Featured image: Zuzana Kronerova, Hot Summer '68, GUnaGU Theatre, photograph by Ctibor Bachraty
Excerpts from two plays that employ absurdist humor as they explore issues related to Eastern European transitions to democracy and one experimental stream of words, thoughts, and dialogues.
Money, Portal, The Third Age (Czech Republic). Playwright: Dodo Gombar. Director: Edward Einhorn. Cast Money: Craig Anderson (Peter), Rolls Andre (Zdeno), Elizabeth Chappel (Milena), Nathanial Meek (Jojco), Max Wolkowitz (Mirec); The Third Age: Richard Toth (Dolina), Max Wolkowitz (Egon); Portal: Craig Anderson (First Speaker), Richard Toth (Second Speaker). Translated by: Lucie Kolouchova. Running time: 90 min.
Money features a “panopticon” of peculiar characters (two pot smokers, a car dealer, a street musician, a dreamy bank security guard, and others) whose seemingly unrelated but certainly odd stories of attempts to do something with their lives meet at one point in a given time and space. Do something, something unexpected—rob a bank, cancel your engagement right before the wedding, or simply manage to have a conversation with your mother. But don’t look back and don’t mess up.
The Third Age is a multigenerational dialogue, a bitter comic farce about life, relationships, and a will to live, about those who cannot escape their past or deal with life in the present. They can’t quite figure it out. In a society that abruptly transitioned into freedom in 1989, expectations quickly lead to disillusions. Have people learned how to live in freedom? Or are they to be left instead living with hope that the next generation, the generation of the “third age,” will live a better life?
Portal is an experimental text in between drama and poetry. Its twelve scenes offer extreme situations full of hidden emergencies and various metaphors. The performance consists of a disquieting stream of words, thoughts, and dialogues between anonymous characters. Spectators are encouraged to find meanings based on their imagination and intimate experiences.
Dodo Gombar’s The Third Age was shortlisted for the best original play script for the Slovak Alfred Radok Playwriting Award in 2002.
The reading is followed by Q&A. It is free and open to the public. Suggested donation $10. Today, we ask you to help us support our Best Mini-Drama Student Contest program by purchasing a printed copy of one of the winning plays. You will contribute to the continuation of life-changing opportunities for creative talents. > Buy student plays
The event will be broadcasted online, live on Zoom. RSVP is required to receive the Zoom link. RSVP online through Eventbrite.
DODO GOMBAR is a director, playwright and pedagogue, born in Slovakia, living in Czech Republic. In 2019, he became a lecturer at the Department of Dramaturgy and Directing at the Janacek Academy of Music and Performing Arts in Brno. He was the Artistic Director of the City Theater Zlin, 2006 – 2009, and Svanda Theater in Prague, 2010-2019. He has directed over 120 plays by such authors as W. Shakespeare, T. Dorst, J. B. Moliere, A. P. Chekhov, F. Kafka and others at many stages in the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary and Italy. He often directs his own plays or his adaptations of world-famous novels. He cooperates with Slovak and Czech Television and Slovak radio. Gombar’s play Hugo Karas won the 2nd prize at the most prestigious Czech drama Alfred Radok Award 1999; the play was then translated into English, published in the anthology called Slovak Contemporary Drama, and in 2002, it was produced in Huddersfield, England. His play Between Heaven and Her was acclaimed internationally, premiered at Thalia Szinhasz in Budapest in 2005 and in 2015 it was staged at La Mama Theatre in Melbourne, Australia. The play Money (2015) won the Alfred Radok Award in 2015. His plays have been translated into eight languages and presented in several countries. In 1996-97, he studied at the Circle in the Square – Theatre School on Broadway in New York, where he directed a production of Tell Me About Birds, his original theater play. He graduated as a director from Bratislava’s College of Performing arts in 1998.
EDWARD EINHORN is a playwright, director, translator, librettist, and novelist. Edward is the Artistic Director of Untitled Theater Company #61: A Theater of Ideas. Some of his notable projects include the production of The Vaclav Havel Festival (2006), a festival of all of Havel’s work, which Edward curated with Havel in attendance; Cabaret in Captivity, songs and sketches from Terezin; The Pig, or Václav Havel’s Hunt for a Pig, adapted from the work by Vaclav Havel and Vladimir Moravek; The God Projekt; Rudolf II, an original play about the emperor in Prague; and The Velvet Oratorio, an opera-theater production following Havel’s character Vanek through the Velvet Revolution. He also directed the stage production and film of Karel Svenk’s The Last Cyclist. Edward Einhorn’s works have been reviewed in The New York Times, Time Out, and The Village. He has received number of awards, such as SEED Magazine’s Revolutionary Mind Award and The NY Innovative Theater Award for Best Performance Art Production of the Year.
CRAIG ANDERSON is excited to team up with Edward again for this reading. Previous works with Untitled Theater Company #61 include Doctors Jane and Alexander, The Resistible Rise of J.R. Brinkley, The Iron Heel, Cabaret in Captivity, and both the concert and fully-staged productions of Velvet Oratorio. He also worked with Edward in the stage production and film of The Last Cyclist, the film version of which is starting to appear in festivals in the U.S. and abroad. Other local productions include the world premiere of Painted Alice, a site-specific musical in the Plaxall Gallery in Long Island City, Stephano in The Tempest for Dysfunctional Theater, Judge Brack in Hedda Gabler for Love Creek, and many others.
ROLLS ANDRE Theatre: "Superterranean" dir. Mimi Lien and Dan Rothenberg (Pig Iron Theatre), "Seagullmachine" dir. Jess Chayes & Nick Benacerraf (The Assembly),"Beardo" Jason Craig-Dave Malloy dir. Ellie Heyman (Pipeline Theatre), "Let Us Now Praise Susan Sontag" (Abrons Arts Center), "12 Shout Outs to the 10 Forgotten Heavens Winter Solstice 2017" (Whitney Museum) both written and dir. by Sibyl Kempson, "Seen/By Everyone" dir. Kristen Marting conceived by Five on a Match (Here Arts Center), Film: " Lost Holiday" produced and directed by The Matthews Brothers.
ELIZABETH CHAPPEL New York theater: Asylum Song (HERE Arts Center); Performance for One (Untitled Theater Company #61), The Happy Garden of Life (New Ohio Theatre); Machinal, Richard III (Lenfest Center for the Arts); Uncle Vanya (Shapiro Theater); Divorce Party (Cave Theatre). Regional theater: See How They Run (St Vincent Summer Theatre); Angels in America (Throughline Theatre); The Comedy of Errors, Much Ado About Nothing (New Renaissance Theatre Co). Training: William Esper Studio. Fun facts: she has a BS in Neuroscience and narrates audiobooks. elizabethchappel.com
NATHANIEL MEEK Theater: Fat Pig (Geffen Playhouse), Bled For The Household Truth (Rogue Machine), Twelfth Night (West Valley Playhouse, City Shakes), Much Ado About Nothing, Hamlet, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and Much Ado (Speakeasy Theater Company), Autobahn, The Devil and Billy Markham (UCLA LIVE). The Distance From Here, The Water Engine, Cyrano De Bergerac, The Laramie Project, Arcadia, Haiti and Coriolanus (Theatricum Botanicum). Film: Ouija House, Halfway to Zen, The Shoot. TV: My Crazy Ex, The Call Room. LA Opera: La Traviata (with Placido Domingo), Barber Of Seville, Tales of Hoffman. Nominated for Best Actor in I Knew Him Well (directed by Sean Harrison Jones) at Oregon Shorts Fest 2021. Nathaniel recently moved from LA to NY and lives in Brooklyn with his record collection. www.nathanielmeek.com.
RICHARD TOTH was co-founder and director of the Prague-based theater company, Misery Loves Company, which performed in Divadlo v Celetne in the 1990s. Notable productions include the Eastern European premiere of Angels in America by Tony Kushner and an original adaptation of Carlo Gozzi’s King Stag (with Divadlo Kaspar). Richard has frequently worked with Edward and UT61, appearing in Protest for the Havel Festival and a number of performances and readings at the Czech Center New York. Recent film and TV: Hedgehog, The Blacklist, Billions, House of Cards.
MAX WOLKOWITZ is an actor and animator based in Brooklyn, NY. Previous work with UTC61 includes Doctors Jane and Alexander and Pangs of the Messiah. Notable roles include Sholem Asch (and others) in Indecent at Arena Stage in DC, the title role in My Name Is Asher Lev at Penguin Rep and Reuven Malter in The Chosen at Long Wharf Theatre. He received an MFA from Brown University/Trinity Rep where some highlights were playing Dr. Givings in In the Next Room (or the Vibrator Play), Sir Andrew in Twelfth Night and The Doctor in In The Blood. He has also appeared in FBI on CBS.
LUCIE KOLOUCHOVA studied Theatre Studies at the Charles University in Prague and participated in the Dilia Agency Young Translators Workshops. From 2007 till 2016 she was a dramaturge at the Svanda Theatre in Prague. She worked on productions of Hamlet (directed by Daniel Spinar) and Metamorphosis (directed by Dodo Gombar), among others. She is a co-author of plays Marilyn the Bastard and The Good and the Truth that had a run at Daryl Roth Theater in New York in 2014. She also cooperated with the independent Leti Theatre. She works as a freelance translator and writer. Her translation from English include Peter Parnel´s QED (Cinoherni klub, 2017), Love and Money by Dennis Kelly (Theatre in Dlouha Street, 2011), The Ritual Slaughter of Gorge Mastromas (DISK, 2015), Game (A studio Rubin, 2017), and Earthquakes in London (National Theatre, 2017) both by Mike Bartlett, Moira Buffini’s Welcome in Thebes (2017), among others.
ABOUT THE 2021 SPRING WEEKEND: CONCERNING HUMAN IDENTITY
The 2021 Spring Weekend: Concerning Human Identity is organized by the Vaclav Havel Library Foundation (VHLF) and Bohemian Benevolent and Literary Association (BBLA) in partnership with the Polish Cultural Institute New York and Consulate General of Slovakia in New York. Spring Weekend is part of the annual Rehearsal for Truth Theater Festival honoring the playwright and human rights activist Vaclav Havel. It showcases contemporary European plays through stage readings performed and directed by New York City–based actors and directors.
The 2021 program has been conceived in consultation with Attila Szabo, Deputy Director, Hungarian Theatre Museum and Institute; Vladislava Fekete, Director, Theatre Institute in Bratislava; Zuzana Ulicianska, Chair of the Slovak Center – International Association of Theatre Critics; Tomek Smolarski, Performing Arts Programming, Polish Cultural Institute New York; and Martina Peckova-Cerna, Head of International Cooperation Department, Arts and Theatre Institute in Prague.
The program is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council and Council Member Ben Kallos. Promotion partners include the Czech Center New York, GOH Productions/Czechoslovak-American Marionette Theatre, and PACE.V4 (Performing Arts Central Europe).