Joke Killers

TUE May 11 + WED May 12 9:00 pm Konvikt / circus tent
premiere at Flora Theatre Festival

SKUTR & Adéla Laštovková Stodolová
JOKE KILLERS

dramatic advisers and directors
SKUTR + Adéla Laštovková Stodolová
choreography Adéla Laštovková Stodolová
sound Petr Kaláb
lighting Michael Bláha
cast Adéla Laštovková Stodolová, Zuzana Stavná, Petr Vršek,
Andrej Polák, Petr Vančura


Joke Killers (premiered on May 11, 2010 at 14th DF) is a direct follow-up project to the successful authorial production La petite mort shown at Olomouc's Bezručovy sady park at DF 2009 and later nominated for the Sazka and Divadelní noviny Award, in which the directorial duo SKUTR (Martin Kukučka & Lukáš Trpišovský) carry on a joint cooperation with the choreographer and performer Adéla Laštovková Stodolová.
Unlike in case of La petite mort in which the authors and actors created poetic physical theatre full of humour and passion, their new project, Joke Killers, challenges them to a brand new topic – the motive of clowns. In grasping this theme, the artists wish to highlight the contrast of the individual's innermost world – including one's fantasies – and the world of social rules and conventions. The impulse for this project developed from Adéla Laštovková Stodolová's (a former student of the mime Ctibor Turba) longlasting interest in the search for a new, modern form of comics and nostalgia. The production seeks as its chief aim the rediscovery of the role of a clown and expression of his or her place in theatre and society.
The production is a joint project of SKUTR and the Flora Theatre Festival with its exclusive opening performances on May 11 and 12, 2010. Immediately after the premiere in Olomouc, the project will move on to represent Czech culture at Expo 2010 in Shanghai.


SKUTR (Martin KUkučka & Lukáš TRpišovský)
M. K. and L. T. started to cooperate during their studies at Prague's DAMU and already their school performances managed to raise considerable critical acclaim. Shortly after finishing their studies, they were offered to join the Archa.lab project at Prague's Archa Theatre. The duo then went on to make several extraordinary and successful projects in cooperation with this specific alternative scene.
SKUTR have been nominated for the Alfréd Radok Award as Best Newcomer of the Year three times and their project Understand received a nomination for the same award as Best Performance. For a number of years now, SKUTR have been drawing audiences abroad as well (e.g. in Serbia, Poland, Lithuania, Italy, Germany, Romania, Slovakia, Scotland etc.).
The name SKUTR is currently also used by a group of artists who formed during SKUTR's engagement at Archa Theatre. SKUTR's major productions include Nickname, Understand, 8-Birds Black, Tits Great, Master and Student (presented at DF 2008), Weepers or La petite mort (DF 2009, Bezručovy sady park).
SKUTR have been largely involved in one of the most acclaimed Czech theatre project of the last year: La Putyka (winning Best Performance of 2009 in the Divadelní noviny critical survey, among others).


“Working in a tandem is an extremely comfortable thing to do. Each of us is free to do what he's good at and what amuses him most. The other partner will then do the rest. A lot of directors feel really envious about our joint cooperation.”


Adéla Laštovková Stodolová (b. 1978) graduated from the Duncan Centre Conservatory in 1997 and in 2003 from the Faculty of Non-Verbal and Comedy Theatre of HAMU music school under Professor Ctibor Turba. Since 2005 she has been a doctoral student at the Faculty of Alternative and Puppet Theatre at DAMU Academy where she also teaches. Apart from acting (cooperation with Archa, Studio Y, Divadlo Komedie, Alfred ve dvoře and Rokoko theatres), she is also a choreographer (The Banks of the Ganges and The Excursion of Mr. Brouček at the National Theatre, Prague, Happy End at Divadlo Na zábradlí and Paradise of the Heart, Labyrinth of the World at Archa Theatre). She also engages in projects she authors herself (Za tím, All the Only Ones, It's so lovely, že? and La petite mort). All the Only Ones (shown at Konvikt at DF 2004) won the Divadelní noviny Prize in the Alternative section, the Audience Award at the Czech Dance Platform, the Grand Prix at Poland's festival Zdarzenia and the Grand Prix at the Fiesta festival in Venezuela. Laštovková has also cooperated with the SKUTR directorial tandem, appearing at Archa Theatre in the projects Nickname, Through the Soul of a Child, Understand and Weepers. As part of the Archa.lab project, she conducts regular movement and dance theatre workshops.


La petite mort manages to express – through minute, yet perfectly precise stage details – the everyday common clichés of human pairing and mating rituals, their mutual encounters and efforts, the stock tactics of women wooing men with expressive urgency and of men seducing women with their careless indifference. The show does not for a single moment spill into an obvious and cheap cliché but, on the contrary, it always finds a way to formulate the essential in a hyperbolic nutshell.