FROM THE DIARY OF A VENTRILOQUIST II
Text: Stanislav Dvorský Directed by, concept: Lukáš Jiřička Music: Paul Wirkus /DE-PL/ Voice: Jan Novotný My place was at the crossroads. Decrepit fences. Buckling fences, sewers without echo. Feelings of paralysis, no promise in sight. I remained, half leaning against myself. Not that I staggered, but I occasionally trembled before the sharpness of the razor, its blinding glimmer, as they say, I shivered as when a tempest madly slams the door, at night, in a fever, all of a sudden, I would like to someday knock on some door, but I don't ever want to...see...a door on this strange and deserted crossroads. And I shudder all the more thinking of what might lie behind this door if I were to finally hit upon it. One day, I retraced my own steps, at least I thought they were my former steps ... as if I recounting everything along the way, from the end to the beginning, patiently, carefully ... A day like a razorblade.
This audio drama is based on fragments of the prose-poem Hra na ohradu (published in 2005 by Torst) written in the 1960s by poet and "Magnesia litera" award winner Stanislav Dvorský. The text oscillates between surrealism, existentialism, and an unusual form of literary art informel. Both the text and the work's other elements address the impossibility of giving order to the world, and the yearning to understand it and to find a way of describing it. The sarcastic text's labyrinthine fragments tell the story of one such search and an examination of the inner and outer spaces of man, but they also point out the impossibility of reducing the world into words.
Director/dramaturge Lukáš Jiřička and actor Jan Novotný take the selected textual fragments from the section "From the diary of a ventriloquist II" and turn them into a kind of raw material, musically augmented by a second "voice" in the form of Polish-German musician Paul Wirkus's audio track. The musical element is created using voices and percussion computer-altered to the point of unrecognizability in order to create a second space, which is occasionally antagonistic or highly unsettling vis-a-vis the voice.
Jan Novotný
Novotný, born in Tábor in 1953, is a graduate of acting from Prague's Theater Faculty (DAMU). In 1979-80, he was engaged by the West Bohemian Theater in Cheb, where his roles included Lysander in A Midsummer Night's Dream and Pavel in Romeo, Juliet and Darkness. Since his time in Cheb, he has also frequently collaborated with director Jan Grossman, who has had a significant influence on him. Novotný followed Grossman first to Hradec Králové and later to Prague's Neumann Theater and, in 1990, to the Theater on the Balustrade. Under Grossman, he performed the title role in Don Juan and played Sydney in Kafka's Dick (A. Bennett - K. Hermann), among others. Since 1993, Novotný has performed with the National Theater, where he has brought to life the roles of Desgenais (The Confession of a Child of the Century), Clarin (The Mighty Magician), Schwarzbeck (Herr Paul), Alexei Kirilov and Fedka (The Possessed), Viktor (Romance for Bugle), Pilgrim and Judas (The Passion), and Brighella (The Servant of Two Masters). He teaches acting at the State Conservatory in Prague, does voiceover dubbing, and has appeared in many films, including The Death of a Talented Cobbler, The Beginning of a Long Autumn, Shapira's Manuscripts, Monidlo, and A Lesson in Dance and Love.
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