PATRICIDE

There is no alternative.
- Margaret Thatcher

TRANSLATION Jaroslav Achab Haidler
STAGE ADAPTATION, SET AND DIRECTION Ondřej Štefaňák
ASSISTANT DIRECTOR Marek Linhart
DRAMATURGY AND STAGE ADAPTATION Barbora Hančilová
SET AND COSTUME DESIGN Jana Hauskrechtová
MUSIC Kryštof Blabla
CAST Magdalena Kuntová, Lucie Roznětínská, František Bouzek, Vojtěch Hrabák, Jan Jankovský, Václav Marhold

A narcistic allegory with absurd grotesque features. Authors’ variation based on A. Bronnen’s text Vatermord – a stage picture of looking for the sense of traditional family beyond the safe end of history. Where lies the boundary between unconditional personal and artistic freedom and family bonds? And what lies beyond this boundary? Family as a refuge, as the source of social violence, or as an ordinary subject of economy? Scenic search for the answer to the question: is family replaceable? And by what? The final part of what one may call the director’s expressionist trilogy. The most personal one. The darkest one.

Arnolt Bronnen (1895) is one of the important figures of interwar expressionism. In the play Patricide (Vatermord, 1922), he defined the main themes of this distinct artistic movement that sought to fulfil the radical artistic freedom. In 1933, Bronnen signed a controversial Nazi manifest endorsing the nascent dictature. However, he joined the communist resistance movement during the war.