The Show Must Go ON/OFF-line: “Uncompressability” Green Thursdays – a cycle of international, online discussions – episode 4

17 December, 15.00-17.00 CET on-line

Participants:

Martynas Petrikas / LTU, Associacte professor at the Faculty of Communication at Vilnius University

Savas Patsalidis / GRK, Professor of Theatre at Aristotle University and the Drama School of the  National Theatre of Northern Greece

Nela H. Kornetová / CZ, Independent performer and performance maker

Moderator:

Jiří Šimek / CZ, Actor, Theatre Artist and co-founder of Ufftenživot Group

In the days of analogue technology, it was necessary to go to a particular place for culture. Once there, the experience was shared with other people. There was no way around it; it was inevitably a collective, shared encounter with theatre, music, paintings. In contrast, the present moment is characterised by fragmentation, digitalisation and personalisation. Algorithms curate unique experiences for each of us on the screens of our mobile devices. Films, music and paintings have simply been compressed into this space and today we are overwhelmed with compressed copies of them: MP4s, MP3s, JPGs, and GIFs. Somewhere, to the side of all this, sits the theatre, like a stone around which this digital river flows. The analogue epoch is well behind us and we’re already well into the digital phase. Can the compression of art and its solitary consumption help us to find a new appreciation for the shared and the collective? Does today’s digital experience offer a chance to arrive at a deeper and better understanding of the importance of collective experience than was possible when it was the only option? How is our relationship to shared experience changing, now that it is a choice?

The new channel Televize Naživo will appear in the terrestrial broadcast on Friday, 20 November 2020, at 8 p.m.  It is a joint project of Cirk La Putyka, Jatka78, and Viktor Tauš’s Heaven Gate company. It aims to present the TV viewers with the works of theatremakers whose performances cannot be staged live in the theatres due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Naživo TV will offer up-to-date live theater and music productions, as well as performances for children. The TV programme Naživo will cover the production of Cirk La Putyka, Jatka78, Amerikánka, the Theatre on the Balustrade, and Minor. Moreover, viewers will be able to watch performances and concerts sets in the live environment of Film naživo, Talk Show by the Vosto5 company inspired by the series Kupé v lese, concerts of Lenka Dusilová, Bára Poláková, and Czech Philharmonic. Mornings will be dedicated to Domanéž, exercises with circus acrobats, and late evenings will see Late Night Show with cabarets, burlesque, music, dance, and magic.

The Slovak National Museum in cooperation with memory institutions in Bratislava invites the XVI. year of the popular pan-European event Night of Museums and Galleries in 2020. This year, untraditionally – in a virtual form.

Due to anti-pandemic measures, the traditional date of the event (Saturday, 3 May) was postponed by the organizers in France to 14 November in spring 2020. However, as early as the autumn of autumn, it became clear that the epidemiological situation could worsen. A question mark already hung over the visit of “stone” cultural institutions in November.

Not to have to think whether culture is too far. Or to watch a performance – a new one or a classical one that has not been in the repertoire for a few years – undisturbed and anytime. The first streaming theatre platform in the Czech Republic – Dramox – offers all of this, starting on 20 October 2020. The goal is to support theatre production in the long run and expand the community of people who live and breathe theatre. The Dramox founders are Martin Zavadil, Radim Horák, and Martin Hájek – the e-commerce businessman and owner of Livesport.

The biggest library of theatre recordings will offer performances from the Dejvice Theatre, Klicpera Theatre, J. K. Tyl Theatre, Goose on the String Theatre, and many others from the Czech Republic. The viewers may see the performances that are sold out or those that can be labeled experimental. “We want to bring theatre closer to people and allow them to spend more time with it than it was possible until now,” explains Martin Zavadil, one of the founders. “I believe that Dramox can attract more people to the theatre, just as similar services have attracted people to films or music,” he adds.

This year’s 19th edition of the International Festival of Children’s Theatres Banja Luka 2020 in Bosna and Herzegovina was exceptional. Due to the global pandemic, the organizers had to do without the in-person participation of invited international theatre companies at the venue. However, they decided not to cancel the festival and provided the viewers with video recordings of invited productions. The festival eventually hosted twelve productions from eight countries.