EXIT 89 - A tragic operetta
16/12/2008 20:00 - A motorway service station somewhere between Berlin and Brno. A long August night: six people, six stories, all somehow connected to 1968. The musical performance, subtitled Horror With a Human Face, was created as part of the Project 68/89 - Divadlo. Doba. Dějiny.
Dubbed by the authors as a “tragic operetta”, EXIT 89 was commissioned by Archa Theatre and written by the young creative duo of Jaroslav Rudiš and German author Martin Becker. The play is directed by Jiří Havelka, and the music, played on stage by a live orchestra, was composed by Michal Nejtek.
EXIT 89, a bilingual Czech and German performance, is set at a motorway service station near the Czech town of Humpolec, where in 1992 the former leader of Czechoslovakia, Alexander Dubček, was killed in a road accident. On the anniversary of the accident, six people meet here, including a pair of truck drivers, a Czech-German couple, a service station attendant and Karel, a government limousine driver and great admirer of Dubček's.
Karel has a bullet lodged in his head, an injury which he suffered during demonstrations in front of the Czech Radio building in 1968. The bullet shifts around, causing hallucinations, blackouts and sudden recollections. A major theme of the play is memory, how history is formed by memory and how memory creates individual identity as well as the identity of an entire nation.
Story: Martin Becker, Jaroslav Rudiš
Written by: Martin Becker, Jiří Havelka, Jaroslav Rudiš
Director: Jiří Havelka
Music: Michal Nejtek
Sets: Dáda Němeček
Costumes: Jana Smetanová
Featuring: Ján Sedal, Marie Ludvíková, Jiří Hána, Philipp Schenker, Jakub Žáček, Zuzana Stavná and Petr Reif
In Czech and German.
Zipp – Czech-German cultural projects
An initiative of the German Federal Cultural Foundation
The Zipp initiative – Czech-German cultural projects carries on the German Federal Cultural Foundation in a series of bilateral collaboration programmes with Eastern European countries. Zipp focuses on selected themes and questions which are socially relevant in both countries, such as the inheritance of democratic parties, dealing with historical trauma, experiences with the process of economic transformation after 1989 or the future of our cities. As part of the theme “1968/1989“, “Modern utopia: Zlín“, “Worlds of Life“ and “Kafka“ the upcoming year and a half will see the production of theatre, film, radio, architecture, visual arts and contemporary history projects.
Project 68/89 – Divadlo.Doba.Dějiny.
To mark the fortieth anniversary of the year 1968 this project focuses on the cultural and social movements of the end of the 1960’s. It brings together historians and artists from Germany, Czech Republic and Slovakia to uncover the events during and after this period in their complexity and with their inconsistencies and to examine cultural exchange and ideological misunderstanding between east and west. The project also looks at development after 1968, the role of the “68ers” during the fall of communism in 1989 and the significance of these historical events.
The project partners are: the Zentrum für Zeithistorische Forschung (Centre for Research of Contemporary history) in Potsdam, the Sophiensaele theatre in Berlin, Ústav pro soudobé dějiny, ÚSD (Institute of Contemporary History) in Prague, Centrum experimentalního divadla (Centre for Experimental Theatre)/Divadlo Husa na provázku (Goose on a String Theatre) (CED/DHNP) in Brno and the Kampnagel cultural centre in Hamburg.
Links:
www.projekt-zipp.de
www.68-89.net
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Tickets: CZK 250 / students and seniors CZK 150 / Archa.klub discount 30%
For sale at the Archa Theatre box office.
Srdjan Stanojevic:
Srdjan Stanojevic:
Srdjan Stanojevic:
