Tabula Rasa Theatre - Premiere of the performance The Good Anna
Press release from October 11, 2000 (The Good Anna)
The premiere performance of the company Tabula Rasa Theatre, entitled The Good Anna, is prepared within the framework of the Studio of the Archa Theatre. It is a performance for four actresses and one musician based on the motives of Gertrude Stein.
Gertrude Stein's novel "The Good Anna" was the inspiration for this project. It is a story about a devoted woman, who is a servant to the lazy and unnecessary people right until the very end. She dies desolated and old. Gertrude Stein is one of the most outstanding, and still unappreciated characters in the literary world. Here in the Czech Republic, she is known for her relationship with Hemingway, Piccaso, T. S. Eliot and other great people of world art. Her own works are practically unknown here.
In her work, literatary experimentor Gertrude Stein demolished the deeply inserted ideas about the structure of the sentence. The rhythm and melody of the text have the same importance to her as the syntax. She managed to create quite unusual pictures, which are even potential theatrical pictures.
This performance does not wish to define the world of women as a confrontation with the world of man, nor does it engage in the question of emancipation. It's theme is the inside world of a woman through her day-to-day routine. We could call this performance a "kitchen symphony".
For every woman, the kitchen is the place of everyday rituals. Washing dishes is perhaps not anyone's favorite work. Nevertheless, rinsing plates can become the music of paradise, and running water can remind one of bubbling waterfalls and calling into the distances. Everyone has experienced the situation when cleaning the floor turned into unfettered aggression and ironing became an ostentatious demonstration of the power.
The project is created by: Jana Svobodová - direction and dramaturgy conception, Petr Nikl - stage design and costumes, Jaroslav Kořán - music and sound design, Michal Zborník - lighting design, Nina Rutová - dramaturgy collaboration, Pavla Niklová and Jana Svobodová - translations of the texts. Performing: Dana Poláková, Eva Pospíšilová, Hana Schmidtmajerová, Lenka Vychodilová and Jaroslav Kořán.
This project is created with the support of the Ministry of the Culture of the Czech Republic and the Municipal Authority of the Capital City of Prague.