The birds set out to find their king, only to eventually find their way back to themselves. The old Persian allegorical story called the Feast of the Birds is an original retelling of the new production of the Forman Brothers Theatre, the first after a seven-year hiatus. It’s stuff that’s suitably grand and fairy-tale-like for a creator renowned for his rich imagination.
The performance combining new circus techniques with digital projection was directed by Petr Forman, featuring 21 actors of five nationalities. It is played in an original tent for three hundred spectators, which was built for this purpose on the Smíchov embankment in a space called Erpet Centrum. The feast of birds can be seen here until mid-November.
Already from the gates of the area there is a beautiful view of the circus courtyard between two tents lit by rows of light bulbs. The evening air carries a festive variety atmosphere, for which it seems easy to undergo even some discomfort: a disheveled lawn, from which a plastic carpet protects a little, and above all, a rather long wait to enter.
The strudel of spectators winds through the wooden hangar, one entrance there and another out, and thence to the gate to the striped tent. In the wooden building, which turns out to be a cozy bar as well as a ticket office, the spectators not only pick up reserved tickets and buy refreshments to make the queue go better. They also choose paper bird masks here. They enter the tent, where they enter in small groups, ready for their bird transformation.
“So I don’t want someone to drag me on stage,” says the woman in the queue, surprised, but then puts on a parrot mask. Maybe in her mind she decided to sit back so she wouldn’t be “called out”. Unnecessary worry. Nothing interactive awaits her. Just a suggestive entrance to the “bird’s nest”.
Dudek in the forehead
The first impression is charming. After an intimate welcome in the hall, a small group of newly arrived spectators walk on carpets past Persian screens and oriental lamps. Bearded and slightly scary monks show the way to the auditorium.
The Bird Festival, including decorations, takes five trucks. | Photo: Irena Vodáková
The show slowly begins. A man carrying a cage with small live birds tells of the cruelty of kings and the helplessness of subjects. Like an instigator, igniting human hearts, he calls to determination: to the journey to the true King Simorgh, who is said to know the true meaning of all things. The man incites to abandon the old life and the arduous journey of knowledge.
Dervishes circle around him, fateful music plays, until the moment of transformation arrives. A little repulsive at first, when the actors remove the rubber, bearded monks’ masks from their faces, but then beautiful.
Actors and actresses become themselves for a moment, and then it’s as if the blood of a bird begins to flow in their veins. They slowly dress up in costumes, but the bird essence emanates from inside their bodies, and the perfect clothes only crown the transformation. A long graceful step or raking jumping and puffing of the chest, jerky movements of the head. It’s beautiful, a little comical, but not exactly ridiculous.
Their wings are atypically shaped like giant fans held in their palms. This idea enhances the gracefulness of the birds’ dances, and is also very creative. You can see an owl, a crow, a duck, a peacock, a dove, and especially a piper, who encourages and guides everyone.
The Feast of the Birds is played in a special tent without support poles, which was custom-made in France. The reinforced floor weighs over fifty tons. | Photo: Irena Vodáková
Birds over the landscape
A long and painful journey begins, the flock soars. The audience experiences Bird’s Flight as in a 3D cinema. In the tent, they are surrounded by a giant video projection in which living creatures sail in sync over an imaginary landscape. Certainly the most attractive part of the performance is interrupted by episodic stops – a love duet between two birds, a meeting with bats or a fight to the death of a tired feathered bird.
At the end of the desert, the flock encounters a giant puppet, a human. He informs the birds that they still have to cross seven valleys – seven difficult trials. What would become in literature a meditation on the important states of the human soul, however, sounds somewhat monotonous in the performance, like a gray overcoming of obligatory suffering.
The expected fulfillment, meeting the king on Mount Kaf, brings little satisfaction. How the last birds that survived to the end met Simorgh and what they understood in the process, the viewer will not see or experience. He only learns this from the narrator, who closes the show as the birds transform back into humans.
The Feast of the Birds by the Forman Brothers Theater balances between wisdom and naivety, grand gesture and pathos. Some situations are managed better, others could be shortened. Video projection with live acting is a very tempting combination.
With their parody of the western Deadtown from 2017, Formani already showed that they are attracted to the new circus and that they have a good handle on it. But Deadtown was juicier. He absorbed more circus skills, stage ideas and wit. Of course, the bird feast is a completely different matter. Humor is difficult to insert into the symbolic story and philosophical Persian epic from the 12th century by the poet Fariduddin Attár. More circus, more body language and fewer narrators would have improved the impression, however.
Petr Sís, a cartoonist living in New York, became the most famous in the Czech Republic with his author’s book from 2011. “I think that there is no Czech translation of Ptačí sněm, only Sís’s book,” says Petr Forman, according to whom soon after the publication of the publication a theater adaptation was planned. “It was planned by producer Richard Balous from La Fabrika, but it fell through,” adds the director, according to whom Petr Sís was also supposed to collaborate on the production.
A different interpretation of the Ptačí Snem once dazzled the father of the Forman brothers, the world-famous film director Miloš Forman. In the early 1980s, he saw a production on which the British director Peter Brook collaborated with the French screenwriter Jean-Claude Carriér. It was played in several countries. The artist Sís, for whom Miloš Forman was a “mentor”, states that at the time when he was thinking about his book, Miloš Forman pushed him just by remembering Brook’s work.
The Feast of Birds balances between wisdom and naivety, grand gesture and pathos. | Photo: Irena Vodáková
Nevertheless, Petr Forman independently found his own way to the Ptačí Sněm. “Once in a long while, we will prepare a new performance, which we will live and travel with for about five years. We considered several materials, Ptačí snem was among them. About three years ago, co-screenwriter Ivan Arsenjev reminded me of it. That’s when the first version of the script was created,” explains the director .
The Assembly of the Birds of the Forman Brothers Theater will be on display until November 15. Then the entire production, occupying five trucks, will head to Denmark, where it will be a guest of the festival. After the winter break, the Formani plan to tour France with the new product. He will return to the Czech Republic again in 2026.
Theater
The Forman Brothers Theatre: The Feast of the Birds
Erpet Centra football field, Prague, premiere on September 25, reruns until November 15.