NOW..?
Directed by: Pavel Štourač
Scenography: Continuo
Cast: Kateřina Šobáňová, Zuzana Smolová, Ivan Jurečka, Martin Janda, Michal Puhač, Alessandro La Rocca
Light-design: Pavel Štourač, Production: ART Prometheus
Physical theatre performance; languages: English, Czech, duration: 55 min.
NOW..?
Radio news, newspaper articles, generally accepted “truths”, which are taken as given and never discussed, and topics which are discussed all the time, dreams and the latest experiences of all the Continuo members – all these have become the sources of the new street performance. After having used personal life stories of particular people in their performances, this time Continuo is trying to introduce a theatrical experiment – it is an attempt of producing the performance in a “live broadcast”, i.e. now.
DRAMATURGY
When the members of Continuo Theatre were preparing their new street project called NOW….?, they decided to work only with their immediate personal feelings, experiences, dreams and perceptions collected during their everyday work and life. During the time of three weeks they have worked out an open structure which provides a lot of space for improvisation and work with stimuli from the time and place where a particular performance will take place.
CTLR C – CTLR V..?
Are we able to say anything authentic or is it possible nothing but to copy, cut, and paste? Are we able to accept our experiences, feelings, states, pictures from our dreams which we might not understand and we are not able to express in words although they are true because we have experienced and experience them? NOW….?
WHERE WORDS FAIL ALTHOUGH THERE IS STILL A SENSE…
A performer´s body, breath, voice, words and singing are brought face to face with the image of the world whose formation we all participate in. What is stronger? Our own inner feelings and what we experience ourselves or our opinions and attitudes which are formed under the never ending influence of our environment?
NOW..? is an attempt to transfer these pre-verbal states of a soul into such a form which can be communicated to other people even if it is not expressed in words. It is expressed in the movements of the performers´ bodies and various visual means. It is expressed in the unique co-existence of a fragile human body and its soul. It is poetry with as well as without words, it is poetry on “the edge of understanding where words fail although there is still a sense.” (T. S. Eliot)
NOW..? – PRESSBOOK
NOW is current street and open air night performance by Continuo created in 2012.
Surprisingly, Continuo is – for me for the first time – walking on the fragile edge between political and poetic artistic expression. Under word political I do not mean the interest in politicians or governments, but contrary, in the public opinion, acceptation and perception. Publicity is the phenomenon artists of Continuo play with. What does influence the opinion of the mass now? What creates the medial picture of the world and what is it like now?
…we are witnessing several continuous poetic, funny and passionate situations that create the backbone of the performance, each one differs from the others. Every of actors presents diverse character that is main in his continuous situation and supporting role in stories of others – then they resemble main character’s material or props. We see crying in panic and fear, we see scientific speech defining the phenomenon of love, seducing passion for football championship, the argue about the meaning of theatre and its value and the most popular headline of 2012 – the end of the world. All situations are connected to the newspaper prop or headlines.
What is Continuo excellent at, is preserved in this show and expanded into form of talking, functional symbol – roughness, intentional unfinished, eloquence of measured simplicity and thrilling dream composition and associativeness far away from realistic causality.
When I saw the NOW..? performance for the first time myself, it was in Prague on a unpleasantly cold summer night on the island in the middle of Vltava river. It was during the big festival and everywhere around me were masses of loud people, all was smelling of beer. It was like I suddenly appeared in modern Middle Ages and I realized that folk space, smell, dirt and cold night is the best place I can see Continuo’s performance. Everything around me was real, not played or pretended as it is in theatre buildings.
Street theatre production as action of public, living and active human being, not the one who is closed behind the door of his house or flat but in the living street. Active towards himself and to the rest of the society, as well. Privacy is discovery of 19th century that almost consumed our culture in 20th century. Continuo’s NOW..? is tool how to break closed minds and conformity of Middle European citizens – consumers.
The performance NOW could be briefly described as a sketch of several topic subordinated to the main topic – topic of mass in human being and public manifestation of nowadays people. Newspaper of the human world in 2012. It speaks about the simple and at the same time complicated archetypal relationship of Myself and World around.
Marek Turošík, GATEWAY TO LA STRADA – La Strada News, 2014