IN THE BELLY OF THE WHALE, 8. – 15. 8. 2019

This year, the annual international theatre site specific project, organized by Continuo Theatre since 1997, will take place on the premises of a former water treatment facility in Písek. The facility, whose history goes back to 1901, was functional up until autumn of last year. The premiere will take place on August 8, 2019. The performances will follow daily until August 15th.

No longer in use, the location maintains characteristics of its long history handling and processing massive amounts of water – great concrete tubs with rusting iron sheets on the walls, a labyrinth of corridors, kilometers of omnipresent piping, as well as hundreds of pumps and other technical equipment. All of these unique features of the waterworks facility serve as inspiration for the upcoming project and will become a part of the theatrical event.

In accordance with previous site-specific projects organized by Continuo Theatre, this production hauls its creative impulses from the location itself, its history, current context, and topics related to the location, especially the stories of locals and people connected to the area; those who have worked there or lived in its vicinity.

A mere hundred meters from the waterworks building, up on a hill, stands an abandoned villa which is currently falling into despair. The villa was once the childhood home of Dagmar Šimková, a Písek native and a political prisoner of the Czechoslovak communist regime. She was arrested at 23 years old in 1952 and sentenced to 14 years in prison for crimes against the regime. In 1968, after her release and after the Warsaw Pact Invasion of Czechoslovakia, she emigrated to Australia with her mother. Her autobiographical book, which outlines the events around her interrogations and years spent in prison, is one of the main sources of inspiration for this theatrical production.

Besides this storyline, the original function of the water plant, to treat and purify water, plays an important role in the planned project. Water has appeared in many of Continuo’s previous site-specific projects including the moat of Chateau Kratochvíle, the Otrhanec pond in Malovice, and the cellar of the Písek gallery, Sladovna.

This year, the creative team got inspired by a selection of mythological stories related to water and its symbolic meaning. The name of the project refers to interpretation by Joseph Campbell, who considers the stomach of the whale to be a symbolic place where man is absorbed into the unknown, a place where a hero, a person who is able to resist destiny, time, fear and totality, is born.

The combination of the former function of the building, the story of Dagmar Šimková and the mythological echoes of stories connected with water and its significance thus form the basic subject matter of V břiše velryby. Opening night of this production will take place on 8 August 2019 inside the old Písek water treatment facility. Reruns will follow daily until 15 August.