Czechoslovak-American Marionette Theatre will end its run of "REVOLUTION!," a theatre spectacle that examines revolutions throughout the history of mankind as a backdrop for the extraordinary peaceful 1989 Velvet Revolution in former Czechoslovakia. The production played at Theater for the New City and featured regulars of Czechoslovak American Marionette Theatre and guest artists.
The piece was performed in the tradition of Central European medieval street and traveling circus shows, using puppetry, object theatre and circus arts. Czech and Czech-American theatre artists join together to offer their particular perspectives on the Velvet Revolution of 1989 and an overview of the very idea of revolution through the ages. The piece is written and directed by Pavel Dobruský and Vít Horejš. Guest artists from The Czech Republic will include Michal Bumbálek, Bára Milotová and Sergej Sanza (Facka/The Slap Theater members), Pavel Strouhal (Project WINGS Director), and Hana Kalousková. Supported by Agentura Dell'arte (Czech Republic) and GOH Productions (NYC).
"REVOLUTION!" is part of "Performing Revolution in Central and Eastern Europe," a five-month long festival featuring a wide range of performances, exhibitions, film screenings and symposia throughout NYC.
Vit Horejš, an emigre from Prague, founded Czechoslovak-American Marionette Theatre in 1990, utilizing century-old Czech puppets which he found in the Jan Hus Church on East 74th Street. His trademark is using puppets of many sizes, from six-inch toy marionettes to twelve-foot rod puppets which double as scenery. CAMT is dedicated to preserving and presenting traditional and not-so-traditional puppetry. Horejš is well known for innovative re-interpretations of classics. At La MaMa E.T.C., the company has performed "The Life and Times of Lee Harvey Oswald" (2004), "Don Juan or the Wages of Debauchery" (2003), "The Prose of the Transsiberian and of the Little Joan of France" (2001), "Johannes Dokchtor Faust" (2000), "The Little Rivermaid Rusalka" (1999), "Golem" (1997, which was featured in the 1998 Henson International Puppetry Festival), and "Once There Was a Village" (2007), an ethno-opera with puppets, found objects and music by Frank London.
"Johannes Dokchtor Faust" was featured in CAMT's first season (1990) and was re-staged in 1994 as part of NADA's Obie Award-winning "Faust Festival" in Soho. It was revived at La MaMa (in 2000) and at Manhattan's Bohemian Hall (in 2007). Other NYC productions include "A Christmas Carol--OY! Hanukkah--Merry Kwanzaa," "Kacha and the Devil," "The White Doe - Or The Piteous Trybulations of the Sufferyng Countess Jenovefa," "Snehurka, The Snow Maiden" and "Twelve Iron Sandals." CAMT has performed its "Hamlet" at the Vineyard Theater, in outdoor venues in NYC, and in the 2004 Prague Summer Shakespeare Festival in the Lord Chamberlain's Palace Courtyard at Prague Castle.
CAMT's "The Bass Saxophone," a WWII fantasy with music based on a story by Josef Skvorecky, played 11 weeks at the Grand Army Plaza Soldiers' and Sailors' Memorial Arch in Brooklyn during the fall of 2005 and the spring of 2006.
In 2007, the troupe mounted one of the company's signature pieces, "Hamlet, Prince of Denmark," on a carousel in DUMBO, Brooklyn. The production made an unmistakable comment on the merry-go-round of fate. Despite its unusual setting, the New York Times (Matthew Gurewitsch) characterized the production as "unabashedly old-fashioned, with just a few postmodern accents."
Last season, the troupe performed "The Very Sad Story of Ethel & Julius, Lovers and Spyes, and about Their Untymelie End while Sitting in a Small Room at the Correctional Facility in Ossining New York" at Theater for the New City in December, 2008. Anita Gates wrote in the New York Times, "Vit Horejš has written and directed a first-rate, thoroughly original production and made it look effortless. The cast gives charged, cohesive performances, and the staging is expert." That production was followed in the spring by "The Historye of Queen Esther, of King Ahasverus & of the Haughty Haman" at The Marjorie S. Deane Little Theater of the West Side Y.
The Company has also appeared at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Lincoln Center Out-of-Doors, the Winter Garden of the World Financial Center, the Smithsonian Institution, The World Trade Center, the Antonin Dvorak Festival in Spillville, Iowa, the Heart of the Beast in Minneapolis, the Lowell Folk Arts Festival in Massachusetts and in international festivals in Poland, Turkey, Pakistan, and the Czech Republic.
Czechoslovak-American Marionette Theatre is a program of GOH Productions. This event has been made possible in part with public funds from the National Endowment of the Arts, the New York State Council on the Arts, New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, Materials for the Arts, and private donors.
