Europeana – laughter from hell

Theatre Reduta (one of the stages of the National Theatre in Brno) has acquired the reputation of a progressive and successful theatre in Brno. The performances, where dramaturg Dora Viceníková and director Jan Mikulášek participated, rank among the most appreciated ones – e.g. Houellebecq’ s The Elementary Particles, V+W: Letters and most recently dramatization of a postmodern prose by Patrik Ouředník called Europeana.

In his book, Patrik Ouředník tries to arrange 20^th century history to make some sense. He puts statistical data, contemporary quotations, fragments of stories, historic facts, ironic ingredients and ice cubes of paradoxes in a huge shaker and then he shakes this big cocktail of illusions, ideas and crimes with a devilishly cynical smile which does not lack sadness.

Director Mikulášek provides the audience with small tastings from this cocktail. At the beginning of the performance, there are three actresses and five actors sitting at a conference about the 20^th century in the middle of a Mahler-like and generous stage and they use their mouths to invoke illusion of a train. Naturally, a depressing image of trains leaving for the war or transports to concentration camps appears in your mind. The director works excellently with the invisible part of common human memory; he uses his associative method to irritate viewer’s imagination with audio tracks, music motives, sketches and expressive physical actions. I was not always successful in decoding his associations (e.g. a speaker who is not able to say a work through laughter and crying) but they work emotively. Ouředník’s text with dreadfully factual content (e.g. calculations of dead soldiers and kilometres: 15,508 km with an average dead body of 172 cm) is uttered calmly and this evokes a feeling of chilling laughter from hell prepared by people during their lives.

Actors and actresses represent strange restless material which either spatters into anonymous individuality or it immediately gathers in the group of bodies which madly dances or masturbates. Characterization of performances would be misleading because their fascinating power lies in their common variability and sensitivity applied in emotively culminated images. For me, the image of  never-ending falling and collapsing bodies represents the most forceful metaphor of hopeless madness and downfall not only during wars. Nobody puts together the meaning of the 20^th century but the performance in Brno foreshadowed hopelessness of our attempts to understand.

Richard Erml

The National Theatre in Brno - Patrik Ouředník: Europeana. Dramatization Dora Viceníková and Jan Mikulášek, director Jan Mikulášek, stage design and costumes Marek Cpin, selection of music Jan Mikulášek, dramaturgy Dora Viceníková. Czech premiere 9^th June 2011 in the Reduta Theatre.