MEDIATHEK

Foam of the Daze – “We’ll be late,” said Colin. – “That doesn’t matter,” said Chloé. “Put your watch back.” A theatre adaptation of Boris Vian’s most famous novel. This unusual love story from 1947 did not become well known until the sixties, but it has been a hit with readers ever since, even coming tenth in a list of the hundred most important books of the twentieth century. Surreal excursions into imagination, desire, jazz, love, the world turned upside down and the present in the fleeting moment. Colin is a rich young man who owns a beautiful flat and a perfect cook. His somewhat poorer friend Chick is an indefatigable collector and propagator of the works of the philosopher Jean-Sol Partre, and is in love with Alice. Colin is in love with Chloé, but after the wedding she succumbs to a peculiar disease. She has a water lily blooming in her lungs. It is very hard to cure, and she has to surround herself with lots of flowers. Foam of the Daze is the final play in the SKUTR directorial and dramaturgical tandem’s trilogy of plays in Hradec Králové (the other two being Swan Lake and Eugene Onegin) devoted to the subject of the marriage of love and death. Marie Reslová has written of the production: “SKUTR has transformed Foam of the Daze into a surreal experience and theatre that employs all the senses.”

If we add the remarkable dramatisation, acting from the local company that is as good as ever (sometimes excellent) and the untrammelled Mastix, we end up with the theatrical success of the season.
Lenka Dombrovská, Divadelní noviny

I am stating in advance that, just as Radovan Lipus’ Romance for the Bugle at the ND was the Moravian-Silesian production of the 1990s, and Jan Mikulášek’s Eugene Onegin at the Petr Bezruč Theatre was the feat of the first decade of the new millennium, there is a good chance that Foam of the Daze, created by Martin Kukučka and Lukáš Trpišovský will be the dominant production of the second decade, even though there is still five more years to go (…) Foam of the Daze is a perfect theatrical form, an artistic poem, a testimony to dreams and desires in society that have been changed by permanent crises of existence into confusion and hopelessness.
Jiří P. Kříž, Právo

It is not easy to create on stage an imaginary Paris and a fragile love story from Boris Vian’s book L’écume des jours. The SKUTR directorial duo, Martin Kukučka and Lukáš Trpišovský have managed to create, out of the author’s characteristic, playfully dislocated and fleeting feelings of enchantment, sadness and existential angst, a performance that is a real experience.
Marie Reslová, www.art.ihned.cz

SKUTR – The dramaturgical and directorial tandem Lukáš Trpišovský and Martin Kukučka (1979) graduated from DAMU in 2004. Their graduation performance itself excited the interest of critics and a favourable response from audiences. After leaving DAMU they took up creative residence at Divadlo Archa, where they came up with several successful theatre projects. SKUTR productions travelled to festivals in Serbia, Poland, Lithuania, Italy, Germany, Romania, Slovakia, China and South Korea. The climax of SKUTR’S appearances abroad was a month-long run at the Edinburgh Fringe in August 2008, where their production of The Weepers was nominated for a Total Theatre Award. Their production of Joke Killers, created together with Adéla Laštovková, then represented the Czech Republic at the Expo 2010 world exhibition in Shanghai. Recently they have become more and more interested in joining music together with theatre. Together with the members of the Berg orchestra they produced Heiner Goebbels’ Schwarz auf Weiss and a staged performance of Honegger’s King David for the international festival Strings of Autumn. Their domain is multi-genre auteur projects, the combination of acrobatics, dance and physical theatre, martial arts techniques, design, sound, sight and various kinds of improvisations. They are inspired by theme, people, the specific place where a performance is created, elements of tradition, as well as by the latest information technology and its use, and new circus. Their teacher, Miloslav Klíma, has described the characteristic features of their work as a clear interest in the human lot, the interweaving of temporal and plot bands, the ludic principle and an interest in ceremonies and rituals. “The Scooters have a an excellent ability to highlight the hidden, they know how to search for contexts that are not apparent, and they often subject the human soul to an autopsy and examine it closely under a microscope,” Lenka Dombrovská has written. Their work often combines imagination, absurdity, playfulness and an emphasis on the romantic. The spoken word is complemented by marked physical action and metaphorical work with props.

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