Václav Havel’s well-known one-act play Vernissage (1975) is a caustic, ironic drama about an empty, platitude-filled life that is meaningful to its protagonists only when it is admired by those around them. The shy leading character Bedřich finds himself visiting old friends and in their perfectly engaged, contrived flat, has to face his own conscience above all – lest he lose himself in an absurd cycle of empty speeches.

This year’s non-growth season of HaDivadlo, instead of presenting new productions, brings so‑called Creative Interventions, which work on the principle of transforming and reforming the existing repertoire. One demonstration of this dramaturgical cycle is Vernissage presented in the flat of an Olomouc audience member. The renewal of the public space in domestic settings thus directly refers to the normalisation tradition of flat theatres and formally thematises and responds to the quarantine trauma of the last two years.

Ivan Buraj (1988) was born in Bratislava. While studying drama directing at the Janáček Academy of Music and Performing Arts in Brno, he was already working as an intern at the National Theatre Prague with Robert Wilson's production of The Makropulos Case (2010). He earned his Masters' degree in 2011 with his adaptation of Kleist's The Prince of Homburg, which was successful at the ISTROPOLITANA festival in Bratislava (special award of the jury and audience award) and was even nominated for the Theatre Newspaper Award.

He has been the artistic director of HaDivadlo since 2015, where he has prepared 10 productions thus far. He attracted the attention of the critics with his ambitious adaptation of Herman Broch's trilogy The Sleepwalkers (2016) or Ibsen’s Eyolf. With staging Gorky’s Provincials (Divadelní noviny award for best drama), Buraj initiated a line of production where he attempts to cope with realism in the context of the crisis of an individual isolated in his/her inability to perceive others – all three productions were featured at the past editions of the festival. The second prominent line which threads through Buraj’s work is reflection on climate change and the effort to integrate radical ecology into the theatre process. In light of this belief, productions such as Ours, Perception or Cosmos (National Theatre) were created. Cosmos together with Provincials and Stiller (Studio Hrdinů) together make up Buraj’s trilogy on the critique of anthropocentrism.
Flora theatre festival follows the production of Ivan Buraj closely and will offer four of his productions in this year’s focus on the director’s work: Ours, Perception, Vernissage and Cosmos.

 

HaDivadlo theatre is situated in Brno, however, it was officially established in Prostějov in 1974 as Hanácké divadlo (director Svatopluk Vála and dramaturg Josef Kovalčuk were associated with it). Soon after it worked its way up from an amateur group to a professional studio stage with demanding dramaturgy.

They moved to Brno in 1985 and by merging with Ochotnický kroužek of J. A. Pitínský, the Kabinet múz was created. After some minor mishaps with their residence, they settled down in the former cinema of Alfa Pasáž in 2004. Remarkable personalities have participated in forming the unique poetics of the theatre such as the director and playwright Arnošt Goldflam, the actor and author Miloš Černoušek (aka Cyril Drozda), the musicians Jiří Bulis and Václav Koubek, the actors Ján Sedal, Marie Ludvíková and Miloslav Maršálek and the directors Jiří Pokorný, Břetislav Rychlík, Oxana Smilková, David Jařab, Luboš Balák and Marián Amsler.

Since 2015, Ivan Buraj has been the artistic director of the theatre. Apart from the German language texts: apart from Broch’s Sleepwalkers, also Bernhard’s slapstick The Force of Habit, Lotz’s drama Ridiculous Darkness, Müller’s memento The Message, Haushofer's Wall or Büchner's Woyzeck – part of the Flora 2021), the theatre repertoire includes production tailor-made for the theatre (Pitínský stage essay ’68, collective projects Ours and Perception or Austerlitz's experiment There Is a Show Going On During the Length of the Show).

Kamila Polívková works regularly with the theatre, she staged Schwab's First Ladies (Divadelní noviny award 2020) or the novel adaptations: Macocha after Petra Hůlová (2019) and The Wall by Marlen Haushofer, which is part of this year's Flora. Each season at HaDivadlo is framed by a specific theme reflecting the current issues in the society (such as Sources, Work or Adaptation). This year's motto „Degrowth“ is in the times of overproduction emphasizing the sustainability, even in the theatre sphere. Instead of bringing new premieres, HaDivadlo ingeniously „recycles“ older production through creative interventions with accent on fresh reflection of social and environmental topics, as will the creative team describe in the thematic discussion.

“It has been and still is a theatre involving an uncompromising search for current theatre language, although it has a tradition of intimate gesture and awareness of its own peripheral nature,” Ivan Buraj described the five-year course of the theatre in an interview for Art Zóna. As a theatre of ambitious yet not elitist dramaturgy, it takes action towards the audiences by organising dramaturgical introductions to productions, discussions after them, seminars and other programmes for secondary school students. They closely cooperate with a new platform for performative art Terén, which originated in Brno and operates as the third stage of the Centre for Experimental Theatre alongside the renowned repertory theatres – Husa na provázku Theatre and HaDivadlo.