CONFERENCE THEATRE AND POLITICS

PRAGUE, ARCHA THEATRE
24. 9. 2022   17:30

The theatre performance Noon was created in 2018. The impetus for its preparation was the events that took place on August 25, 2013, when a dozen people were detained by the security forces on Red Square in Moscow, who came here to commemorate the protest rally against the occupation of Czechoslovakia by the armies of Warsaw contract in August 1968, as well as Miloš Zeman’s derogatory public statement about some participants in the demonstration in 1968 and their children from 2014. The actual preparation of the performance Noon was preceded by extensive research, including the study of historical documents and consultations with Czech and foreign historians, as well as interviews with living participants in the demonstration, their children and members of the then Soviet dissident.

The theatre performance Noon combines documentary theater telling about the events that followed the demonstration of eight brave people on Red Square in Moscow on August 25, 1968, and visual and physical theatre of persistent images inspired by the poetry of Natalya Gorbanevskaya, Vadim Delone and other poets of Soviet dissent in the 1960s and the 70s. The direction and art concept is the work of Pavel Štourač and Helena Štouračová; the live musical accompaniment of the performance is then provided by a string quartet in the compositions of Elia Moretti, a longtime collaborator of the ensemble.

A public conference called Theatre and Politics will be held in Archa Theatre before the performance Noon. The conference will be attended by Yaroslav Gorbanevsky, son of Natalya Gorbanevskaya and Sarah Fajnberg, daughter of another protester Viktor Fajnberg, Adam Hradilek from the Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes and other guests. The moderator will be Michaela Stoilova, a Russian studies scholar and translator, and the co-author of the book For Your Freedom and Ours.

Continuo Theatre repeatedly goes back to such historic political topics of the events of the 20th century which up to now influence the reality of Central Europe area. The Continuo authors are persuaded that these events and the absence of their intentional analysis directly or indirectly influence harmful social climate in the countries of the former Soviet bloc. They show themselves in pathologic phenomena in all levels of the society reminding psychotic reactions of incurred traumas in the form of paranoia, fear of the unknown, the herd instinct, or low self-confidence. Performances and projects of this kind deal with various historic events, they look for their overlap and context in everyday reality of our society.

Following this dramaturgic concept Continuo Theatre has produced a lot of repertory performances, such as The Victim (2009), Neighbours (2012), or Noon (2018), as well as site-specific projects like Scars in Stone (2010), Forgotten in the Fields (2015), or In the Belly of the Whale (2019).