How to Stage Einstein - Kamila Černá

Director Jiří Havelka received the Alfréd Radok Award for “Talent of the Year 2007” and his first production was an immediate justification of the award he deserved. His production this year, “Indian at Risk”, staged by the Ha Theatre (Hadivadlo) in Brno, introduces Einstein’s theory of relativity with an unusual inventiveness. The first part is a presentation on-stage that clearly demonstrates Einstein’s concept of space by six assistants armed with flashlights and one lecturer, who scribbles on a chalkboard showing the audience how light enters into Einstein’s theory of relativity and how the laws of momentum, action and reaction function. The second part of the performance demonstrates the function of the laws of physics in “reality”: in a train whose travellers of every physical regularity are subject to Einstein’s coiffeurs and a humorous succession of clearly timed entrances illustrate to us how the perception of the world around us is diverse and misrepresented. In short, the sense for the grotesque, the precise sense of timing and the clear stylisation that arise out of Havelka´s production make it, without a doubt, one of the most refreshing events of the season.

Ha Theatre (Hadivadlo) – Jiří Havelka and Collective: Indian At Risk (Indián v ohrožení) – Direction – Jiří Havelka, set design – Dáda Němeček, costumes – Jana Smetanová, Czech premiere January 9, 2008.

More information (in Czech) at: www.hadivadlo.cz