The Wasteland
length: 80 minutes
The Wasteland is a multimedia project based on a libretto, a poetic opus created by the linking of three most important collections of poems by the Czech underground poet Pavel Zajíček, namely Roztrhanej film / The Torn Film, Šedej sen / The Gray Dream, and Kniha moří / The Sea Book. All the selected poems were written in the early 1980s and they provide an insight into the author’s particular perception of the period. The Wasteland consists of six parts, six variable constants: City, Journey, Forest, Night, Sea, Wasteland.
The libretto expresses the pure imagination and the pure existence that might lead us through the wasteland of the flat and over-informed world, which on the first place tries “not to get dirty”, not to compromise itself.
The libretto employs documents from the secret police file on the Czech underground culture scene (Druhá kultura / Other Culture, DG 307 and Pavel Zajíček).
The production aims to foster the intimacy of the creative work through free artistic act to accompany the poet, a poet who stumbles across the present on his journeys.
If we are to learn anything at all, then perhaps by listening to silence, solitude, humbleness. That’s the fabric for your beautiful robes of light and darkness! You shall not see, hear or feel anymore, when you begin to see, hear and feel the strange new roar in your head!
The production is accompanied by the live band DG 307.
The Wasteland is dedicated to Filip Topol and Ivan Martin Jirous.
The production has been supported by the festival …příští vlna/next wave…
The production has been supported by Karel Schwarzenberg.
It is a coproduction of Studio Hrdinů and O.S. Mezery.
We would like to give our thanks to PARKHOTEL Praha for their donation of the bed sheets.
