FOTO MAGDA JIŘIČKA STOJOWSKA
oys &
Eva Zikmundová „Šťastnou cestu, vrať se zdráva, každému se dívej do očí a nezapomeň, že jsi Mašková.“ To mi tatínek říkal vždycky, když jsem někam jela. “Have a good trip, come back safe, look everybody in the eye and don’t forget that you are a Mašková”. That’s what my dad used to tell me whenever I travelled somewhere. Jan Pospíšil Když jedu Fetrovskou, tak tam bydlí Řepa, potom Urbánek, Štrougal, Pospíšil, ministr dopravy, Marie Majerová, Marie Pujmanová, Jan Řezáč, Vojtěch Cynibulk, jedna jeho dcera, mimochodem měla za muže, jak se jmenoval, dělal v diplomatických službách… Marion Cety, malíř, který spáchal sebevraždu v Minsku, Emil Kotrba, malíř, význačný v oboru koní, od něj koně vidět, to skutečně bylo poznat, že je to kůň, rodina Šimkovic, doktor Šimek, profesorka Šimková, Miloslav Šimek, jak hrál se Sobotou, Miloslav, pak měli ještě jednoho, on hrál tenis, oni celá rodina hráli. K profesorce Šimkové jsme všichni tři chodili na němčinu, francouzštinu a angličtinu… When I go through Fetrovska Street I think about the people who live there: Řepa, Urbánek, Štrougal, Pospíšil, the Minister of Transport, Marie Majerová, Marie Pujmanová, Jan Řezáč, Vojtěch Cynibulk, one of his daughters, who was married to what’s his name who worked in the foreign service… Marion Cety, the painter, who committed suicide in Minsk; Emil Kotrba, the painter, famous for his horses, because his horses really looked like horses; the Šimek family: Dr. Šimek, Professor Šimková, Miloslav Šimek, who played with Sobota, Miloslav, then they had another one, who played tennis, the whole family played. All three of us went to Professor Šimek for German, French and English…
The Boys & Girls project is conceived as a theatre platform for the meeting of children and older people during which the stories of older people and others will be told and theatrically reworked. Old age interests us as the personal experience of individuals as well as a contemporary social phenomenon. In our work we were inspired by documentary theatre, which is implemented in various forms by European theatre groups such as Rimini Protokoll, She She Pop, Gob Squad and others. We think that documentary theatre is still relatively unexplored and unknown terrain in the Czech Republic, even though it permits social groups to be activated and encourages discussion of various social problems and phenomena. At the moment we are working with a group of four seniors: three women (an accountant, an X-ray laboratory worker and a singing teacher who is a former soloist at the National Theatre opera) and one man (a train dispatcher), who are all 70 or older, and the oldest of whom is 83. We are also working with an 80-year-old professor of physics. All of these participants are incredibly interesting, active people who certainly don’t fit the stereotype of people in their “golden years”, despite the fact that two of them suffer from Parkinson’s disease. Our group also includes six children: four girls and two boys aged eight to 11. We work with memories and at the same time with fantasies of possible life scenarios, the ideas that the children have about their old age and about the lives of seniors in our group. We create situations in which a process of familiarization and mutual inspiration of children and seniors creatively take places in the framework of the Boys and Girls project. Thanks to this we acquired a lot of material – recordings, texts, photographs, drawings – which become an important part of the script and form of the production. The bringing together of these
two groups, who spend most of their time on stage together, creates unique dramatic situations, in which the boundaries of the lifecycle and different eras meet. An important part of our project is old age as such, understanding the difficulty of talking with seniors about getting old. Is it not a tautology to invite them as actors in the project and at the same time expect them to talk about themselves? The strongest counterpoint to old age in our project is childhood. The interesting thing is to activate the participants as “experts”, to find that which interests them, that which they think about, what encourages their imagination and their bodies, but also that which they have in common. The children imagine what they will look like when they grow old – they draw their houses, how they will dress, their animals or surroundings. Their drawings reveal the most schematic signs of old age – glasses, a cane, knitted sweaters, as well as many extravagant views of themselves in old age, which have a punk character. In the performance a child gang portraying a gang of seniors robs a bank, whose employees are played by real seniors, in order to describe this event in a newspaper, which the members themselves created. There is an interaction between “real” old age and the “fictional” old age as imagined by the children. It’s about not putting “life truth” on a pedestal, but admitting honestly that there is no such thing. That mixing memory – an intimate record – with figments of the imagination, a dream, a game or a fantasy makes those on stage real heroes. Their physical presence on stage is the most important testimony. And this presence is always new, always authentic. Magda Jiřička Stojowska and Tereza Durdilová