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Dejvicke theatre Prague

2001

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Play/Drama

8

7

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Notes:
Original Playwright - Petr Zelenka. Alfred Radok Award for the best original play of the year in 2001

Synopsis:
The story of thirty-five-year-old Peter, who is trying to master the world around him; to win back his girlfriend Jana, who left him because of his "abnormality"; to survive visits to his parents which are never free of his mother's fussy and interfering worries about others; not to go mad due to the crazy methods of satisfaction of his friend Midge; to get used to his strange neighbours who require people with their eyes "on the surface of their faces"; to accept the fact that his boss likes little boys; to get used to the blanket in his room coming to life& In the end there is only one solution: to pack oneself up in a box and send oneself off somewhere very far away. A witty reflection on our times, including a reference to the recent past and its still active influence. The text also plays with references to the sphere of "artistic creativity", in inverted commas because his neighbour is a composer of elevator music, his father was once, in the Communist era, a weekly newsreel commentator and now brings this up in public as a curiosity, and one of Midge's girlfriends, although a cleaner, loves ballet. The action is kept going by the constant effort to find and maintain a real relationship; whether in the case of the younger ones (Peter and his circle), or of their parents. Both the theme and the form of the play relate to the original script-writing profession of the author - the scenes follow one another as in film sequences.

Dejvicke theatre Prague

2005

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Play/Drama

8

3

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Notes:
Original Playwright - Petr Zelenka

Synopsis:
The play is based on the real life of Leon Sergeievich Theremin - an inventor, musician, and a spy. In the words of the father of the modern synthesizer, Robert Moog, without Theremin, Moog himself would not have been able to construct his synthesizer. Theremin was born in 1896, and during the First World War he worked for the radio- technical battalion of the Red Army. In 1920 he completed his important invention: a musical instrument called the thereminvox, which to this day is the only non-contact musical instrument in the world. In 1922 Theremin presented the instrument to the enthusiastic Lenin, who saw it as a magnificent opportunity to promote the new revolutionary music. On Lenins orders Theremin embarked on a concert tour around disease and hunger-ravaged, post-revolutionary Russia.The tour was followed by a concert series abroad  in Germany, France, and England. Those tours however, were organized by the newly formed Soviet Secret Service GRU, for which Theremin had begun to work as an agent. After conquering Paris, the Royal Albert Hall, and Berlin, Theremins journey continued, logically, to America. He arrives in New York with his German friend and business manager Hans Goldberg. His mission is clear: to place Theremins inventions in the US industry and to receive US patents while at the same time infiltrating the nascent American air and electronic industries. It is Theremins time in the United States that constitutes the actual plot of the play. Recitals in Carnegie Hall, private performances for millionaires parties, and even the first stadium concerts, the biggest of which attracts more than 20 000 people!!! Instead of the originally planned two months, Theremin would remain in America for ten years. At its most basic level, Theremin is a story about the rise and fall of the worlds first electronic music band. But beyond this Theremin is a portrait of a controversial and a peculiar human being. It is a story of a man caught in the torrents of 20th century history, unable to be free in his calling, his actions, and his wants.