervention, but rather through conveying a sense of community based on a shared imagery able to make sense out of living as a collective of individuals. In other words: some ideas that proactively create an identity rather than an ideology that imposes one. This comparison with Havel may be accounted as good material for this little experiment of “microhistory”, which used performing arts to cast a light on the mentality of a country. And, once again, challenge a simplistic conception of “international theatre”.

 

 

Published on 21 October 2016 (Article originally written in Italian)