Jana Svobodová: Archa.lab and Archa Theatre
Archa Theatre was established in the mid nineteen-nineties as a production house. It was the first professional theatre to abandon the repertory system and to start to present theatre performances on a project basis. After fifty years of international isolation, Archa tried to enable people in Czech Republic to experience world theatre creation. Thanks to Archa, Czech audiences had the chance to see for the first time the work of creators such as theatre directors Robert Wilson, Anne Bogart, the choreographers Wim Vandekeybus, Anne Theresa de Keersmaeker, the experimental musicians Meridith Monk, Diamanda Galas, the composer Philip Glass and the South African director and artist William Kentridge.
In addition to hosting these artists, Archa created its own theatre projects. For one of the first such projects, Archa collaborated with the founder of the Bread and Puppet Theatre, the American artist and legend of puppet theatre Peter Schumann. In addition to a large amount of cardboard and coloured paints, Schumann had only one requirement: at least 20 actors, who understood English and would be willing to work in any field of theatre expression – dancing, singing, acting with puppets or masks, playing musical instruments or singing, and, most importantly, wouldn’t need to work from a pre-written script.
This was in 1994. Given the conditions of Czech Theatre at that time, we had been given a fairly impossible task. We knew we wouldn’t get any professional actor straight away for two reasons: firstly, they would be employed in a repertory theatre and secondly that they wouldn’t be willing to conform to Schumann’s demands. The only saviour could be an artistic academy. By agreement with the head of the newly founded Duncan Centre conservatory, Eva Blažíčková, we got a whole year group of future dancers for one month. Students and graduates of the Department for Puppet Theatre and some musicians also worked alongside them on the project.
After the project finished, the participants were once again offered the chance to return to college or to their theatre or music groups. And this was repeated again with each subsequent project, from Michal Vích and Jaroslav Dušek’s Opera La Serra, to Arnošt Goldflam and American director Damien Gray’s Sladký Theresienstadt or the three versions of the performance Grimm Grimm from the Japanese choreographer and dancer Min Tanaka.
We discovered the limitations of this method of working during the preparation of the performance Questioning Heaven in Despair, directed by J.A.Pitínský, which confronted European music deriving from the baroque with traditional Chinese opera and all its stylisation. The preparation of the performance lasted almost a year and required regular movement and voice training under the leadership of Chinese singer Feng-jun Song.
Our aim was never to found a permanent ensemble at Archa, but it was clear to us that if we really wanted our endeavours to bear fruit, then we would have to create conditions for continual work.
After the flood in 2002, which seriously interrupted activities at Archa Theatre for more than a year, it was clear that the new form of dramaturgy at Archa Theatre must incorporate elements of continual creation. We created the programme Archa.lab. The reference in the title of the programme to a laboratory indicates its orientation towards practical theatre activities, focussing on exploration, research and experiment.
The dramaturgy of this programme can be best described as ‘non-interpretative theatre’. It means that Archa.lab devotes itself to forms of stage expression which don’t come from interpretation of a previously written text.
Archa.lab understands theatre as a synthetic form, which doesn’t differentiate between individual stage genres. Space, music, light, sound, text and the action of performers carry equal weight in conveying the end message.
Archa.lab is a loose alliance of artists collected around Archa Theatre. Its structure could be likened to cells, whose walls are accessible on two sides, but which nevertheless maintain their form. Membership of Archa.lab is based of the principle that the individual only gets as much out of it as they put in. Members of Archa.lab have the opportunity to take part in regular training, focussing on physical preparation, voice exercises and improvisation. Membership is based on the principle known as residency. This means that the advantages, rights and responsibilities of Archa.lab members apply for a limited period of time. We usually agree with artists on a two year period and then, on the basis of the results of their work, membership can be extended for a further period.
For the first season we addressed the theme of Internet communication and approached fresh graduates in directing from the Department of Puppet and Alternative Theatre at DAMU in Prague, Martin Kukučka a Lukáš Trpišovský, who had already formed the directing duo SKUTR whilst they were at theatre academy. This led to the natural creation of two groups, which worked on the performances Chat – Dangerously Easy Liaison and Nickname respectively.
In the performance Chat, I tried to bring together academically trained actors with performers who came from the streets and brought their experience in the area of hip-hop. SKUTR created their team from their contemporaries, graduates from HAMU and DAMU. It was in this way that a group of mutually inspiring artists with a range of experience and skills was created.
Archa.lab’s current resident artists are dancer Adéla Laštovková-Stodolová, actors Dorka Bouzková, Josef Rosen and Rostislav Novák, hip-hop musicians and performers Jaroslav Vanický (Cossiga) and Aleš Jindra (Dowis), the Chinese singer and performer Jing Lu and the musician and sound designer Petr Kaláb.
One of the aims of Archa.lab is also to attract new audiences, those who would not normally come to the theatre, and both performances were successful in this respect. They even gained international recognition; Chat has been performed in Japan, in the UK and in Austria. Nickname was presented at the festivals BELEF in Belgrade and Sirenos in Villnius.
The following season was devoted to Hans Christian Andersen. We took the fate and work of this famous fairytale writer as inspiration for a thematic cycle (rebellion against one’s fate, a child in an adults body, etc), which we then worked with in various ways. SKUTR, for example, used the pregnancy of Adéla Laštovková-Stodolová for the one-off project A Childish Soul, where two young women appeared on stage; one who had just experienced the first year of motherhood, and the second who was about to experience this change in life. Autumn saw the premiere of another project from SKUTR, under the title Understand, where four performers each took one of the obsessions with which Andersen suffered and created a contemporary, very personal parallel. Meanwhile, I and my team (the core of which created the performance Chat) worked on a long term project in refugee camps, which culminated in the big site-specific performance At 11.30 I Will be Leaving You at the Bělá pod Bezdězem refugee camp.
The last project of the Andersen year was the performance DREAMING.ANDERSEN, in which the contemporary tales of artists from the streets are confronted with the life fate of Hans Christian Andersen, whose road to fame was lined with failure and disappointment. The performance features graffiti artists, rappers and beatboxers alongside a classical music composer and the Chinese girl who left China to find her talent in Czech Republic.
For next year, we have chosen a more universal theme, summarised in three words: Tradition – Convention – Instinct. The relationship between these concepts is the foundation of all art. We asked the question, when does tradition inspire and when is it only a constriction? When is convention an advantage, which enables artistic communication and when does it become an empty gesture? When is instinct a driving force for artistic creation and when is it an unconquerable destructive force? SKUTR, working together with Rosťa Novák, were the first to respond to these questions. Rosťa belongs to the eighth generation of puppeteers, actors and comedians descended from the legendary Matěj Kopecký. The performance 8 – Birds Black, Tits Great, is the personal response of an artist who must come to terms with such a rich cultural heritage.
In the second half of the year, in the performance Strange Neighbour, we will return to the theme of immigrants and majority society. In a big performance in an open urban space, this project will explore the confrontation of various traditions and customs from the perspective of someone who has been transported from their own cultural surroundings and must come to terms with our traditions, which were further intensified by fifty years of cultural isolation under the communist regime.
Alongside training, workshops and work on performances, theoretical reflection is also a part of Archa.lab.
This year Archa.lab has started to collaborate with the Centre for Theatre Research, part of the Department of Alternative and Puppet Theatre, led by Professor Milan Klima.
A comprehensive approach is important for the further development of theatrical creation. The suffix ‘lab’ in the title of our project doesn’t only refer to a theatrical laboratory. We understand the theatre as a place where, like in some sort of social laboratory, the state of development of the whole of society is naturally explored.
Jana Svobodová
Artistic Director of Archa.lab
In addition to hosting these artists, Archa created its own theatre projects. For one of the first such projects, Archa collaborated with the founder of the Bread and Puppet Theatre, the American artist and legend of puppet theatre Peter Schumann. In addition to a large amount of cardboard and coloured paints, Schumann had only one requirement: at least 20 actors, who understood English and would be willing to work in any field of theatre expression – dancing, singing, acting with puppets or masks, playing musical instruments or singing, and, most importantly, wouldn’t need to work from a pre-written script.
This was in 1994. Given the conditions of Czech Theatre at that time, we had been given a fairly impossible task. We knew we wouldn’t get any professional actor straight away for two reasons: firstly, they would be employed in a repertory theatre and secondly that they wouldn’t be willing to conform to Schumann’s demands. The only saviour could be an artistic academy. By agreement with the head of the newly founded Duncan Centre conservatory, Eva Blažíčková, we got a whole year group of future dancers for one month. Students and graduates of the Department for Puppet Theatre and some musicians also worked alongside them on the project.
After the project finished, the participants were once again offered the chance to return to college or to their theatre or music groups. And this was repeated again with each subsequent project, from Michal Vích and Jaroslav Dušek’s Opera La Serra, to Arnošt Goldflam and American director Damien Gray’s Sladký Theresienstadt or the three versions of the performance Grimm Grimm from the Japanese choreographer and dancer Min Tanaka.
We discovered the limitations of this method of working during the preparation of the performance Questioning Heaven in Despair, directed by J.A.Pitínský, which confronted European music deriving from the baroque with traditional Chinese opera and all its stylisation. The preparation of the performance lasted almost a year and required regular movement and voice training under the leadership of Chinese singer Feng-jun Song.
Our aim was never to found a permanent ensemble at Archa, but it was clear to us that if we really wanted our endeavours to bear fruit, then we would have to create conditions for continual work.
After the flood in 2002, which seriously interrupted activities at Archa Theatre for more than a year, it was clear that the new form of dramaturgy at Archa Theatre must incorporate elements of continual creation. We created the programme Archa.lab. The reference in the title of the programme to a laboratory indicates its orientation towards practical theatre activities, focussing on exploration, research and experiment.
The dramaturgy of this programme can be best described as ‘non-interpretative theatre’. It means that Archa.lab devotes itself to forms of stage expression which don’t come from interpretation of a previously written text.
Archa.lab understands theatre as a synthetic form, which doesn’t differentiate between individual stage genres. Space, music, light, sound, text and the action of performers carry equal weight in conveying the end message.
Archa.lab is a loose alliance of artists collected around Archa Theatre. Its structure could be likened to cells, whose walls are accessible on two sides, but which nevertheless maintain their form. Membership of Archa.lab is based of the principle that the individual only gets as much out of it as they put in. Members of Archa.lab have the opportunity to take part in regular training, focussing on physical preparation, voice exercises and improvisation. Membership is based on the principle known as residency. This means that the advantages, rights and responsibilities of Archa.lab members apply for a limited period of time. We usually agree with artists on a two year period and then, on the basis of the results of their work, membership can be extended for a further period.
For the first season we addressed the theme of Internet communication and approached fresh graduates in directing from the Department of Puppet and Alternative Theatre at DAMU in Prague, Martin Kukučka a Lukáš Trpišovský, who had already formed the directing duo SKUTR whilst they were at theatre academy. This led to the natural creation of two groups, which worked on the performances Chat – Dangerously Easy Liaison and Nickname respectively.
In the performance Chat, I tried to bring together academically trained actors with performers who came from the streets and brought their experience in the area of hip-hop. SKUTR created their team from their contemporaries, graduates from HAMU and DAMU. It was in this way that a group of mutually inspiring artists with a range of experience and skills was created.
Archa.lab’s current resident artists are dancer Adéla Laštovková-Stodolová, actors Dorka Bouzková, Josef Rosen and Rostislav Novák, hip-hop musicians and performers Jaroslav Vanický (Cossiga) and Aleš Jindra (Dowis), the Chinese singer and performer Jing Lu and the musician and sound designer Petr Kaláb.
One of the aims of Archa.lab is also to attract new audiences, those who would not normally come to the theatre, and both performances were successful in this respect. They even gained international recognition; Chat has been performed in Japan, in the UK and in Austria. Nickname was presented at the festivals BELEF in Belgrade and Sirenos in Villnius.
The following season was devoted to Hans Christian Andersen. We took the fate and work of this famous fairytale writer as inspiration for a thematic cycle (rebellion against one’s fate, a child in an adults body, etc), which we then worked with in various ways. SKUTR, for example, used the pregnancy of Adéla Laštovková-Stodolová for the one-off project A Childish Soul, where two young women appeared on stage; one who had just experienced the first year of motherhood, and the second who was about to experience this change in life. Autumn saw the premiere of another project from SKUTR, under the title Understand, where four performers each took one of the obsessions with which Andersen suffered and created a contemporary, very personal parallel. Meanwhile, I and my team (the core of which created the performance Chat) worked on a long term project in refugee camps, which culminated in the big site-specific performance At 11.30 I Will be Leaving You at the Bělá pod Bezdězem refugee camp.
The last project of the Andersen year was the performance DREAMING.ANDERSEN, in which the contemporary tales of artists from the streets are confronted with the life fate of Hans Christian Andersen, whose road to fame was lined with failure and disappointment. The performance features graffiti artists, rappers and beatboxers alongside a classical music composer and the Chinese girl who left China to find her talent in Czech Republic.
For next year, we have chosen a more universal theme, summarised in three words: Tradition – Convention – Instinct. The relationship between these concepts is the foundation of all art. We asked the question, when does tradition inspire and when is it only a constriction? When is convention an advantage, which enables artistic communication and when does it become an empty gesture? When is instinct a driving force for artistic creation and when is it an unconquerable destructive force? SKUTR, working together with Rosťa Novák, were the first to respond to these questions. Rosťa belongs to the eighth generation of puppeteers, actors and comedians descended from the legendary Matěj Kopecký. The performance 8 – Birds Black, Tits Great, is the personal response of an artist who must come to terms with such a rich cultural heritage.
In the second half of the year, in the performance Strange Neighbour, we will return to the theme of immigrants and majority society. In a big performance in an open urban space, this project will explore the confrontation of various traditions and customs from the perspective of someone who has been transported from their own cultural surroundings and must come to terms with our traditions, which were further intensified by fifty years of cultural isolation under the communist regime.
Alongside training, workshops and work on performances, theoretical reflection is also a part of Archa.lab.
This year Archa.lab has started to collaborate with the Centre for Theatre Research, part of the Department of Alternative and Puppet Theatre, led by Professor Milan Klima.
A comprehensive approach is important for the further development of theatrical creation. The suffix ‘lab’ in the title of our project doesn’t only refer to a theatrical laboratory. We understand the theatre as a place where, like in some sort of social laboratory, the state of development of the whole of society is naturally explored.
Jana Svobodová
Artistic Director of Archa.lab
