Avant-garde inventory

"Theater is everywhere," exclaims Šárka Havlíčková, peering through the Malá inventura program, which has a rectangle cut from the center, making everything viewed through it appear as if on a stage.

Havlíčková is the director of development for the festival and a founding member of New Web, an independent initiative supporting the new theater scene across the country.

A collection of performances showcasing, in its own words, "expanding forms of new theater that will make you weightless," Malá inventura runs from Feb. 22 to 27 and will offer such innovative and outlandish concepts as post-apocalyptic picnics, invisible animal hunts and a troubled individual named WhoWhatWhichWhose.

"Malá inventura is a creative cluster," Havlíčková says. "New Web works on the promotion of the festival and bringing together directors and promoters from many Czech regions and abroad.

"But we don't tell people what to do. As an artist myself, I hate being told how to do things, so we are trying to keep it open as much as we can. Everybody has their own space; they present what they perceive as the best material from the last season."

As for the definition of new theater itself, Havlíčková is coyly noncommittal.

"There were so many small words to describe what was going on: physical movement, sonic, fine art. ... It was not clear. Transferring things like 'time-based art' into the Czech language doesn't sound nice; it's not possible. So we decided to call it new theater. Two, three years later, and everybody is calling it new theater, so it worked," she says.

Although the festival has been a successful venture in Prague, promoting new theater throughout the Czech Republic is proving more trying, and Havlíčková believes state support needs to be more forthcoming.

"I feel we are losing our value in comparison with what's going on outside [of the Czech Republic]. We now have to work out how to become more competitive. I think artists need more opportunities to travel and to see other artists. We also need to bring more artists to the Czech Republic to inspire our own," she says.

Asked what she is looking forward to at this year's festival, Havlíčková mentions Metal Music, a new performance from Czech theater troupe Handa Gote that will be performing at Alfréd ve Dvoře.

"I've been following the work of the group from the beginning. They always do something that looks low-budget, but there is high intelligence and concepts hidden inside," she says.

Tomáš Procházka, one of the members of Handa Gote, who took their name from the Japanese expression for soldering iron, helped create the Beckettesque Metal Music, which sees four forlorn figures sit by a dried-up lake, "enjoying" a post-apocalyptic picnic.

Procházka says the troupe didn't use any digital equipment whatsoever, in the creation of Metal Music. Instead, the show's stars fashion their own props from junk.

"We did two previous shows without digital equipment. The first time, I suppose, it was a statement from us, saying that at the moment technology is everywhere and everything. We decided to start thinking in a different way. When you use analog equipment, it's very straightforward. In Metal Music, we use an amplifier, small turntable and a cigar box guitar. It's important that we make the props ourselves; it's necessary to feel the bond with these things," he says.

The Prague Post also caught up with Lenka Vágnerová, one half of duet dance performance Mah Hunt. Vágnerová was among the first artists to join the DOT504 Dance Company when it formed about five years ago. Along with dance partner Pavel Mašek, she will be performing at the Ponec Theater.

Vágnerová explains that Mah Hunt, which features no dialogue, is set at a time in the future when all animals are extinct. The two main characters play a game in which they imagine what it would be like to go hunting.

"The main theme is the relationship between animals and people. The man and woman try to understand the relationship between different hunters and the hunted, such as the fisherman and the fish."

Despite the challenges of getting new theater out to the masses, Havlíčková remains optimistic for the future.

"We're trying to help promoters across the regions and are looking at what other cultural services we can offer; workshops, special evenings in public spaces, helping people to develop their own personal expression," she says. "We are connecting with people and organizations to make creative art and live art an organic part of everyday life."

Will Noble can be reached at
wnoble@praguepost.com