{"id":604,"date":"2019-12-08T10:13:14","date_gmt":"2019-12-08T10:13:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/20\/?p=604"},"modified":"2022-02-05T13:33:59","modified_gmt":"2022-02-05T13:33:59","slug":"men-punish-women-in-pilsen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/20\/men-punish-women-in-pilsen\/","title":{"rendered":"Men Punish Women in Pilsen"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Matti Linnavuori<\/strong>*<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Divadlo international theatre festival in Pilsen, Czech Republic, September 2019.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

A significant part of the world lives in the age of #metoo, but this\nyear’s Divadlo Festival in Pilsen seemed to dwell in a different era. Could it\nbe that Divadlo is one lap ahead, or does the festival lag behind? No one\ninterested in safeguarding their credibility would dare go against equality and\ndiversity, so is the selection perhaps the blackest of jokes in an area where\ncomedy is a rare guest? What is the soft underbelly of #metoo that Divadlo sees\nbut I fail to perceive, even after watching these shows? I find it hard to\nbelieve that old plays about women being forced into marrying brutal men were\nemancipatory revelations to contemporary spectators. But perhaps they are: the\nselection came from Russia, Hungary, Poland and the host country, Czech\nRepublic, all notorious lately for their mistrust of so-called European values.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Without a Dowry<\/em>: The merchants look like caricatures of the bourgeoisie in the old Soviet press, with their overlong fur coats, limps, etc. Photo: Jaroslav Prokop<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Or perhaps theatre’s cultural undercurrents do not travel all that well. I watched the first half of Dmitri Krymov\u2019s staging of Without a Dowry<\/em>, a Russian classic by Alexandr Ostrovsky (1878), and found the characters multi-dimensional if odd. For the second half, I resorted to the simultaneous English translation and thought the characters flat and their concerns trivial. In no way was this the fault of the interpreter; rather, it was a consequence of the different mind-sets of languages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Krymov\u2019s production came from Moscow as a joint project of the School of\nDramatic Art and producer Leonid Roberman.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Ostrovsky\u2019s play, a young woman (Marija Smolnikova) is in love with a\nman who chooses a rich wife instead. The local rich merchants then toss a coin\nto decide which of them will get to enjoy the young woman. She dies.\nDelightfully, there are at least two characters who never utter a line, but\nhang around as human backdrops, parts of the social scenery. Less\ninterestingly, characters often walk out of the back door only to continue\ntheir walk in a video projection on the back wall.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Cross by the Stream<\/em>: Trapped in marriage. Actress Pavla Gajdo\u0161\u00edkov\u00e1, set by Eva Ji\u0159ikovsk\u00e1. Photo: Dita Hrom\u00e1dkov\u00e1<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Karolina Sv\u011btl\u00e1\u2019s 1868 classic Czech novel The Cross by the Stream<\/em> was presented by the Slov\u00e1cke Theatre from the town of Uhersk\u00e9 Hradi\u0161t\u011b, in the Czech Republic. It is the story of Eva, who decides to marry into the Potock\u00fd family. Although the Potock\u00fd men are known for their maltreatment of women, Eva believes that her true love will overturn fate, and\u2014lo and behold!\u2014she gets to suffer accordingly. Martin Franti\u0161\u00e1k\u2019s production presents the characters as archetypes. Pavla Gajdo\u0161ikov\u00e1 is radiant as Eva, particularly considering that she rehearsed the part for Divadlo as a stand-in for its original performer, Kl\u00e1ra Vojtkov\u00e1. The latter was nominated for the award of best actress of the year as Eva, whereas Ms Gajdo\u0161ikov\u00e1\u2019s nomination came for her role in Mary\u0161a.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Mary\u0161a (Pavla Gajdo\u0161ikov\u00e1) is being dressed for her wedding. The dark figures of village women loom over her future. Photo: Anna Ritterov\u00e1<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Mary\u0161a<\/em>, staged by the Petr Berzru\u010d Theatre from the town of Ostrava, in the Czech Republic, was also shown at Divadlo. The play by Alois Mr\u0161tik is a Czech classic from 1894 and a steady favourite with audiences as well as festival juries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Janka Ry\u0161\u00e1nek Schmiedtov\u00e1\u2019s production portrays a responsible and\nintelligent young woman, Mary\u0161a, who succumbs to pressure from her parents and\nfrom the community: her marriage to the miller is a mere business transaction\nas far as her father is concerned. But Mary\u0161a remains loyal to herself in\nrejecting offers of an escape, either with her true love or back to her\nparental home. When, in the end, Mary\u0161a takes control of not only her present\nbut of her future\u2014by poisoning her brute of a husband\u2014the village women show\nanything but female solidarity: they silently condemn her, and here the story\nrises above sheer psychodrama.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Julie (S\u00e1ra Venclovsk\u00e1) under the scrutiny of her husband Fernando Krapp. Moving chairs into different configurations on the tiny stage was the action part of the production. Photo: Jaroslav Prokop<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Klicpera Theatre from the Czech town of Hradec Kr\u00e1lov\u00e9 presented a play of German origin, Tankred Dorst\u2019s Fernando Krapp Wrote Me This Letter<\/em>. His 1992 play is based on a Spanish story from 1916. The Czech version was directed by Jan Holec. This is getting repetitive, but\u2014the rich man buys the daughter of an impoverished man as his wife, only to endlessly torment her.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Sternenhoch: Helga (Vanda \u0160\u00edpov\u00e1) gets whipped by Sternenhoch (Sergej Kostov). The opera is sung in Esperanto. Photo: Yuliya Herhalava<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

If this year\u2019s Divadlo was a triumph for Pavla Gajdo\u0161ikov\u00e1, the same can be said for Ivan Acher, whose music was heard in many theatrical productions; for example, Angels in America<\/em> and, most notably, in the opera Sternenhoch<\/em>. It is based on a 1928 novel by the Czech author Ladislav Kl\u00edma. This time, the woman fights back. The eccentric nobleman Sternenhoch (Sergej Kostov) marries Helga (Vanda \u0160\u00edpov\u00e1) and then proceeds to kill her, but she keeps resurrecting to launch demonic attempts on poor Sternenhoch\u2019s life. Michal Do\u010dekal\u2019s direction for the Prague National Theatre employs and enjoys the grotesque to the fullest. The seven dancers, choreographed by Lenka Vagnerov\u00e1, are a considerable asset in depicting all the twists.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Hard to Be a God<\/em>: He (Roland R\u00e1ba) marries the madam (Annamar\u00eda L\u00e1ng) in the middle of a video shoot, where he has accidentally killed one of her prostitutes. Photo: Jaroslav Prokop<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Narrative or poetic expressions aside, the Hungarian Proton Theatre\u2019s Hard to Be a God<\/em> is a full-frontal attack. The setting consists of two real trucks. In one, a madam (Annam\u00e1ria L\u00e1ng) keeps her women. In the second, the women are being used for a porno video and another video meant to expose the wrongdoings of a politician. Commercial or idealistic purposes lead to the same result: the male video makers seriously damage the women\u2019s health by, for instance, burying one alive or skinning one\u2019s back and then pouring boiling water over it. This is shown on video on the side of the truck.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The show premiered in 2010, and I first saw it shortly afterwards. It\nwas a disturbing experience then, and is even more so now, partly because of\nthe documentary-type human trafficking storyline, but also because the\nproduction appears to handle its young actresses no differently. There is a\nframe story, where a god is told by his superior not to interfere in what men\ndo, but, after witnessing atrocities for 90 minutes, the lesser god kills the\nmen, and, for this, he evaporates in smoke; via video, the superior god is then\nseen silently drifting alone in a boat amongst reeds. I wonder if this is\nenough of a philosophy. The show strikes me now as both topical and outdated at\nthe same time. However, I do not wish to contest the accuracy of the world view\nin Korn\u00e9l Mundrucz\u00f3\u2019s production: evil is routinely being done to women. The\nproduction showed me that my avowed humanism is no more than a fig leaf, under\nwhich evil can go on with my passive consent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Krystyna Janda and Janusz Bogacki\u2019s band perform Notes from Exile<\/em>. Photo: Katarzyna Kural-Sadowska<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

The Polish production Notes from Exile<\/em> proves that my experiencing shock in theatre comes from contemplation, from inside, not from any smutty symbolism. And, this time, it is an entire state that persecutes, not a mere individual of no matter how satanic proportions. Sabina Baral was one of the 9,500 Jews expelled from communist Poland in 1968; her memoir was published in 2015. Magda Umer has directed the stage version, in which the actress Krystyna Janda calmly delivers the story of Ms Baral and her family. Ms Janda looms on the dimly-lit stage, but an extreme close-up of her face\u2014as befits a renowned film actress\u2014is superimposed on the transparent curtain. Every movement\u2014a slight smile, one or two tears, a tiny trace of contempt toward the authorities\u2014is fully visible. Anything more would be vulgar. Janda possesses a captivating stage authority. There can be no escape to sentimentality, not even during the poems she sings to the accompaniment of Janusz Bogacki\u2019s small band, while archive photos of the expulsion and contemporary footage of far-right demonstrations are shown on the curtain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Personas<\/em>: The actresses of Na Z\u00e1bradl\u00ed look teasingly like those of the 1966 Ingmar Bergman film. Alma (Jana Plodkov\u00e1) and Elisabeth Vogler (Magdal\u00e9na Sidonov\u00e1). Photo: Anna Ritterov\u00e1<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Apart from Sternenhoch<\/em>, the stylish relief was provided by Personas<\/em>. Na Z\u00e1bradl\u00ed Theatre\u2019s production is based on four of Ingmar Bergman\u2019s most anguish-filled films. Dora Vicen\u00edkov\u00e1\u2019s dramaturgy and Jan Mikul\u00e1\u0161ek\u2019s direction is a balance act, where the absurd and the ordinary co-habit. The ensemble steps light-footedly through painful betrayals, divorces and separations\u2014and that, of course, serves to emphasize life\u2019s disasters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

More on Mundrucz\u00f3<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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No Exit, no Explanation, no Exit<\/a><\/blockquote>