Featured image: Zuzana Kronerova, Hot Summer '68, GUnaGU Theatre, photograph by Ctibor Bachraty
Excerpts from two plays that employ absurdist humor as they explore issues related to Eastern European transitions to democracy followed by one experimental stream of words, thoughts, and dialogues.
Money, The Third Age, Portal (Czech Republic). Playwright: Dodo Gombar. Director: Edward Einhorn. Cast Money: Craig Anderson (Peter), Rolls Andre (Zdeno), Elizabeth Chappel (Milena), Nathanial Meek (Jojco), Max Wolkowitz (Mirec); The Third Age: Richard Toth (Dolina), Max Wolkowitz (Egon); Portal: Craig Anderson (First Speaker), Richard Toth (Second Speaker). Translated by: Lucie Kolouchova. Running time: 90 min.
Money features a “panopticon” of peculiar characters (two pot smokers, a car dealer, a street musician, a dreamy bank security guard, and others) whose seemingly unrelated but certainly odd stories of attempts to do something with their lives meet at one point in a given time and space. Do something, something unexpected—rob a bank, cancel your engagement right before the wedding, or simply manage to have a conversation with your mother. But don’t look back and don’t mess up.
The Third Age is a multigenerational dialogue, a bitter comic farce about life, relationships, and a will to live, about those who cannot escape their past or deal with life in the present. They can’t quite figure it out. In a society that abruptly transitioned into freedom in 1989, expectations quickly lead to disillusions. Have people learned how to live in freedom? Or are they to be left instead living with hope that the next generation, the generation of the “third age,” will live a better life?
Portal is an experimental text in between drama and poetry. Its twelve scenes offer extreme situations full of hidden emergencies and various metaphors. The performance consists of a disquieting stream of words, thoughts, and dialogues between anonymous characters. Spectators are encouraged to find meanings based on their imagination and intimate experiences.
Dodo Gombar’s The Third Age was shortlisted for the best original play script for the Slovak Alfred Radok Playwriting Award in 2002.
For more information, visit www.rehearsalfortruth.org.
The reading is followed by Q&A. It is free and open to the public. Suggested donation $10. Donations benefit the Best Mini-Drama Student Contest program.
The event will be broadcasted online, live on Zoom. RSVP is required to receive the Zoom link. RSVP online through Eventbrite.
ABOUT THE 2021 SPRING WEEKEND: CONCERNING HUMAN IDENTITY
The 2021 Spring Weekend: Concerning Human Identity is organized by the Vaclav Havel Library Foundation (VHLF) and Bohemian Benevolent and Literary Association (BBLA) in partnership with the Polish Cultural Institute New York and Consulate General of Slovakia in New York. Spring Weekend is part of the annual Rehearsal for Truth Theater Festival honoring the playwright and human rights activist Vaclav Havel. It showcases contemporary European plays through stage readings performed and directed by New York City–based actors and directors.
The 2021 program has been conceived in consultation with Attila Szabo, Deputy Director, Hungarian Theatre Museum and Institute; Vladislava Fekete, Director, Theatre Institute in Bratislava; Zuzana Ulicianska, Chair of the Slovak Center – International Association of Theatre Critics; Tomek Smolarski, Performing Arts Programming, Polish Cultural Institute New York; and Martina Peckova-Cerna, Head of International Cooperation Department, Arts and Theatre Institute in Prague.
The program is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council and Council Member Ben Kallos. Promotion partners include the Czech Center New York, GOH Productions/Czechoslovak-American Marionette Theatre, and PACE.V4 (Performing Arts Central Europe).