Stage reading of Petr Kolečko’s Poker Face at the Altre Parole festival in Rome

Petr Kolečko, the playwright and now the scriptwriter and film director, will offer his original point of view of Czech society after 1989 in his play Poker Face to the Italian audiences on 26 March 2021 at 8 p.m. The stage reading of Kolečko’s play will take place at the Altre Parole festival, which takes place online due to the coronavirus pandemic this year. The reading will be preceded by an interview with the author. The partner of the Czech participation at the festival is the Czech Centre in Rome and the Arts and Theatre Institute, which was associated with the festival back in 2012 when staging Alice Nellis’s The Floods and residencies for Czech translators from the Italian language.

The 15th edition of the theatre festival Altre Parole has staged more than 100 theatre plays from all around the world as stage readings will take place online at the Youtube channel of the Roman (???) theatre Argot Studio from 22 to 27 March at 8 p.m. The festival is one of the most important annual gatherings of professionals and theatre audiences who want to learn about the best of international theatre. Apart from Petr Kolečko, the festival will present the plays written by Slovak playwright Viliam Klimáček,…

Petr Kolečko’s Poker Face is a cynical tragic comedy, with the main heroine being the poker star, millionaire and cynical 40-year-old monster, who used to be a girl with ideas and faith that “good and love must prevail over lies and hatred”. Now she has a 20-year-old daughter with a 14.3% probability that her father is Václav Havel, and she does not know what to do with her. The family’s well-being is disturbed by the fact that the daughter’s boyfriend longs for the mother’s money and the mother herself. The pre-recorded interview preceding the stage reading in Italian features author Petr Kolečko, Italian researcher specializing in Czech Gaia Seminara, director Marco, actress Daniela, director of Czech Centre Rome Petra Březáčková and the head of the International Cooperation Department and manager of Generation Icons project Martina Pecková Černá. Italian partners and theatre-makers were interested in the social and cultural context of Kolečko’s play, the role of theatre before and after 1989, and the current contemplation on Václav Havel at the occasion of the 10th anniversary of his death.

Petr Kolečko’s Poker Face was written for the European project Generation Icons in (Central) Europe, which was coordinated by the Letí Theatre with GUnaGU Theatre in Bratislava and Wiener Worstaetten in Vienna in 2011-2013. The project is based on the association of theatre, international author, and international director. International cooperation was the basis for texts and coproduction performances. The topic was inspired by the interest in what connects and divides three neighboring countries. The project also featured quantitative research with high school and university students. The outputs of this research were available to the authors Petr Kolečko, Viliam Klimáček, and Bernhard Studlar. The project partner was the Arts and Theatre Institute that published the final three plays as a book and e-book in Czech, German, English, and Spanish translation.

You can watch both presentations on the YouTube channel of the Argot Theatre in Rome

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC2UVpJKn_FXfTTiul5LeXXg

The Festival program is available here: https://rome.czechcentres.cz/it/programma/jinymi-slovy?locale=it

Antonín Brinda a Martina Pecková Černá