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Bumper crop

4 + 4 harvests new work at the Museum of Agriculture
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By Brooke Edge
For The Prague Post
May 16th, 2007 issue

COURTESY PHOTO
They may look happy, but there's a dark side to this Superamas soap opera.
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Location, location, location. Beyond a real estate mantra, it’s also the driving force behind one of Prague’s most anticipated and invigorating annual festivals.
Every year since its founding in 1998, the 4 + 4 Days in Motion International Theatre Festival has unleashed an army of artists on different spaces in Prague considered unusable for performing arts, or at least far from expressive. “Usually the location influences the project itself,” says Markéta Černá, executive producer of 4 + 4.
4 + 4 Days in Motion

When: May 19–26
Where: National Museum of Agriculture, Divadlo Archa, Divadlo Ponec, Letná park
Tickets: 100–290 Kč, available at Archa and Ponec
For a complete schedule, check www.ctyridny.cz

Each year’s theme and performance selections are determined by the location, which is in turn determined by what is available around town. The mission for festival planners is to find a building or set of buildings that have seemingly little to do with art, and stage a performance-based takeover for eight days. Past sites have included an old sewage plant, a factory, a former brewery, the Prague Zoo and an ice hockey arena.
Of particular interest to 4 + 4 is the blend of untraditional, often industrial, public structures with the arts. “The purpose is to enliven objects of Prague architecture through theater and the presentation of international projects,” Černá explains.
This year, 4 + 4 organizers initially had set their sights on a Holešovice port. But they received an offer from the Ministry of Agriculture to utilize the National Museum of Agriculture building near Letná Park as the featured location. When the offer arrived in the festival’s office, Černá says, the reaction was, “The Museum of Agriculture would be perfect!”
So, as in other years, the feature performance was developed specifically for the site. And an ideal fit for the Museum of Agriculture was found in the Dutch company Silo Theater.
Silo Theater is made up of artists committed to the public use of space — so committed that the group took over and squatted in an old Amsterdam grain silo for nearly 10 years. The squat grew to eventually include a restaurant, an art gallery, and living and studio space for 40 people. The group was evicted in 1998, but still lives and works together in another squatter site outside Amsterdam.
Festival organizers commissioned the group, along with seven Czech performers, to create this year’s featured performance. Titled Kultivar, it is still in the planning stages, though it is expected to be a multifaceted work that will include music, dance and visual art tailored for the location.
“They will work mostly with the facade and walk the audience through the ground floor of the building to the other side,” Černá says. “Only five performances, and then it will disappear.”
The 4 + 4 festival typically includes contributions from 20-odd performing groups or artists, some of whom will focus on this year’s secondary theme, the intersection of art and sociology. “Within the fest there are three or four projects based on social issues,” Černá says. Grouped under the title “Panorama,” they include a sample kitchen and fashion show focusing on the Vietnamese community; an international project about human migration within Europe; “Hanging Around,” a photo exhibition of different ways Europeans spend their free time; and the screening of Native Now, a documentary created by a Navajo tribe for 4 + 4.
“The variety of art is something that makes this festival different from all the other fests here,” Černá says proudly. “We like to combine things — like live music together with dance, or film projects mixed with live performance.”
The always-popular 4 + 4 bar will be in Letná Park near the Museum of Agriculture this year, created from scaffolding by the local artist group Jednotka/Unit. The park will also be the focus of a panel discussion with the architects who created the controversial design for Prague’s new national library, slated to be built at Letná.
Among the visiting performance groups, the Austro-French company Superamas is bringing its most recent production, BIG 3rd episode (happy/end), which mixes film, dance and live music with soap opera elements to comment on consumer culture. A Swiss theater-music project called “Velma Superstar” offers a combination of classical and rock music and will feature 20 Czech singers in its Prague performance.
And, while the group’s name may not sound funny, the Polish dance company Good Girl Killer promises to make audiences laugh with its sarcastic take on punk music, disco and mix tapes.

Brooke Edge can be reached at features@praguepost.com


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