THE 2023 REHEARSAL FOR TRUTH THEATER FESTIVAL: Anew
The 2023 Rehearsal for Truth Theater Festival, honoring playwright and human rights activist Vaclav Havel, featured works from the Czech Republic, Poland, Slovakia, Germany, Romania, and the US.
Accounts of former times—especially those based on real events and people—can help us connect history to the present world in a way that creates compassion for its complicated nature. It can help us understand ourselves and see our surroundings anew. For the sixth edition, entitled ANEW, we invited theatrical talents who search for stories of the past to make sense of the present and find one’s place in the world. What did it mean to become a political refugee from 1968 Czechoslovakia? To live in and navigate the dark landscape of 1970s Warsaw? To arrive as a member of Jewish family in the 1940s Theresienstadt ghetto? And how does it feel today to be a Russian artist or an orphan teenage Roma girl in Romania?
The 2023 Rehearsal for Truth Theater Festival: Anew was organized by the Vaclav Havel Library Foundation and the Bohemian Benevolent and Literary Association in partnership with the Polish Cultural Institute New York, GOH Productions, Trap Door Theatre, Centre of Jewish Culture ŠTETL, Jan Mocek, Martin E. Segal Theatre Center, Palissimo Company, and Romanian Cultural Institute.
The program was made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature. The festival was supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, Arts and Theatre Institute in Prague, and Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic.
2023 FESTIVAL PROGRAM
The story of a book (CZECH REPUBLIC)
PLAY | Emerging from thousands of stories of people and objects forever lost, The Story of a Book portrays a nearly century-long history of the Strachs, a Jewish family from the city of Brno. It centers on their machzor, a prayer book assumed long lost after its confiscation in the Theresienstadt ghetto. The sacred book then undergoes a miraculous rediscovery and returns to the family.
The Story of a Book (2022), Czech Republic. Written and directed by: Hana Mikolaskova. Original story: Angela Strach. Cast: Miroslav Sykora, Zdislava Zacalova, Melika Yildizova, Ester Aylin Yildizova, Hana Mikolaskova, Elias Kliment. Dramaturgy: Eva Petlakova. Music: Ivan Acher. Costume design: Sylva Zimula Hanakova.
The presentation in the US is supported by Centre of Jewish Culture ŠTETL, Jewish Community of Brno, Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic, Statutory City of Brno, Consulate General of the Czech Republic in New York and Czech Centre New York.
THE MYSTIC SHIMMER (SLOVAKIA/US)
DANCE PERFORMANCE | A hallucination, a dream, a life, a performance: conjectures and reflections on temporal efforts and their significance. What holds? What resists the bite of time? An interdisciplinary performance examining human ambition, embodied presence, and existential meaning.
The Mystic Shimmer (2023), Slovakia/US. Presented by: Pavel Zustiak, Palissimo Company.
Concept, direction, choreography, costume design: Pavel Zustiak. Performed by: Christine Bonansea, Wendell Gray II, Emma Judkins, Doug LeCours. Original music, sound design: Christian Frederickson. Lighting design: Masha Tsimring. Dramaturgical advice: Keith Skretch.
The performance is produced by Palissimo Company, New York, with support of the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, Movement Research, NYU Skirball Center for the Performing Arts, Baryshnikov Arts Center, Bogliasco Foundation, Massachusetts Institute of Technology – Council for the Arts at MIT.
PRESENT: PERFECT (CZECH REPUBLIC)
PERFORMANCE | Set in a museum of our collective memory, the play’s design invites the audience to explore a collection featuring valuable artifacts that commemorate alternative versions of key historical moments. Even with the guidance of the performers, it is, however, hard to determine which events are important, which are good to remember, and which are better to forget. The space slowly transforms into a bizarre “rage room” where events of the distant past return to the contemporary and forgotten history pervades current affairs.
Present: Perfect (2021), Czech Republic. Created, designed and directed by: Jan Mocek. Performed by: Tinka Avramova, Irina Andreeva. Music: Matous Hekela. Production: Tana Svehlova. Lighting design: Vaclav Hruska.
Creation of the performance was supported by the Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic, State Culture Fund of the Czech Republic, Prague City, and Prague 7 Art District. The presentation in the US is organized by the Arts and Theatre Institute and supported by EU – NextGenerationEU, Czech Recovery Plan, and the Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic.
Bowie in Warsaw (POLAND/US)
The women of Warsaw tremble with the rumor of a strangler on the prowl. Behind their fear, unspoken secrets and traumas begin to surface. Set in the landscape of a true crime story from 1970s Poland, Bowie in Warsaw is an absurd comedy about the repression of self-expression and love in the Soviet era. Playwright Dorota Maslowska constructs a fantastical and baroque world to be one day visited by none other than David Bowie himself.
Bowie in Warsaw (2021), Poland/US. Presented by: Trap Door Theatre, Chicago, US premiere.
Playwright: Dorota Maslowska. Directed by: Pawel Swiatek. Cast: Holly Cerney, Emily Lotspeich, Miguel Long, David Lovejoy, Laura Nelson, Emily Nichelson, Tia Pinson, Keith Surney, Bob Wilson.
Translation: Soren Gauger. Stage manager: Anna Klos. Scenic design: Merje Veske. Lighting design: Richard Norwood. Costume design: Rachel Sypniewski. Original music, sound design: Danny Rockett. Makeup, hair design: Syd Genco. Dramaturgy: Milan Pribisic. Dramaturgy intern: Emily Townley. Production intern: Tom McLees. Graphic design: Michal Janicki.
Bowie in Warsaw is co-produced by the Trap Door Theatre and the Polish Cultural Institute New York, with generous sponsorship by Regina Bowgierd and John Kulczycki.
the Astronaut (Germany/us)
STAGE READING | A tender but sad exploration of a relationship between a father and his son. Through a series of monologues offering advice to his son—a silent figure dressed in an astronaut suit—a Czechoslovakian refugee of the 1968 Prague Spring inadvertently traces the consequences of this historical event on his life, values, and personal relationships.
The Astronaut (2023), Germany. Playwright: Lucia Mann. Directed by: Arnon Grunberg, Lucia Mann. Cast: August Zirner.
This event is presented by the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center.
POOL (CZECH REPUBLIC/us)
DANCE PERFORMANCE | A collaborative fusion of performance, visual art, and documentary that explores the male gaze, self-objectification, and the way power shifts as we move between looking, seeing, and being seen. In a society that sees self-objectification of the feminine both encouraged and derided by the dominant culture and its critics alike, internalized oppression is erased. POOL sets out to bring this intergenerational wounding into view.
POOL (2023), Czech Republic/US. Choreography: Denisa Musilova. Dramaturgy: Mark DeChiazza. Performed by: Denisa Musilova, Mark DeChiazza, Vivienne Pankratova, Tom Rychetsky. Music, sound design: Ales Kauer.
The Best child in the World (romania)
PLAY | The story of the Roma girl who discovers at a very young age the differences of race and environment. She manages to make her way through life and transform her complexes into determination and motivation through the power of a therapeutic exercise.
Alina Serban’s autobiographical performance hovers on the borderline between life and theater, between experience and confession, effecting an authenticity to the point of becoming a fragment of reality.
The Best Child in the World (2022), Romania. Created and performed by: Alina Serban. Artistic consultant: Andrei Majeri. Assistant director, dramaturgy consultant: Vera Suratel. Costumes: Cristina Milea. Set design: Miruna Balasa. Choreography: Razvan Rotaru. Director of photography: Boroka Biro, Catalin Rugina. Video design: Mircea Bogateanu. Music: Lucas Dario Molina. Sound for video: Stefan Azaharioaei. Lighting: Roxana Docan.
on the other side (russia/us)
DANCE PERFORMANCE | A form of somatic protest and viscous disobedience in the light of the current aggression of the Russian government. Russian artists Elena Demyanenko and Tarik Burnash examine the notion of rapidly disappearing past and their need to negotiate the unknown, absurd, madness, inhibition, and rage while searching for release into another approach for moving forward and finding their resistance.
on the other side (2022), Russia/US. Choreography and performance: Tarik Burnash and Elena Demyanenko. Lighting design: Masha Tsimring. Lighting associate: Austin Boyle. Voice advisor: Tatyana Tenenbaum. Choreographic advisor: Jon Kinzel. Dramaturgy: Natalia Zaitseva.
on the other side was created with the generous support of Trust For Mutual Understanding and Ufestudios in Berlin, Germany.