MEDIATHEK

The production is a free adaptation of the style of Buñuel, the roots of which lie in surrealism. Although the production’s title refers to a specific film, the result is a hotchpotch of the motifs and themes by which Buñuel was fascinated and attracted. He unveiled new possibilities for film language and tried out different narrative structures. His works are shot through with the need for freedom, an intolerance of hypocrisy and of social convention, but also a fascination with the irrational, chance, a fascination with phenomena that go beyond ordinary human experience. Despite his fondness for everything inexplicable, however, Buñuel situates his fantasy against a background of concrete situations. By using a story to create the appearance of reality, he strengthens the imaginative element of his films. For what would remain of his dreams if they took place in an environment where everything is allowed from the start? It is the contrast between the world as we know it and the world whose mysterious laws we have yet to reveal that creates the specific atmosphere that is found in Buñuel’s works. His mystification included playing a game with the viewer, a desire to surprise him, to force him to look at his own portrait from a different angle to that from which he was used to seeing it. The audience of his films can be compared to the company in the film The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, which sits down to a feast without suspecting that it is on the stage of a theatre.

About the director of the play "The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie. Homage to Luis Buñuel and Jean-Claude Carrière": Jan Mikulášek (b. 1978) – Born in Zlín, where both his parents were actors in the local theatre. After studying at the Academy Grammar School in Brno he gained a place at the Janáček Academy of Arts to study drama direction. He spent three years there, being taught first by Peter Scherhaufer and then Zbyněk Srba. After a successful production of Bertolt Brecht’s The Flight Across the Ocean he became the artistic head of the Brno theatre Polárka in 2001. Together with other young theatre artists he helped make Polárka a closely followed alternative theatre, focusing mostly on auteur work for as wide an audience spectrum as possible. He has also held the position of artistic head of the Petr Bezruč Theatre in Ostrava. In addition to directing, he actively devotes himself to composing music for the theatre. He is currently one of the most in-demand theatre directors – in addition to directing at the Reduta (Atomised, The V + W Correspondence, Europeana, The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie) he regularly works with the Petr Bezruč Theatre, the Goose on a String Theatre and the Theatre in Dlouhá. From this season on he is to become an in-house director at the Theatre on the Balustrade. Mikulášek’s direction is notably influenced by film approaches – in addition to having directed many adaptations of films, he also uses elements of film language on stage, such as cutting, detail, musical contrapposto and parallel plot unfolding. His other major source of inspiration is fine art, from which he “takes” an emphasis on mise-en-scene and lighting. Mikulášek is also well-versed in different genres, and inclines towards grotesque stylisation, something for which he finds space even in major dramas.

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