Centre for Contemporary Performing Arts

Utopia from the edge

Going into the wilderness as an attempt to start afresh, as an attempt at radical self-determination. An attempt to obtain personal and social reform. One’s own utopia. Solitude. What kind of civilization is this where books about escaping it become bestsellers?

In the mid-nineteenth century, the American philosopher Henry David Thoreau withdrew from the city to the forests by Walden Pond to reflect again on the lot of modern man in conditions of simplicity and self-sufficiency. In their way of life, he and his modern-day followers, voluntary exiles and loners from the books of Aleš Palán’s interviews, questioned the very foundations of our existence in our social system long before they were shaken by a global pandemic. Aren’t they showing us now what needs to be changed so that we don’t go mad in it?

Anna Davidová (1984), with her dreamy directorial poetics and lively creativity, is considered to be among the most significant directing talents of the younger generation. Since January 2019, she has been artistic director of Husa na provázku Theatre. Prior to this post, as a freelance director, she created here several productions that have been highly acclaimed by both public audiences and professional spectators. She won the Theatre Critics’ Award in the category of Talent of the Year.