On-Stage: Revolution!?

What’s a revolution without puppets? While many revolutions have had metaphorical puppets, the Czechoslovak-American Marionette Theatre (CAMT) represents the great revolutions of history, culminating in the 1989 Velvet Revolution, with its cast of wooden marionettes, as well as the puppet-like puppeteers themselves in Revolution!?, an avant-garde Commedia dell’Arte which officially opened at the Theater for the New City, in conjunction with the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts’s multi-disciplinary Performing Revolution festival.

Consisting of a series of vignettes, Revolution!? has a decidedly absurdist (occasionally even abstract) bent, reflecting the influence experimental Eastern European theater groups, like perhaps the Polish Theatre of the Eighth Day. Though founded by troupe member Vít Horejš following the discovery of several traditional Czech puppets in the Jan Hus Church on the Eastside of Manhattan, the puppets employed in Revolution!? are entirely featureless (so do not look for a Havel marionette).

Perhaps the most intriguing revolution is that of Prometheus, in which music, a fairly jazzy tenor saxophone in fact, takes the place of fire. It is all the more impressive since it takes place on stilts (like much of the show). After Spartacus and the Hussite Czech peasant revolutions, the CAMT reaches our revolution.

The “Boston Tea Party” scene actually takes on additional meanings today with the advent of the new Tea Party Movement. While their mash-up of Washington crossing the Delaware with the lyrics of Broadway conveys something uniquely American, it ranges well into parody. (Though it is surely unintentional, at the risk of sounding “jingoistic,” one would also prefer to see this scene done without the American flag being stepped on.)

“Bolsheviks” is easily the funniest scene, in which a harried school teacher attempts to teach the 1917 Revolution to a distracted and distracting student. Unlike the American sequence though, the humor is not derived from the revolution itself, but from the comedic circumstances of the school setting. On the other hand, the strongest and darkest images are created during “Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite,” as the marionette corpses start to pile up during the reign of terror.

There are some striking visuals in Revolution!? and its cast of puppeteers are enormously talented physically. Nearly every troupe member spends considerable time on stilts as well as manipulating the marionettes. Hana Kalouskova also exhibits remarkable flexibility in “Prometheus” and Adela Jrackova demonstrates her considerable juggling skills in several scenes. However, a consistent through-line linking the episodes, beyond the revolutionary theme, would have helped maintain a more consistent tone throughout the show.

Revolution!? is a well produced display of puppetry in an adventurous theatrical setting, but it is probably not the show to go to for insight into the Velvet Revolution (or any of the prior revolutions for that matter). While younger audiences may well appreciate its physicality and marionettes, it really is devised with adults in mind. An interesting but not imperative theater experience, Revolution!? runs through March 21st at the Theater of the New City.

(Photo by Zita Bradley)

A View from the East: Dwarves Go to the Ukraine

They are the Merry Pranksters of freedom and democracy in Eastern Europe. They even have their own psychedelic bus. However, their idealism is truly a beautiful thing. The self-styled “Dwarves” are profiled in Miroslaw Dembiński’s Dwarves Go to Ukraine, the next installment of A View from the East: Documentaries from Eastern Europe, a series of non-fiction films addressing the Communist experience as part of the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts’s multi-disciplinary Performing Revolution festival.

For the Dwarves, the color orange forms a bond of solidarity between Poland and Ukraine. During the marital law period, the Communist government assiduously white-washed over Solidarity graffiti whenever it cropped up. As the white patches proliferating across the country, Waldemar “Major” Frydrych starting filling them with dwarf caricatures to underscore the absurdity of the Communist system. Inevitably, the site of protestors wearing orange dwarf caps being hauled away by the authorities also became a common site that would logically link the color with Poland’s emerging democracy movement.

Twenty-some years later, the color orange was also adopted by the Ukrainian democracy movement, mobilized by a brazenly rigged run-off election ostensibly won by the Russian-oriented Yanukovych government. Under intense international pressure, a new run-off election was ordered, pitting Yanukovych against opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko. Recognizing the importance of the moment, the Dwarves broke out their orange caps, loaded up a bus, and headed to Ukraine to show their support for Yushchenko and the Orange Revolution.

Dembiński is hardly ambitious stylistically, but he captures history in the making from a very personal perspective. Many of the man-on-the-street interviews seem to offer a real window into Ukrainian attitudes and the Dwarves themselves have an endearing knack for combining whimsy and serious principles (the sculpted chocolate Yushchenko and Yanukovych heads are a particularly eccentric touch). Ultimately, there is just something refreshing about the younger Dwarves’ unpretentious idealism (not to mention some are cute too) that makes Ukraine a pleasant and even inspiring viewing experience.

Those who can sneak away from the office Tuesday afternoons at 2:30 are strongly advised to check out the View from the East series. It is a rare opportunity to check out many hard to see documentaries, like the Ukraine. Previous films included Alexandru Solomon’s Cold Waves, which explained how the American financed Radio Free Europe built up a staggering 65% listenership among all Romanians. Scoring some impressive interviews and filmed with visual flair, Wave is an intriguing film rarely screened in New York. Likewise, there just have not been many chances for most New Yorkers too view Czech television’s The Man Who Overestimated the Czech Soul: the Escapes of Josef Bryks. Imprisoned first by the Nazis and then the Czechoslovakian Communists, the Czech born RAF Captain led a tragically eventful life that makes for fascinating viewing.

Warmly recommended, Ukraine screens at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts this coming Tuesday (2/9) with another Dembiński “Orange” short. View continues through February 23rd with Andre Meier’s provocatively titled Do Communists Have Better Sex? and Neven Korda and Zemira Alajbegovic’s The Old and the New, while Performing Revolution continues through March 31 with a variety of programming.

Performing Revolution: Velvet Oratorio

On November 9th, world leaders past and present converged on Berlin to commemorate the twentieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. However, our own president was not sufficiently interested to attend. In contrast, the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts has found the fall of the wall and the subsequent revolutions that swept the Communist Bloc worthy of five months of special programming. Incorporating drama, film, dance, and literature, the Performing Revolution series came to Bohemia National Hall last night for the Untitled Theater Company’s production of Velvet Oratorio, a dramatic hybrid chronicling the events of then Czechoslovakia’s Velvet Revolution.

Incorporating primary sources including contemporary news accounts, official statements of the Czechoslovak Communist Party, and declassified CIA and State Department cables, as well of scenes from Vaclav Havel’s Vánek plays and original interviews conducted by librettist Edward Einhorn, Oratorio presents an impressionistic but informative overview of the heady days of the Revolution. As the play opens, Ferdinand Vánek, Havel’s literary alter-ego, is in police custody yet again, but this time his interrogator is a bit nervous. Since he has been confined to a cell, the writer has not heard the news sweeping the across Eastern Europe—the Wall has fallen.

While Vánek again serves as a stand-in for his creator, we do hear from one specific historical figure, American Ambassador Shirley Temple Black, who Oratorio depicts as quite an effective and relatively proactive diplomat. On the other hand, the unnamed Communist Party spokesman comes across as a “Baghdad Bob” without the style points. He is nicely brought to life though with appropriate oily insincerity (and increasing uncertainty) by Danny Bowes.

At times, Oratorio has an absurdist bent that would befit some of Stoppard’s work in terms of tone and certainly subject matter. However, Oratorio often ends such scenes with a thoughtful kicker, as when two namesakes of Martin Smid, the mathematics student erroneously reported murdered during the November 17th demonstration, petition Vánek to declare them “alive.”

Musically, Oratorio is imminently respectable, but the odd harmonies and dissonant passages might be a bit challenging for patrons not accustomed to contemporary classical composers. From a shallow musical theater perspective, it also lacks the rousing notes of pure triumph to accompany the Revolution’s peaceful climax.

Unquestionably, Oratorio’s strongest scenes involve Peter Brown as the literary everyman Vánek (again also credit the original creator Havel), particularly when confronting his former interrogator and appealing to the conscience of a former colleague from 1968 who had since joined the government. Indeed, Brown simultaneously conveys compassion and an ironic sensibility that is very Czech.

Oratorio is a well-conceived production that provokes welcomed reflections on the Velvet Revolution and the fall of the Communism in general. Twenty years after 1989, within my own lifetime the Czech Republic has been a free country longer than it has been a Soviet Satellite. That is definitely an anniversary worth marking. The UTC’s next free production will be the Czech-themed Rudolf II, beginning March 5th. Performing Revolution continues with programming well into March 2010.