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This year’s J. W. Goethe Award laureate Wen Hui will come to Prague right after the premiere in the legendary Théâtre de la Ville in Paris. Her breathtaking solo composition I’m 60 will provide the combination of dance and original screening of archive movies, underpinned with the author’s statement. “The production was inspired by classical silent and early sound films produced by trailblazing film studios in Shanghai in the 1920s and 1930s. Women openly presented their courageous attitudes. Thus, the production rediscovers Chinese progressive female choreography of the 1930s for Czech audiences and reflects the growing feminist movement in China today,” says director Jana Svobodová, the festival programmer and draws attention to another international production called History of Korean Western Theatre.
The South Korean theatremaker and music composer Jaha Koo asks questions why Asian theatre obstinately copies European stages, including references to Shakespeare, and seeks answers to why the Koreans keep forgetting about their own roots and are proud of the Western interpretation of the world.
The Czech point of view will be represented in director Jiří Honzírek’s Gross Domestic Product with the topic of distraints. “Honzírek reminds us of the fact that if the Czech citizens with distraints inhabit a region, it would be the sixth biggest region in the Czech Republic. Our distraint rules came into force twenty years ago. Questions have arisen whether we have a reason to celebrate, the creditors have managed to get their money, or has set the value of a loan and money, and, more importantly, the value of relationships of people within one society,” says Svobodová, who will stage her production Those Who Speak for Themselves at the festival. The audiences will see the stories of 12 women staged in the open space of the Archa Theatre as if it was a gallery. They will then choose when, from which point of you and how long they will observe the scene. In the authentic responses, the director follows the link of young women to freely decide about their own destiny.
The fifth production at the Akcent festival will be the original gaming performance Virtual ritual, which brings the viewers into the parallel world of online videogames millions of people log in all around the world every day. It is a survey of digital cities, their inhabitants, laws, and rituals that form a seemingly weightless world where nearly everything is possible.
All five productions staged at the AKCENT festival were created in various parts of the world and various cultures. Independent from each other, they open the general topic of a conflict of individual freedom and socially implemented norms. “We are proud of this year’s program. We want to show the theatre lovers that documentary theatre is not boring. We think, however, that if theatre is only “nice” these days, it is simply not enough,” says Jana Svobodová.
