Gold Cut

Studio Hrdinů’s production of Gold Cut is a loose continuation of the theater’s production of The Church, about controversial writer L. F. Céline. However, this time the main protagonist is Japanese artist, but above all writer Yukio Mishima. What both authors have in common is not only their exceptional literary work, but their greatly skewed characters. Mishima is perhaps most famous for his scandalous suicide, which represents a kind of culmination of his inner world in which beauty is the highest value. At the same time, this value is utterly paralyzing, the only way to cope with it being through destruction. Mishima’s world is full of dark sexuality and an increasingly growing nationalism that bears comparison with fascist ideology. Post-World War II Japan is a laboratory in which long-held traditions and values are being dismantled. What Western culture has been going through for centuries is taking place in just a matter of years. Mishima thus becomes a tragicomic character fighting for samurai traditions while living in a villa built in the Tuscan style.