The Lachende Bestien theatre group was formed during rehearsals of its first production, 120 Days of Freedom, dealing with limits of imagination and humanity and formally encompassing drama, demonstration and performance. It was followed by The Passion Play, a performance-happening, repeated every year at Easter. The group treated a more intimate theme – loneliness in the contemporay world – in a version of Kurt Vonnegut´s Slapstick, entitled Cries of the Nightjar. Lachende Bestien, founded in 2011, performed first at the Theatre on the Balustrade (Eliadova knihovna, Divadlo Na zábradlí), within the SPEK Association. Before leaving the Balustrade Theatre, it produced a fragment-happening of two plays by Shakespeare as a dialogue (Timon/Coriolanus). LB then joined the Kartel Platform, a loose association of three directors and their collaborators. Their productions took place at the Pilot Klub and at the Podnik. LB staged Kohlhaas Terror after the novel Michael Kohlhaas by Kleist, focusing on the themes of justice, legality and terrorism. In 2015 LB became the residential ensemble at the Venuše ve Švehlovce Theatre. After a series of „auteur“ projects, Pornogeography is the first production of a stage play, and also the first-time presentation of this text by Werner Schwab. LB advocates the idea of the theatre as a critical medium, provocative, socio-critical, political. It prefers to choose issues that are „in the air.“ The form of its productions is chosen with respect to the treated theme. Playership, demonstration, irony and detachment are the group´s principles. Michal Hába is the Artistic Director of LB. Lachende Bestien members also perform in the Horse and Motor Theatre (Divadlo koňa a motora), a travelling, social and community project, also a part of Kartel.

THE MISSION

(Heiner Müller)
Directed by Michal Hába
(2 women, 4 men)

„Slavery is a natural law, old as mankind. Hi!“
Liberté Egalité Fraternité. Love, treason and death.. Hegel, Haiti and Pirates of the Caribbean.
Lachende Bestien interpret Heiner Muller´s text.. The story from the times of the French
Revolution. Location: the Caribbean. Négritude included.

Premiere 12 & 14.1.2018 in Venuše ve Švehlovce

 

SEZUAN (BASIEREND AUF BRECHT/BASED ON BRECHT)

Directed by Michal Hába
Art Director: Adriana Černá
Costumes: Adriana Černá
Music: Jindřich Čížek
With: Markéta Dvořáková, Adriana Kubištová Máčiková, Johana Schmidtmajerová, Marie Švestková a Jindřich Čížek

Ping pong panda jin´n´jang – province Szechuan"

The new original project of the Lachende Bestien Company, based on Brecht´s Good Person of Szechwan and his theoretical writings. Four acresses take up Brecht to make a statement about feminism, love, capitalism and living in truth.
Demonstration, politics, Verfremdungseffekt (estrangement effect).

 

FERDINANDE!

Written and directed by Michal Hába

Dramaturge: Simona Petrů
Art Director: Adriana Černá
Music: Jindřich Čížek
With: Michal Hába and the band KONZUM KOKAIN KAPITALISMUS (Jindřich Čížek, Vlado Mikláš a Michal Škoda)

„Ferdinand Vaněk dnes – a topic for theatre today“

The intellectual in public space, Václav Havel and his legacy, postcommunism and postmodern confusion, absence of a single truth or rather posttruth, division of the society into masses and élite and impossiblity of their mutual understanding. „Ferdinand Vaněk Today“ misses his partner, the Brewmaster, so he is not engaged in a dialogue, only in a powerfully powerless monologue. The text is inspired by Václav Havel´s play Audience and by his essays The Power of the Powerless or The Anatomy of the Gag.

 

COALHOUSE RAGTIME HORROR TERROR FUNY SHOW

Written and directed by Michal Hába and collaborators
Music: Jindřich Čížek
Visuals: Marek Brožek
Costumes: Adriana Černá
Directorial supervision: Šimon Spišák
Stage demonstration: Michal Hába

Inspired by the novels Michael Kohlhaas by Heinrich von Kleist and Ragtime by E.L.Doctorow, the Kohlhaas Terror production, Kafka´s short story Outside the Law, Czech fairy-tale bandit Rumcajs, American popculture superheroes, and audience participation. A production combining the classical stage form, performance and staged demonstration on lofty themes of universal justice and its limits, difference between revenge and justice, legality and legitimacy, terrorist action and audience participation. Kohlhaas, a horse merchant, rides in the darkness of universal injustice to the ragtime tunes of Coalhouse Walker Jr.!

 

PORNOGEOGRAPHY

Play by Werner Schwab
Translated by Barbora Schnelle, Michal Hába
Directed by Michal Hába
Director´s Assistant : Anna Marie Maxera
Dramaturge: Lukáš Jiřička
Art Director: Antonín Šilar
Costumes: Adriana Černá
Music: Jindřich Čížek
With: Roman Zach/Jiří Konvalinka, Martin Pechlát, Lukáš Bouzek, Hynek Chmelař, Johana Schmidtmajerová, Marie Švestková, Adriana Máčiková-Kubištová, Jindřich Čížek

Josef Balvín Award Winner 2016 (Award for the best Czech production of a German play)

„You got to fuck…lick the dry ice from the neighbourly bodily universality, which must become a part of you just like natural alienation.“

The first-time Czech production of Pornogeography is a black-humour analysis of the morose and vicious bourgeois fascism of the characters, as well as a seethingly cynical report on their dreams, desires, and their surprising fulfillment. Schwab declared he was not interested in a theme but in the language, which was the theme for him. Director Hába comments: „When staging Schwab, one must not forget that the core of the text is in the distorted language, you cannot interpret merely the situation ort he theme, while especially today one cannot overlook the theme of latent or inner fascism, the situation when people in fear destroy anything that is different.“

Austrian playwright Werner Schwab (1958-1994), along with Peter Handke, Thomas Bernhard or Elfriede Jelinek, a provocative and uncompromisingly critical dramatist, is reputed for his poetic „texts-sculptures“, in which the text is an unstoppable avalanche of verbal „populodiarrhea“. In the Czech Republic, Schwab is related to the famous era of the Prague Comedy Theatre of Artistic Director Dušan D. Pařízek. Lachende Bestien continues in its footsteps: it employs some of the former Comedy actors and Michal Hába was assistant to director Pařízek.

 

THE PASSION PLAY

Directed by Michal Hába, Šimon Spišák
With: Adriana Máčiková Kubištová, Markéta Dvořáková, Marie Švestková, Šimon Spišák, Jesus of Nazareth

„Do you really love your neighbours as you love yourself? Would you have both cheeks slapped, if one is enough?“

Jesus accepted our invitation and he has decided to refute all untruths spread about him by his followers. Jesus will demonstrate a long jump into faith and back, and he will also perform his acrobatic act on the cross.

„The Kingdom of Heaven is coming, come and meet it.“

 

 

CRIES OF THE NIGHTJAR

Based on the novel Slapstick by Kurt Vonnegut
Adapted and directed by: Michal Hába, Šimon Spišák
Music: Jindřich Čížek
With: Adriana Máčiková Kubištová, Marie Švestková, Michal Hába, Šimon Spišák, Lukáš Bouzek, Jindřich Čížek

The story of deserted cities and spiritual cannibalism and incest and loneliness and lack of love and death, and so on…It depicts me and my sisters as monsters, and so on… To whom it may interest.

Heigh-ho.

The critically acknowledged Lachende Bestien production in collaboration with the Horse and Motor Theatre.

 

 

120 DAYS OF FREEDOM

After Marquis de Sade
Written and directed by Michal Hába, Šimon Spišák

Music: Jindřich Čížek

With: Adriana Máčiková Kubištová, Marie Švestková, Markéta Dvořáková, Michal Hába, Šimon Spišák, Lukáš Bouzek, Jindřich Čížek

„There is a latent pig in everyone.“
„What the hell,“ Curval said, „what are you doing, Duke?“
„I´m just fucking my own daughter, imagining she´s dead.“
„Damn, you rascal, you crave crime!“
„Let the devil take me,“ the Duke replied, „I want it to be true.“ His foul semen poured into Julia´s vagina and he asked Miss Duclos to carry on in her narration.

 

 

KOHLHAAS TERROR

Written by: Michal Hába, Adriana Kubištová-Máčiková
Directed by: Michal Hába
Dramaturgy: Adriana Kubištová-Máčiková, Jan Kačena
Sets and video: Marek Brožek
Music: Vladimír Miláš, Dušan Černak
With: Adriana Máčiková-Kubištová, Marie Švestková, Michal Hába

I want my horses back, my beautiful, well-fed horses. Take them back, your skinny beasts, here´s your bravery and moderation, you wise guy. Was? Mande? What? These are not my horses. I wanted to be a law-abiding citizen, but it seems I´ll have to burn everything down.