The Bohnicka Theatre Company in cooperation with professional actors presents a play reflecting the life of the Norwegian author Knut Hamsun. The performance is meant to be a court trial in the matter of conscience and responsibility of an artist and genius. This documentary line of the production is entwined with passages from author’s work. The first and second premiere will take place on 7 and 8 March at 20:00 at the Experimental Space of Roxy/NoD in Prague.
The Norwegian writer Knut Hamsun is a noticeable personality in the world of literature for many reasons. He was awarded the Noble Price for literature. He created a psychological novel whose torn and sociably failing character in a way anticipated the later work of Franz Kafka. In our project we aim to analyze the causes that made this giant of literature tragically turn to Nazism and to admire Adolf Hitler, which in his late years brought him into a complete social and artistic isolation. Speculations of a possible mental disease or of a logical outcome of his inner processes that became reflected in his early work are still alive and stir up people’s fantasy even fifty years later. Not mentioning the old-new rampage of neo-Nazi fighters throughout Europe, which definitely calls for a strict refusal but not for ignorance as far as the Nazism provoking causes are concerned.
The target is to create a special kind of performance - an acted documentary, a certain court trial in the matter of conscience and responsibility of an artist and genius. This documentary line of the production will become entwined with read and acted passages from author’s work.
The main part of the script has been created by Mr. Martin Komárek, author and journalist, based on the theme and with the cooperation of the director of the play, Martin Učík.
The part of the author Hamsun will be played by David Matásek, actor of the dramatic department of the National Theatre. His ideological counterparts will be played by an intimate group of professional actors. Other actors, members of the Bohnicka Theatre Company, will create the visual - illustrative and motion part of the performance on another, surreal level, as a certain “ghostly chorus of witnesses of the time”. Some of them will also become involved in the verbal part of the performance.
Members of the production team:
Main role - David Matásek, actor of the dramatic department
of the National Theatre
Sound - Michal Bureš/Dj Blue
Graphics - Jusuf Čumlivski
Stage Design - Hynek Dřízhal
Film Postproduction - Pavel Štingl
Theatre script, historical research - Martin Komárek
Theme, choreography and direction - Martin Učík
„Bohnicka Company” was established in 1991 as an open theatre group of mentally ill patients, our friends and professional artists of the Psychiatric Clinic of Bohnice.
www.bohnicka.cz
http://nod.roxy.cz/