The annual summer project took place in the premises of the former municipal waterworks in Písek, whose history dates back to 1901 and which operated until the fall of 2018.
The now disused building features vast water treatment facilities – giant concrete tanks with rusting iron plates on the walls, a labyrinth of corridors, kilometers of ubiquitous piping, hundreds of pumps, and other technical equipment. All these unique features of the former waterworks have been incorporated into the upcoming project and have become part of the theatrical event.
We drew inspiration for the performance primarily from the place itself, its history, current context, and themes related to the place, and especially from the stories of people connected to this place, people who worked here or lived in its vicinity, such as Dagmar Šimková, a political prisoner of the Czechoslovak communist regime. In addition to this storyline, the original function of the waterworks building, i.e., water treatment and purification, and mythological stories associated with water and its symbolic meaning (e.g., Joseph Campbell’s interpretation of Jonah and the whale, which considers the belly of the whale a symbolic place where man is swallowed up by the unknown; a place where a hero is born, a person capable of defying fate, time, fear, or totalitarianism).
