A roving camera freezes on an unsettling image: Stacks of lifelike infant dolls, each encased in clear plastic shrouds, glare out almost accusingly. Suddenly there's movement, though this could be due to the unsteadiness of the cameraman; at least we hope it's a tremor from the cameraman, otherwise we must believe that these dolls are straining to break through their bubbles. At last the camera moves on, but hardly to a more reassuring subject. Now we're confronted with a skeleton in a nun's habit standing in a ring of votive candles.

While this film has been playing on the back wall of the stage at Alfred ve dvore, four women in shawls, at first sitting sedately on the forestage in chairs, try to entice us into buying something from them. One is selling dried flowers, another chili sauce. But their pitches grow in intensity. They are suddenly not sitting but directly confronting us. Madness, born from terror or hunger, begins to infect their voices. They plead for us to buy from them, demand that we do so. They will suddenly sell anything to us: the chairs that they were just sitting upon, their clothes, themselves.

This collision of live and filmed action is part of a new piece titled Laskavost Krácející Ryby (The Kindness of Walking Fish) created by Mexican theater director Rubén Ortiz. Ortiz is in Prague to take part in (well, really to define) Alfred's week of Mexican theater, "Fiesta." Along with the premiere of Kindness, for which he has been collaborating with Czech artists, Ortiz will also be showing a piece that he and Mexican actor Gerardo Trejoluna have been performing for some years, Autoconfesion. The rest of the Alfred week will consist of a celebration of Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) and two performance workshops given by Ortiz.

"It's difficult for me to tell a story," Ortiz confesses after a rehearsal. "I deal in moments. I collaborate with actors to find honest moments on the stage, and with these we fashion a prayer." Ortiz discovered his current Czech colleagues while attending a theater workshop in Prague last May.

"For me, an actor is all, is everything, " he continues. "These actresses are the best — well trained and intuitive. We understand each other." Which is fortunate, as Ortiz finds himself directing Czech actors in English, using a piece of text in Spanish from the great Mexican writer Salvador Elizondo. For all that, the rehearsal goes smoothly.

Communication with actor Trejoluna has practically become nonverbal, as the two have been performing Autoconfesion (based on writing by Peter Handke) steadily for over two years throughout the Spanish-speaking world. "Handke's text is a purging of egotism," Ortiz says. The piece, performed solo by Trejoluna, becomes a highly physical attempt at self-exorcism. "What these two pieces share in common is an attempt to connect with people on a profound level," Ortiz explains. "The theater should be a place for such connections. For me, it's a place for giving. It's a place of generosity."

This time in Prague has become a homecoming of a kind for Ortiz. "It's important for me to be in Central Europe now," Ortiz says. "My theater mentor in Mexico City was Ludwik Margolis, who had escaped Poland during the war. Ludwik gave us a grounding in Jerzy Grottowski and Jan Kott, and so to be here working finally feels right."

Margolis also infused Ortiz with the belief that theater is the best common ground to use for the exploration of shared pasts. "Ludwik once opened a picture book on World War II, and showed us a horrible image from a Nazi execution site," Ortiz remembers. "He suddenly pointed to one of the bodies and said, 'I knew that man,' then again, 'and I knew that man.'"