Characteristics and genesis of the production

Four clowns find themselves in the free world after 40 years of totalitarianism. However, the vision of getting rich quickly divides them. They compete for property, positions, and seek their place in society. Through dynamic, comic, and poetic scenes, they go through all the stages of early capitalism until they realize that the dream world does not exist. The production, built on a metaphorical parody of contemporary real life, ends with a symbolic departure to another world. The motion comedy full of situational gags is intended for all social groups and age categories from 13 years old.

The original performance of KLAUNI from the beginning of 1989 was more than a breakthrough for our theater. It concluded a very instructive and interesting stage of cooperation with Peter Scherhaufer, founder and director of the Theater on a String in Brno in the late eighties. If we omit the following performances – Preliminary Inventory of the Revolution, as a quick and simple reaction to the ongoing political changes and the clownery for children ČORO-MORO, the pre-revolutionary CLOWNS became our last profile production for a long time.

CLOWNS by Andrzej Strzelecki (director of the legendary Polish theater Teatr 77 from Łódź, a prominent theater, film and television screenwriter and director, rector of the Theater Academy in Warsaw) directed by Peter Scherhaufer was a supremely courageous political theater. The story of circus clowns, who are gradually forbidden by the circus management to perform almost everything. So that in the end – when the circus is surrounded by bars and they are unmasked in civilian gray suits – it announces propagandistically that everything is now allowed.

When we started talking about a comeback in the theater, we realized that the first performance after such a long time should be about the time we have lived through since our breakthrough years. That is why we tied our thread to Clowns. In order to be able to weave a decent rope from this thread, inspired by Strezeleký, Scherhaufer and the events of the last two decades, we approached Scherhaufer’s student and our friend Jozef Krasula with the libretto for the future production. And we provided our acting partner – Roman Vykysalý with new, younger and more skilled acting colleagues. It was a real pleasure to watch how a fairly decent theater was gradually built during rehearsals from our original, simple idea… But let’s not get ahead of ourselves, the stage is already set. Please turn off your mobile phones, we will start in a moment!