The review – Socialism – paradise of hell?
Students of Janáček Academy of Performing Arts had created an author’s performance called Hády – Touching the Past based on Sylvie Richterová’s novel Let Everything Reach its Place. Young creators are polemicizing about an important historical stage – socialism.
Their approach to this topic sensitively. They do not see this complex historical decade in black-and-white. They try to understand both groups; people who condemn the former regime for its illegitimacy but also people who think back on this stage in a positive way.
Their starting points were:
- Socialism was paradise!
- Socialism was hell!
Those two statements are subliminal motivation of thoughts of individual characters. Someone used the regime for their own enrichment and became a carefree slave. Another one defends people because being communist was the only way to live a dignified life. No one is able to understand the atrocities of the regime. Tourists from the west perceive it as a fascinating attraction. Performance offers different points of views using the individual fate of dramatic characters. Through a certain fragmentation and decomposition of the final shape creators reached a concept layering.
The set took a very important part. The most significant element was the translucent horizont of the stage. We were able to see the shadows of socialist leader behind it. To achieve the feeling of “Big Brother” who knows and sees everything, the director Igor Dostálek used the principles of shadow theatre. Also there were iron bars on the horizon which indicated the inaccessible system of the country as well as the unaccessible city of Brno. At the end of the performance this horizon falled down and the whole space was covered with blue light, as if we would be in heaven. Costumes should be highlighted as well. They were adapted to the fashion of portrayed decades. As the characters got older, their clothes and make-up changed and their hair became grey.
Actors had a very difficult job. Each of them had one main character whose fate we followed but they were also portraying supporting characters. During the creating process the authors could delete some of them but they decided to retain them. When reconstructing pro-regime parts they went for moderate stylization. For serious moments of life they choose the technique of psychological realism.
Music dramaturgy combines melodies to create an atmosphere of situations sensitively. We could hear Internacionála during a scene with pioneers. Italian episodes were finished with the famous Bella ciao melody.
Hády – Touching the Past is a retrospective of young characters who are trying to see socialism in an objective way. They are trying to deal with their own national and local history and to understand them.
Adam Nagy (VŠMU)