A contemporary play dealing with the current war, about a Ukranian family on a farm and a Russian soldier who stumbles into their farm.
A contemporary tragicomedy, a paraphrase of the biblical brothers Cain and Abel, which tells a story of love, friendship and the hatred of otherness fueled by the far-right National Socialists.
Excerpts from Czech plays that use Havel's character, Vaněk, originally created as a stand-in for himself (a dissident playwright) during the Communist era in Czechoslovakia. The character was then adapted by numerous other Czech dissident playwrights such as Pavel Landovsky and Pavel Kohout. The excerpts will be accompanied by a discussion with Carol Strong, who recently wrote a book about the character and its enduring significance.
An accounting of the recent Estonian banking scandal, where Russian oligarchs used Estonian banks to launder their money into the EU.
Lowlands is a haunting depiction of the moral decomposition of the terminal years of communism seen through the eyes of a child from the German minority of Romania. It is based on a text by the Nobel Prize winning writer Herta Müller.
A daughter’s relationship with her father is always spe- cial, but how does it change if the father is a famous dictator? How does it feel when Dad is a “monster”? Here Moscow Calling dynamites the idea of unique truth and proposes to the audience an intense theatrical-cinematic experience. The camera becomes the main character and the reconstruction of the truth a puzzle to be solved.
Join me, Marta Hermannová, for an engaging workshop based on the puppet theatre production "The Zlín Project," which we will be performing at the festival Rehearsal for Truth. This session will delve into the animation techniques we discovered during the creation of this production. Additionally, we will discuss the integration of puppet theatre with theatre based on real, including historical, events. This workshop is designed for performance attendees interested in deepening their understanding of puppetry and its application in such storytelling. The session will include an introductory talk about "The Zlín Project" and its creative process, followed by small group activities where participants will experiment with the discussed techniques, and a collaborative exploration of the potential of puppetry in theatre. The aim is to introduce participants to the possibilities of puppet theatre that they may not have encountered before, providing new insights and practical experience. The workshop will last one hour.
Tomas Bata’s advisor, Berty Ženatý, wanted to replace fairy-tale characters in children’s stories in the 1920s with clever and skilled industrial workers. A puppet production about the life of the city of Zlín in the era of Baťa. A production about everyday life that is functional, modern, universal, model, routine and effective. Every day, all the time. Until an error occurs.
More than a decade ago, the right-wing extremist terrorist cell known as NSU came across the novel The Turner Diaries by American neo-Nazi William L. Pierce. This work served as a guide for other neo-Nazis world-wide. The performance combines documentary material with fictional literature and creates a disturbing scenario that fundamentally questions the common notion of lone perpetrators.
From Slovakia, with English subtitles. Ingmar Villqist’s Helver’s Night is a thrilling and gut-wrenching play that charts the relationship between Carla and her young charge, Helver. Helver is fascinated by fascism – not by the ideology, which he is unable to grasp, but by the bravura of the movement. With Diana Semanová (Karla) and František Balog (Helver). Production: Terézia Mindošová
Two short dance films from Farm in the Cave. Effemery is about fleeting moments. It was filmed during early Covid in a vast, empty building, with 20 performers in permanent motion. Commander is inspired by real online chats of the neo-Nazi group FKD, which was led by a thirteen-year-old boy operating under the nickname Commander. It uses the chats themselves as the text.
The ability to exist in symbiosis with other creatures on the planet, the importance of respecting the value of all beings, the uniqueness of species and the struggle to preserve them – these are the main themes of the production. The force and power of nature will always find their way and do what is necessary. Riders views human action through the eyes of birds. Of the ancient inhabitants of our planet, sentient, intelligent, free beings, shrouded in mythology. Of the silent observers of our destinies. We had learned from them, admired them and worshiped them. Then we forgot. Birds are the only surviving group of dinosaurs. They were here before us and they will be here long after us.
Based on a dark comedy written in the Terezín Ghetto in 1944 by camp inmate Karel Švenk but banned on the night of its dress rehearsal for fear of SS reprisals. The play the actors are rehearsing in the film pits bike riders (Jews) against lunatics (Nazis), as did the absurdist original—a silly story with a deeply serious message. The Last Cyclist allows audiences to bear witness, as if we too are attend-ing that fateful rehearsal in the concentration camp.
A new project by Yara Arts Group that captures the resilience of Ukrainians in a multi-media performance about Russia’s full- scale invasion of the city. It features four diariescollected by Daria Kolomiec, from: Yaroslav Semenenko, a member of the Ukrainian National Paralympic swim team; Yevhenia Ivanchenko, a captain in the Mariupol Police; Olena Nikulina, from an old Mariupol family, whose husband defended Azovstal and is currently a Russian captive; and Valeria Mykhailovska, who was working in the Czech Republic and decided to return home to Mariupol to rescue her mother.
Noon combines documentary and physical theater to tell about the events which followed after the demonstra- tion of eight people in Red Square on August 25, 1968, using visual theater of insistent images. It is inspired by the poetry of Natalya Gorbanevskaya, Vadim Delone and other Soviet dissident poets of the 1960s and 1970s, along with live string quartet accompaniment.
Boa is the first choreographic play in the history of the National Stary Theatre in Kraków. Its main theme and explored space of movement is desire, how it is demon- strated, embodied, and performed. In Boa, choreographer Paweł Sakowicz wonders about paths by which desire circulates in the body; how it is created through a spatial orientation of bodies; how it can be intermediated through popular culture, discourses, and technologies.
It is not entirely clear if Fred Herko planned to finish his intimate performance with his own suicide. He began to dance naked in the living room. He approached an open window several times and then he ran and jumped out the window of the apartment on the fifth floor of Corne- lia Street. Ballet dancers are said to believe they can fly. And indeed, suspended for a second in a jump, they do.
A young woman born in independent, post-occupation Estonia sings of the Soviet residue that pollutes the minds of some of her fellow countrypersons and restrains feminist progress. The Kaisa Ling Thing (vocalist plus piano) paints a vaudevillian blues portrait of modern life on Russia's doorstep.
Inspired by the life of the successful athlete Zdena Koubková, celebrated in the sports world of the time as a “wonder woman” and holding several world records until she was identified as intersex - in 1936, changed her gender, and underwent surgery to become Zdeněk Koubek.
Mark Harman's new translations of Kafka shorts. One is about an ape who has learned to be human. Read and performed by Markus Hirnigel, directed by Henry Akona in a music hall vein. The other is a new music piece by Martin Bresnick with speaking percussionists (Makana Madeiros and Chad Beebe).
Timelessness, anti-dialogue and an atmosphere of suspense. Any Spot with Marks Left Behind is a play that has the intonation of contemporary absurdism. The heroine finds herself in someone else’s apartment and doesn’t remember how she got there. Strange sounds out of nowhere, overly friendly hosts and uncomfortable silence. The play has two acts that are radically different: by the end, the collective unconscious is transformed into a search for self-determination. The playwright explores the origins of violence, social and personal norms that do not always reflect reality.
In a kindergarten changing room, a rubber bat vanishes into thin air, setting off a chain of events igniting suspicion and resentment among the parents. What begins as mild distrust soon turns into full-blown hatred. The story unfolds, through a series of quotidian yet deeply resonant scenes, into a darkly humorous tale of absurdity from Central and Eastern Europe. Against a backdrop of comedic chaos, it poignantly portrays the stark realities of contemporary Hungary. “The Bat” offers a biting commentary on a Hungarian society marked by hatred, recrimination, and ultimately sorrow.
In a kindergarten changing room, a rubber bat vanishes into thin air, setting off a chain of events igniting suspicion and resentment among the parents. What begins as mild distrust soon turns into full-blown hatred. The story unfolds, through a series of quotidian yet deeply resonant scenes, into a darkly humorous tale of absurdity from Central and Eastern Europe. Against a backdrop of comedic chaos, it poignantly portrays the stark realities of contemporary Hungary. “The Bat” offers a biting commentary on a Hungarian society marked by hatred, recrimination, and ultimately sorrow.
Lowlands is a haunting depiction of the moral decomposition of the terminal years of communism seen through the eyes of a child from the German minority of Romania. It is based on a text by the Nobel Prize winning writer Herta Müller.
A staged reading of four translations of Scene 8 in Vaclav Havel’s play, The Memo (also translated as the Memorandum). An examination of the nuances of translation. Directed by Edward Einhorn, Artistic Director, Rehearsal for Truth Theatre Festival.
The story of the Roma girl who discovers at a very young age the differences of race and environment, but who manages to make her way through life and transform her complexes into determination and motivation, has the power of a therapeutic exercise.
A collaborative fusion of performance, visual art, and documentary that explores the male gaze, self-objectification, and the way power shifts as we move between looking, seeing, and being seen.
A dance performance as a form of somatic protest and viscous disobedience in the light of the current aggression of the Russian government.
A hallucination, a dream, a life, a performance: conjectures and reflections on temporal efforts and their significance. What holds? What resists the bite of time? An interdisciplinary performance examining human ambition, embodied presence, and existential meaning.
A tender exploration of a relationship between a father and his son. Through a series of monologues offering advice to his son, a Czechoslovakian refugee of the 1968 Prague Spring inadvertently traces the consequences of this historical event on his life, values, and personal relationships.
Imagine a collection of valuable artifacts that commemorate alternative versions of key historical events.
Machzor, a prayer book assumed long lost after its confiscation in the Theresienstadt ghetto, undergoes a miraculous rediscovery and returns to the Strachs, a Jewish family from the city of Brno.
Rabbi Stephen Menashe Kliment of Brno, Czech Republic, will share an incredible story behind the 13,000 prayer and religious books confiscated from Jews during World War II throughout the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia.
The women of Warsaw tremble with the rumor of a strangler on the prowl. Behind their fear, unspoken secrets and traumas begin to surface. Set in the landscape of a true crime story from 1970s Poland, Bowie in Warsaw is an absurd comedy about the repression of self-expression and love in the Soviet era.
