Actor Dominik Teleky will spend practically the entire time on his bicycle in the new performance of the Brno Theater Goose on a String. He will play the main role of a courier in it. The production, called Once upon a time, the children will thank you, was based on the novella Vyhorení by Petr Šesták, which was nominated for the Magnesia Litera award this year. He looks at the imaginary war with motorists from the perspective of cyclists.
The premiere will take place this Friday, October 25, and is already sold out. The nearest reruns follow on October 28 and November 14. “One messenger’s bicycle ride with food against motorists is not only a story of today’s culture wars, but above all a call to reflect on the ideologies of each of us,” says the artistic director of Goose on a String, Martin Sládeček, who is also the dramaturg of the production.
It takes place in the streets of the city, where a fierce battle rages between cyclists and motorists. “A world reduced to those with two wheels and those with four. No dialogue is possible through the car window. The only way to meet is through a wreck,” says the annotation.
The direction was taken by 25-year-old Martin Modrý, a graduate of JAMU in Brno and a student of game design at the Faculty of Fine Arts of the Technical University. “Already at school, he impressed us with his ability to articulate topics burning for the youngest generation, with a kind of originality in his vision of the world, as well as with the music he composes for his productions. In addition, in his work, he usually reflects very precisely and convincingly not only social events, but also theater and its means as like that,” adds Sládeček.
The director associates burnout from the title of Šesták’s book with a loss of perspective. “During the production, the audience can fall into the world of a very ambivalent character, from which there is no other way than to examine one’s own opinions and starting points. For this ‘fall’, we use almost all the weapons that the theater offers, from the convincing performance of the actor on the bike to the use of of the entire technical apparatus of the stage,” Modrý describes.
According to the representative of the main role, Dominik Teleky, the role of the messenger is demanding due to both the amount of text and the limited playing space. “That space is a bicycle, from which, with a few exceptions, I basically don’t get off during the evening. From one point, I have to encompass the entire hall and use one single repetitive movement – pedaling – to play out the entire story,” concludes Teleky.
Markéta Matulová, Zdislava Pechová, Dalibor Buš and Matouš Benda also perform in the novel. The music was composed by the director himself, Modrý’s regular collaborator Adéla Szturcová is in charge of the set.
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