Being part of Fabulamundi is an opportunity for me to share and discuss my experiences with people from different cultural backgrounds, who come with different theatrical visions. What does writing for theater mean for them and what are the different roles that text can have within a performance? How do they write, which kind of literary language do they use, and what topics they´re interested in? Why? Is it important for them to inspire some specific formal and scenic techniques? I have come to many things in my life through dialog with others and I´m intensively involved in theater practice in addition to writing – so it´s very important for me to explore with others the various forms of writing and theatrical expression. And to search for an answer to the question of what dialogues are possible within the theater.
Kateřina Součková
Kateřina Součková works both as playwright and dramaturge on independent projects, she writes scripts for theater and radio plays. Her PhD research is focused on reception of theatre. Currently, she works as dramaturg of theatre Činoherní studio in Ústí nad Labem and as a pedagog at the theater faculty of the Academy of Arts in Prague (DAMU). In her scripts and dramaturgical work, she is interested in exploring different possibilities of theatrical language. As a playwright and dramaturg, she has participated in, for example, theater projects for theatres Meetfactory, Alfréd ve dvoře, Divadlo v Dlouhé, Činoherní studio, Jatka78, as well as many site-specific productions for the Pomezí association, of which she is a co-founder. In her own work, as a playwright and director, she devotes herself to the genre of sound walks (audiowalk) in public space, which include the projects Invisible market (Market in Holešovice), Above the city (emergency colony Kotlaska) and White painting (Winternitz villa). In 2016/2017, her show Pomezí was awarded by the Divadelní noviny Award in the category of alternative theater category and the Next Wave Festival honored the same show as a Project of the Year. Due to her focus on experimental and immersive projects the opportunity to participate in Fabulamundi is an opportunity for her to lead creative dialogue and to explore new means of theater expression and writing forms.
Borderland
“Sometimes I get really worried that I´m losing my mind. Everyone´s wearing some masks. And of course – everyone is very well recognisable anyway, so I don´t exactly see the point. But they´re acting…oddly. Maybe I´ll find some explanation – or maybe I should get out of here as soon as possible.”
The town of Pomezi, lost somewhere in the mountains on the Czech-German border. Traces of its existence remain only captured in several photographs by Andras Kakkuk. What led to the town’s demise and what role did the inhabitants – who gathered at Magdalena’s Celebration – play in it? The story of people, who fell under the deceptive spell of photography. The story of people who unfortunately didn’t read properly old Slavic legends and eventually the forest grew over them. A drama script for immersive performance, which took place in three-store building, where the viewer could choose which of the twelve characters to follow and thus created his own story of the lost town.
Invisible Market
“I’m uncovering layers that have settled around this place and gradually piecing together the found fragments. I could tell you so much about this market. For example, how one day everything here will be overgrown with grass. The grass growing between the tiles will flourish, and the buildings will be swallowed by clumps of greenery like a rock city in the mountains.“
What does Prague’s market look like when all the hustle and bustle and the stalls that hide it during the day disappear? The layers of time begin to materialize from the rustling and quiet steps. The sound of livestock on the pavement and the clink of Vietnamese stalls mixing with remnants of sounds of today’s morning A script for an interactive multimedia audio walk specifically designed for the market of Holesovice – a former slaughterhouse. With a map and a special application, the viewer can explore hidden corners of the market that have become the scenography for intertwined stories inspired by Vietnamese poetry and documentary interviews with former slaughterhouse employees.
“But that’s all in the past. I like to look through the bars at the street and watch someone pass by and then disappear again. If they noticed me, I would feel like a character. A character they forgot here, locked up so he could take care of it, prevent a disaster, and they could leave.”
There’s no need to do anything at all
‘You work so hard because you don’t know how to live. If you knew how to live, you wouldn’t even dream of working.’ Milorad Pavic.
Is it even possible to stop and rest in today’s world? Or are we being held back by some kind of inexplicable fear? What stream of thoughts and images appear in our heads when we allow ourselves to take a break from activity? And could theater be a place where we can surrender to such a flow and let it carry us away for a moment? To take a breath. To immerse ourselves in an exciting and crazy detective story of our own mind. And it was like…well-being. A script for theatrical performance with one completely motionless actress. It´s an associative textual collage of wide range of literary works of classic, philosophical, religious and experimental literature, incorporating texts by Albert Camus, Julio Cortazar, Alain Robbe-Grillet, Honoré de Balzac, C.G. Jung, St. Teresa of Avila and many others.
New Voices
Workshop #2 Directing for immersive theatre
Playwrights: David Košťák and Kateřina Součková Partner: Divadlo Letì Twinned playwright: Eva Geatti Duration: 13 months Participants: 6
Workshop #3 Writing for immersive theater
Playwrights: David Košťák and Kateřina Součková Partner: Divadlo Letì Twinned playwright: Mihaela Michailov Duration: 12 months Participants: 3
