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Making a scene

The Prague Quadrennial grows up and out

By Steffen Silvis
Staff Writer, The Prague Post
June 13th, 2007 issue

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Alchymista making connections.
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The Angie Hiesl troupe suspending seniors.
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Teatro Linea de Sombra is ready to defend freedom with fruit.
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All manner of outrageous costumes will be on display at the exhibition, including works by Pat Olezsko.
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Lucy and Jorge Orta's piece "Fallujah."
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Naked choreography from Miguel Pereira.
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It is the Olympiad of theatrical design, as important to modern theater as the Venice Biennale is for other disciplines. Every four years since 1967, the world of theater has descended on Prague for the Prague Quadrennial (PQ), a celebration of scenography, costumes and technical design.
The 2007 Prague Quadrennial

When: June 14–24
Where: Výstaviště exhibition grounds, various theaters and street locations
Admission: 120 Kč daily, 600 Kč for a 10-day pass
For more information, check www.pq.cz

Taking over the entire Industrial Palace in Holešovice, as well as various performance spaces throughout town, this current PQ will be a feast for theater people, with hundreds of workshops, exhibits, performances and many opportunities to meet with stage-struck peers from around the globe (6,000 people have already registered to attend).
The PQ is divided into three major components. The primary exhibition, the National section, is where all of the participating countries, from Argentina to Venezuela, will present their individual scenography exhibits. Many of these will be built as installations, including the Czech section, designed by the famed Forman brothers.
Alongside the national exhibitions will be the Scenofest section, which is primarily geared toward students, featuring work by students. The third section is devoted to theater architecture and technology.
Originally a Eurocentric venue for Cold War aesthetic one-upmanship, the PQ has grown into a truly global event. This year, the festival has more countries and artists participating than at any other time in its history. And, for the first time, the general commissioner is a foreigner — American Arnold Aronson — rather than a Czech.
Aronson is one of the most respected theater scholars in the United States, and one of the principal reasons serious theater students try to get accepted to Columbia University, where he teaches.
“I’ve been involved in the PQ since 1987,” Aronson tells me over coffee at the Prague Theater Institute. “I was president of the award jury in 1991, and was the curator of the American exhibit in 1995. So when I was asked to come on as this year’s general commissioner, I was very honored and immediately said yes.”
The naming of Aronson as its head is proof that the PQ is maturing. “The PQ leadership has been gradually changing over the last two sessions,” Aronson says. “There’s been a replacing of the old guard with the new.” He laughs, then admits, “Well, I suppose I’m a bit ‘old guard’ myself, but one from outside.”
Perhaps the greatest change is in the major expansion of the performance component of the PQ. “The past offered a bit of a conundrum,” Aronson notes. “It was a static study of the theater, an exhibit of the artifacts of process. For the most part, it still must focus on the often-forgotten features of stage work. But the performances will, I think, create more a sense of occasion.”
The wealth of costumes, sets, maquettes and photos of theater work from over the past four years will be greatly enhanced by the living theater surrounding it. In fact, the entire city will become the stage, as artists perform on Wenceslas Square, Charles Bridge and in Masarykovo nádraží, as well as within the Industrial Palace itself.
There will even be a few parades through town, including one, Bird Walk, which will be a carnival march of hundreds of people costumed as characters from various international productions of Aristophanes’ The Birds (June 15 at 7 p.m. starting in Holešovice and winding its way to Wenceslas Square).
Participants of PQ will include well-known artists and troupes from the world over, including Italy’s dadaist Tony Clifton Circus, performance artist William Pope L. and Anne Bogart and her company.
Every practical aspect of theater will be discussed in the numerous workshops and lectures on offer. There is also an area for children, where a liberal-minded parent can coax their brood toward a future on the stage.
That there is a future for theater is abundantly clear at the PQ. “The art is changing,” Aronson says. “We are moving into an age of more trans-discipline work, and trans-media as well.”
Even with his encyclopedic knowledge of theater design and history, Aronson is excited by the work on offer at the PQ. “There is some wonderful work that’s being produced in many different countries — Mexico, Germany, Japan, Taiwan — much of which will be in evidence here.”
If all the world’s a stage, Prague is definitely its busy backstage at the moment.

Steffen Silvis can be reached at ssilvis@praguepost.com


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