Photos from the performance
Venedikt Vasiljevič Jerofejev: Moskva - Petuški
Performing:
Veňa - Cyril Drozda
Angel - Anna Veselá
Epitome of a dolt - Tomáš Matonoha
Intelligent handyman - Marek Daniel
Grandson (Mitrič, cretan) - Pavel Liška
Grandfather (Mitrič, imbecile) - Miloš Maršálek
Mustached man with beret - Luboš Veselý
Mustached woman (with beret) - Marie Ludvíková
Sphynx - Iva Volánková
Semjonyč (inspector) - Ján Sedal
Satan - Ján Sedal
Waitress - Iva Volánková
Red-headed Woman- Marta Bačíková
God - Miroslav Kumhala
Tichonov - Miloš Maršálek
Duchess - Simona Peková
1st Comrade- Luboš Veselý
2nd Comrade- Josef Polášek
3rd Comrade - Tomáš Matonoha
4th Comrade - Pavel Liška
5th Comrade - Marek Daniel
1st Murderer - Luboš Veselý
2nd Murderer - Josef Polášek
3rd Murderer - Tomáš Matonoha
4th Murderer - Pavel Liška
5th Murderer - Marek Daniel
Later as revolutionaries, degenerative, blind men, country Cossack, extras and actors.
Translation: Luboš Suchařípa
Adaptation: Janoš Krist
Direction: Jiří Pokorný
Stage Design: Aleš Votava
Costume Design: Zuzana Krejzková
Music: Michal Ničík
Dramaturgy: Janoš Krist
A brief auto-biography of Venedikt V. Jerofejev (October 24, 1938 - May 11, 1990)
I was born on October 24, 1938 on the Kola Peninsula near the Arctic Circle. I first crossed the Arctic Circle (of course from the North side to the South) after I finished school at seventeen. At that time, I travelled to Moscow for the entrance examinations to the Moscow State University. I was accepted to the University, but after one and a half years, they disqualified me due to my absence from the military department. From April 1957, I worked at various places, practically all of them above the Soviet Union - as a worker in a grocery store (Kolomna), as an assistant in the stone workshop during the construction of the Čerjomuški apartment complex (Moscow), as a parish (Vladimir), as an officer of the militia (Orechovo - Zujevo), as a worker in a bottle recycling depot (Moscow), as digger in a geological expedition (Ukraine), as a member of the Armed Protection (Moscow), as a librarian (Brjanks), as an assistant in the geophysical expedition (Arctic Region), as the chief of a cement storage depot on the highway construction from Moscow to Peking (Džeržinsk, Gorkov area), as well as several other places. But for the longest time, I stayed with the communications as a cable line fitter (Tambov, Mičurinsk, Jelec, Orel, Lipeck, Smolensk, Riga, Bělorusko from Gomel through Mogilev to Polock and other places). Almost ten years with the communications.
But the only job that appealed to me was the one I had in 1974 as a worker in a laboratory at the parasitological expedition in Hladové stepi (Hungry Steppes) in Tadžikistán. It was an expedition of the All-Union Scientific Invention Disinfection Sanitary Institute for War with a Flying Biting Insect. In 1966, I became a father, in 1988 a grandfather (my granddaughter's name is Nastasja Jerofejevna).
According to the testimony of my mother, I started to write at the age of five. The first work of any worth was "Notes of a Psychopath" (1956-58) - the most voluminous and the most inept. I began to write that at the age of seventeen. "The Announcing", my work from 1962, was valued by the professionals in the main cities as a refractory attempt to create the evangelism of Russia existentialism and the inverted Nietzsche.
At the beginning of the Sixties, I wrote several essays about my Norwegian relatives (after one about Hamsun and Bergson, and two about the later Ibsen plays). The science bulletin of the Vladimir State Pedagogical Faculty included all of them as methodologically terrible. In autumn 1969, I finally found my own style, and in Winter 1970 I wrote "Moskva - Petuški" (from January 19 till April 6, 1970). In 1972, the work "Dmitrij Šostakovič" followed, which is of course still lost in the handwriting and the attempts to renew it have not lead to anything.
In the years following, all of my works remained in the drawer in the tens of notebooks as well as fat tablets. The wanton essay about Vasilij Rozanov was an exception, and, as well as other things, was written for the press of the magazine Věče.
In Spring 1985, I wrote the tragedy in five acts "Valpružin´s Night or Kročeje Komondorov's". The two ideas for the plays were postponed for a long time due to my illness (cancer of larynx). The poem "Moskva - Petuški" was published for the first time in a very condensed version in the magazine "The Sobering and Culture" (No 12 / 1988 and No 1, 2, 3 / 1989), then later in its entirety in the almanac Věsť (publisher Krasnaja palata), and finally... in this book, which I had doubts about until the last moment.
Vendekit Vasiljevič Jerofejev
(from the Czech translation of Libor Konvička)
text of the programme: HaDivadlo, Brno