This year’s summer project, entitled Layers, will be unique and exceptional in several respects. After more than a quarter of a century of annual and now „traditional“ site-specific projects resulting in full-length productions in non-theatrical environments, which take more than half a year to prepare and involve four weeks of intensive rehearsals with twenty performers and musicians, the theater’s creative team has decided to establish this format of site-specific projects as a biennial event.
However, audiences who are accustomed to attending Divadlo Continuo’s summer projects will not miss out on anything. The new Site-specific LAB format will offer them a connection between theater and other art forms—visual arts, music, and literature. And what exactly can audiences look forward to this year? An evening during which they will be able to wander around the corners of Švestkový Dvůr and its surroundings and watch individual theater events, visual and musical installations, short performances, and performative lectures by invited guests.
Thematically, this year’s project focuses on the phenomenon of reality and its image. The artists will work with a wide range of sources of inspiration, from mythological stories to the latest scientific theories, current newspaper reports, comments on social networks, and even prehistoric Paleolithic cave paintings.
All these sources and inspirations will offer viewers a wide variety of perspectives on the efforts of twenty artists to find at least hints of answers to the question „what kind of society do we actually live in?“ The resulting production could be characterized as a multimedia theater journal on the most pressing issues of our everyday reality, with an expedition into the depths of our subconscious.
The ensemble invited ten students and recent graduates from partner European theater schools and young artists, performers, visual artists, and musicians from the Czech Republic, Germany, Italy, Greece, Spain, Great Britain, Slovakia, and Colombia to participate in the preparation of the project.
