PerformCzech SKILLS: Drama Revival

Alžběta Vrzgula
Happy End (Reconstruction)

On the eve of The Big Day. It’ll either be the start of a new chapter, or the end of the world. Nothing in between.
In the background of colliding worldviews, a wedding band plays all the pleasures that might be guilty but are also as accurate as the Oracle of Delphi. Feminism, Europe’s questionable humanism, or the search for positive masculinity – characters from ancient myth and 20^th century pop culture are dropped hard, fast, and deep into these topics.
Do their archetypal narratives reflect of our own lives? Are we even aware of the myths that our society is based upon? Is it based on anything anymore? A remorseless musical comedy for audience members 15 and up who like to study their own identity, their place in relationships and the world.

Directing: Jan Frič
Acting: Mária Ševčíková (Siren), Nataša Bednářová (Antiopa), Jaro Viňarský (Cowboy) + Lucia Čižínská (from the recording)

Oksana Grytsenko
I Will Return

Sonia and Ania are two teenagers who meet in a summer camp in Crimea, where the Russian authorities bring Ukrainian children allegedly for a vacation but in fact for deportation. Friendly and open minded Sonia doesn’t have much in common with sociophobic Ania except for their resistance to the camp rules and determination to go back to the government-controlled part of Ukraine. But their way home will be marred by hard choices, bitter losses and multiple tests of their friendship.

Director: Anna Turlo
Acting: Christina Volovik (Sonia), Olesia Usata (Kostia), Anastasiia Kravchuk (Ania), Vira Timofeeva (Matrioshka )

Tomáš Ráliš
Compatible Parts

A young adult nightmare with a hint of true crime, where we reconstruct the demise of one friendship.
But for now, Savo is part of the gang.
A vocational school, an old grimy bus stop. A vocational school is still a school.
Savo is learning how to fix cars, work with parts, how to disassemble.
The dorm is a grey block, a pain in the ass, the ass of education. It’s quite the downer.
But you can have fun with your gang, right?
This ain’t no high school musical. This is a black metal requiem for all the students form the former Eastern Bloc who are destined to end up in the hands of the employment office and the loan sharks.
People have different ways of dealing with it. Booze, tobacco, junk, porn, booze, junk, junk, aggression, junk, compulsion, explosion, erection, eruption. The dorm. The dorm is a mum reeking of detergent.
There’s not really much else to do.
There’s not really anywhere to go.
But the luckier ones have the gang, like Savo. And with it come the cars, the rap, everything that just hurts so good, and helps break away the grey silence and unease.
But what if somebody were to break apart the gang?
What if somebody were about to break?

Directing: Lucie Ferenzová
Acting: Dan Kranich, Hynek Chmelař, Šimon Krupa, Marek Flutka, Lucie Roznětínská, Kateřina Bejčková

Dagmar Fričová
Darlings

A family. Mum, dad, son, daughter. The kids are all grown up, all the big goals – the family lineage, the upbringing, the practicalities of life – should be done now. But it looks like they’re not. Dad is sobbing on the couch. Mum is looking back at her life, wondering if it was really her who chose this existence. The daughter says she doesn’t wanna have kids and the son has a big secret. And to make matters worse, grandma and uncle are here. Just wonderful family fun. The proceedings are watched over by the portrait of “the nation’s daughter”, a 19^th century woman whose fate was guided none other than the entire Czech nation. And sadly, that fate did not end too well. But what’s the link between “the nation’s daughter”, Zdeňka Havlíčková, and a modern family, where all the women are called Zdeňka? Isn’t that a bit too much for one family, one fate? All that’s left is a veritable earthquake. And it will come…
A play about the struggles of playing the roles we reject, the difficulty of avoiding other people’s expectations, and about the 19^th century in all of us. Also about more than one daughter of a famous father, the nation’s daughter and the founding father, and about stories none can piece together anymore.

Directing: Ondrej Štefaňák
Acting: Jan Grundman (dad), Agáta Kryštůfková (daughter), Šimon Krupa (son), Nataša Bednářová (mum), Hynek Chmelař (grandma), Jakub Tvrdík (uncle), Johana Kolomazníková (Zdeňka)