New York Critic: The Divadlo International Theatre Festival, Czech Republic

Above: The Grand Theatre, Pilsen = Congratulations to The Divaldo International Theatre Festival for the 2019 Festival! The annual festival takes place over ten days in September in the gorgeous city of Pilsen, Czech Republic. This year’s edition - it was the 27th - presented 50 productions from central and eastern Europe, in 35 venues (the venues I saw were quite handsome indeed). I was happy to have the opportunity to talk with the Festival’s General Director, Jan Burian. He explained that select productions are invited to participate in The Divadlo Festival; they don’t submit themselves. The Festival’s Artistic Board visits “crucial” European productions and festivals as scouts. At least two members of The Artistic Board must see each invited production, and they must agree. The priority is on innovative work. Pilsen was chosen as the host city because of its convenient location, because it is not Prague, and because it was freed by the US army during the war, not ...

Steve Capra's Interview with Jan Burian,  General Director,  Divadlo Theater Festival =  Pilsen, Czech Republic =  September 14, 2019 =  SC: As I understand it, you have 50 productions. How many submissions did you have? How many producers wanted their shows to be in the festival? =  JB: I will explain the system. We work, of course, all year, but our permanent employees are only two. One is the producer of the shows and one is the General Director handling all other things. But we have something that we call the Artistic Board or Dramaturgy Board. It’s made up of five people. But of course we have a lot of collaborators in foreign countries, mostly in the Middle Europe but of also in Germany, Russia and so on. We cover Central Europe, visiting festivals, crucial new productions. The principle is that each production must be seen by a minimum of two people. Of course, it’s impossible to see everything, say, in Poland - it’s quite a big country...

Photo: Jiri Sediak =  Sternenhoch , from the National Theatre Prague Opera, is based on Ladislav Klíma’s expressionist novel, The Sufferings of Prince Sternenhoch , written in Czech and published in 1928. This opera suggests the first expressionist plays - specifically Kokoshka’s Murderer, The Hope of Women . However, Kokoshka’s mythical male murders the woman he’s found; Klíma’s eponymous hero is a sort of anti-hero, a victim, looking foolish with a thin necktie and derby, and his female is a demon (even the witch Prince Sternenhoch goes to for protection betrays him). Each work is misogynistic in its own way. The cast is flawless. When Sergej Kostov, in the central role, sings without vibrato, his voice has an eerie, haunting tone, less alive than undead. Vanda Sipova is equally mesmerizing as Helga, the wife from hell with an unearthly voice, mesmerizing us from the first line, “Your dead wife thanks for all our moments together.” When Prince Sternenhoch first sees her h...

Photo: Jiri Sediak =  Without a Dowry is an impressive show, a joint project of the company of the School of Dramatic Art and producer Leonid Roberman (Moscow). The script is an adaptation of the 1878 play by Alexander Ostrovsky, adapted by Dmitrij Krymov, who also directs. It concerns a young woman who, having lost her playboy lover, prepares to marry a sincere but luckless young man. The acting is meticulous, each actor focussing on the character’s eccentricity. Indeed, some characters are grotesques. In the central role, Marija Smolnikova ably presents a cold, dislikable woman. She reads to her betrothed a list of demands (including limits on sex) as if their scheduled marriage were a business deal made at a street stall. The show is presented on a large stage. The staging is complex and impressive, using a huge video screen on the back wall to show the events on the other side (the interesting set is by Anna Kostrikova). The characters know they’re watching a vide...

Photo: Katarzyna-Sadowska =  Notes from Exile , from the Teatr Polonia (Warsaw) is a monologue, an adaptation by actress Krystyna Janda and director Magda Umer of of Sabina Baral’s auotobiography. As a Jew, Ms. Baral was forced to emigrate from Poland in 1968 in a bloodless pogrom. Ms. Janda stands behind a scrim on which is projected a huge close-up of her; we see her behind the scrim to the side. The close-up image on the scrim is nearly as large as a commercial film screen, although it’s only a few yards from the first row of the audience. This is the equivalent of yelling to make a point. It’s the definition of tastelessness. For two hours Ms. Janda whimpers the minute details of her exile. There is only one subtext: “Feel sorry for me.” The hyper-amplified whispering never changes. Even when she sings (there’s a small band next to her), she shows not a glimpse of anything but victimhood. What actress - what playwright - would create a character who shows only one...

Photo: Jiri Sediak =  The 25 performers on the cast of Hymn to Love , produced by The Chorus of Women Foundation (Warsaw) and Polaski Theatre (Poznan) give us 50 minutes of extraordinary ensemble work in Hymn to Love . It’s the final play of a trilogy inspired by Brecht’s Mother Courage and her Children . This is strong political theatre, clear and convincing, never heavy-handed.  The show is written and directed by Marta Gornicka. She uses techniques from various sources - Judith Malina; Jerzy Grotowski; Bertolt Brecht - and binds them together with an inspired concept: the script presents nationalism from the point of view of the nationalists. The irony of the concept gives the production a valuable theatrical dimension; it involves us, the audience, in processing the message. Just so, the singing (which is excellent) and the chanting give the play distance . The cast also whisper, yell or bark as the occasion demands. On a bare stage of handsome Pilsen’s New T...

Photo: Jiri Sediak =  Before Sunset is Gerhart Hauptmann’s family drama (meaning about a family) about an aging patriarch marrying a girl young enough to be his granddaughter, first produced in 1931. The Slovak National Theatre (Bratislava) has presented it under the masterful direction of Michael Vajdicka, with a superb cast. Mr. Vajdicka makes Hauptmann’s characters imposing personages, almost epic personalties. They aren’t defined by their environment - Pavol Andrasko’s set gives us no more than we need. Indeed, the hard, unyielding attitudes of the family are reflected in the walls that bookend the playing area (the audience is on two sides). Martin Huba gives a complex, commanding performance as the wealthy gentleman (the role was originally created by Max Reinhardt) bewitched by a young girl. He kisses her with a sort of desperate, bewildered disbelief that she’ll have him. His family, of course, disapprove and work to thwart his happiness, but she sincerely lo...

Photo: Jiri Sediak =  The Cross by the Stream , from Slovacke Theatre (Uherske Hradiste, Czech Republic) is stunning theatre. It’s an adaptation of Karolina Svetla’s 1868 novel (Czech) of that name, the story of a woman who marries a man from family cursed in their marriages. It has has the power of myth; it reaches a point in our collective unconscious that we hadn’t met before, or had forgotten. The script itself is powerful, with a dignified poetry: “I can’t love. There is  no heart on me. Only a handful of ashes,” and “A grave blacker and deeper than night.”  The play uses sophisticated, challenging techniques. There’s murder and suicide, but the victims nonetheless continue in the story. The abusive husband beats a stuffed dummy while his wife watches. Dramatic action has its own rules - events on stage have their own truth. If there are passages that dwell for too long on the moment - well, this is a dramatic poem, and these are mythical moments. Ma...

Photo: Jiri Sediak =  Where is my Home? (A Love letter to Czechslovakia) is educational theater from Pilsen’s Alfa Theatre, directed by Jakub Vasicek. It uses 15 performers in drama, monologue, songs, live video of the performers, historic archive video and puppetry to present the social, political and artistic history of Czechoslovakia/Czech Republic from 1918. Its title is the name of the Czech national anthem. Much to its credit, it teaches without dogmaticism.  Director Jakub Vasicek weaves various techniques together to create a single fabric. Kamil Belohlavek’s complex set gives us puppets and video on either side of the main stage. A videographer roams the main and marionette stages. The production, as straightforward as it is, asks us to do some complex processing. At one point the family we’re following is at the dinner table when a rock singer climbs up on it to belt out a song. The family never acknowledges them, and we’re asked to receive multiple realiti...

Photo: Jiri Sediak =  Michel de Ghelderode’s play Bluebeard (Sir Halewyn) was first produced in 1934. It’s based on the famous story of the serial killer who knocks off his wives but meets his match in his final murderess wife - but the connection is unclear. The script anticipates by decades the current vogue for mythical, vaguely medieval fantasy. Unfortunately, to our ears its dialogue is adolescent kitsch , lacking specificity, written for effect instead of being based in concept. Of course, our disappointment is due partly to the fact that this flavor has become popular - but, in addition, the writing genuinely fails. It lacks depth, as if Ghelderode was unwilling to commit to his undeveloped concept.  But this expressionist production from the J. K. Tyl Theatre, Pilsen, with its ominous dark visuals, nearly saves the piece. Natalia Deakova’s direction is certainly creative - as Sir Halewyn, Ondrej Rychly roams around the theater, appearing in the audience, at on...

Photo: Jiri Sediak =  BodyVoiceBand (Prague) gives us a fine piece of dance theatre in its study of senior citizens, Musical of the Third Age . It uses young dancers - it needs young dancers - and, with a single exception, young singer/musicians to study the challenges facing those of us with decades behind us. The show’s meticulous, straightforward direction is by Jaroslava Siktancova. There are eight in this first-rate band (accordion; flute; clarinet; violin; bass; drum; guitar; keyboard), on a platform upstage, as well as a singer. The six dancers (one man is also a solo singer) are wonderful as well, working with Eliska Vavrikova’s jazzy choreography, which is so precise that when we see bamboo canes fall on stage we feel that they must scatter in the same pattern at each performance. If it’s unclear how some of the dance relates to the theme, we don’t care. This examination of aging is subtle and complex. We find a real understanding of late age here. The songs’ l...

Photo: Jiri Sediak =  It’s impossible not to love street theatre! Certainly not when it’s this good! The Priden Mozic Theatre Company (Slovenia) has given us a trio of street performers and 40 minutes of laughter in a silly sketch called Rest in Peace . The premise has something to do with undertakers with a direct phone line to God, who calls repeatedly to announce their assignments. The performers, clothed in their funerary blacks, get a volunteer from the audience to lie in the coffin - and be resurrected of course. And there’s a surprise at the end (hint: it involves water).  Is this simplistic theater? What could be more profound - or more necessary - than laughing at death? Rest in Peace is as defiant as The Day of the Dead, and it wraps up in 40 minutes. Moreover, street theater doesn’t let the audience lose itself in a fiction, as does realistic theater. We perceive the men on the street as archetypical undertakers and as Slovenian performers simultaneous...