Mission

Theatre cut-up based on William S. Burroughs‘s novella Ghost of Chance

performance/film/radioplay/cirque nouveau/cut-up

IN CZECH WITH ENGLISH SUBTITLES

Created by:

Veronika Švábová, Jakub Hybler, Tomáš Procházka, Robert Smolík, Jan Dőrner

Length:

50 min

The Premiere:

7.12.2013

Production:

jedefrau.org

Supported by:

International Visegrad Fund (Visegrad Artist Residency in ST A NICA – ŠTOKOVEC, priestor pre kultúru), Ministerstvo kultury ČR, Magistrát hlavního města Praha, jedefrau.org / produkce / Cavina-Kalivodová, Motus o.s., produkce divadla Alfred ve dvoře


Ghost of Chance is a book about the conflict between human civilization and nature, and Handa Gote has been concerned with this theme for quite some time. The main motif of the story is the decay of the pirate community on Madagascar. Burroughs sees that behind the conflict leading to the community‘s demise is the senseless violence that destroys natural harmony and Captain Mission’s utopian project. This lost opportunity results in resistance and hatred from which it seems there is no escape. Humankind becomes trapped in the very cage it forged, the cage of time. The killing of a sacred animal starts off a spinning spiral of death, violence and destruction, the seeds of which were hidden in the utopian project of idyllic cohabitation between various people and the natural world from the very start. Ghost of Chance’s main theme is thus the uncontrollable human urge to destroy.

Mission also follows up on Handa Gote’s formal experiments in the use of live video and live music as means of narrating in their own right, not just as some kind of decoration. The group has conducted long-term research in the field of specific narration, better know as non-narrative art, the deconstruction of tradional storytelling and above all in consistent work in unveiling theatrical illusion and the related reduction caused by traditional mimesis. The opinion
of the group is that mimesis has lost its purpose in the “society of the spectacle“ (Guy Debord). Imitation has become our reality. Theatre should no longer offer mimesis as yet another kind of “imitating the imitated“, it should offer deeper insight (even if it is difficult to decipher), bringing us closer to mystery and intellectual adventure.

PRESS


"Handa Gote, which looks to be the most important and most inventive independent theatre group in the Czech lands, here proves that the story of a pirate community, colonialism, the liquidation of indigenous tribes, the criminal rape of the animal kingdom, and violence committed against lemurs can be mirrored in any form and still be readable. And with a bit of a cruel perspective, it can be brutally entertaining."



Lukáš Jiřička, A2, 2/2014


Supported by:

International Visegrad Fund (Visegrad Artist Residency in ST A NICA – ŠTOKOVEC, priestor pre kultúru), Ministry of Culture of Czech Republic, the City of Prague, jedefrau.org / production / Cavina-Kalivodová, Motus o.s., producers of the Alfred ve dvoře Theatre
Production jedefrau.org.