Prague Crossroads Festival's programme released!

This year, we present Stefan Kaegi and Rimini Protokoll with their production This Is Not an Embassy (Made in Taiwan), Milo Rau and NTGent with their latest production Medea's Children, and the first-time guest in Prague, the French-Austrian director Gisèle Vienne with her spectacular show Extra Life. The festival also offers a rich accompanying programme and meetings with the creators.

The festival will start on Wednesday November 6, 2024, at 18.00 with the panel discussion ND Talks: Is theatre dangerous?, which is organised by the NT Drama in cooperation with the Wiener Festwochen as a part of the Resistance now! Tour.

Stefan Kaegi / Rimini Protokoll: THIS IS NOT AN EMBASSY (MADE IN TAIWAN)

Despite China considering Taiwan its province, it officially has the status of an independent republic since 1947 and for some time after 1945, it even had its representation at the United Nations. However, after the political rapprochement between the US and China in the 1970s, a vast majority of states no longer recognised Taiwan as an independent state and it thus lost its official foreign mission there. During his residency in Taipei, Stefan Kaegi approached three Taiwanese nationals to jointly devise an event that would act as the official opening of a Taiwanese Embassy on a theatre stage. This Is Not an Embassy is a portrait of this little-known country that nonetheless plays a key strategic role in the current geopolitics and industry. We hereby invite you to the opening of the Taiwanese Embassy on the New Stage of the National Theatre.

>> November 6 & 7, 2024 at 8 p.m. at the New Stage <<

Milo Rau / NTGent: MEDEA'S CHILDREN

The second production presented in this year’s edition is Medea’s Children by Milo Rau, the long-standing director of the NTGent (Belgium) – renowned for its uncompromising dramaturgy and political engagement –, who was appointed the new artistic director of the Wiener Festwochen festival this year. Milo Rau will bring his latest production, a part of the series of his take on ancient Greek tragedies where he reinterprets and recontextualizes the founding stones of European drama and looks at them uncompromisingly through the lens of the current world. Moreover, in this production he returns to working with children seven years after the Five Easy Pieces, a production that the Czech audiences could see at the Archa Theatre in Prague.

In Medea's Children, six children dissect on stage the notorious Greek tragedy of a mother who kills her children for revenge. In this piece, the director explores the ways of working with children on stage, basing his narration on a recent case of a desperate mother who decided to kill herself and her children but survived her horrific act.
A group of children takes inspiration from this bloody criminal act, and perhaps one of the darkest myths of the European culture, to reflect on themselves: on their family history, their first loves and first encounters with death, their plans for the future and fears of the end of the world. How can a child cope with the parents’ divorce, injustice, a broken friendship, or the school pressure? Yet, instead of imagining the inner worlds of young people, Milo Rau works directly with them and gives voice to their feelings. The audience can thus experience a rare intergenerational dialogue first-hand.

>> November 9, 2024 at 8 p.m. & November 10, 2024 at 1 p.m. at the New Stage <<

Gisèle Vienne: EXTRA LIFE

Extra Life by the French-Austrian director Gisèle Vienne is the last production to be presented at the Prague Crossroads this year. The director studied philosophy, music and puppet theatre at the famous École Supérieure Charleville-Mézieres and has uniquely incorporated her knowledge and skills in her theatrical work.
Extra Life follows a story of two siblings who find themselves alone in the morning after a long party. Their close childhood bond was violently disrupted by a tragic event that happened twenty years ago and deeply affected them both. Now they have a chance to revisit and face the old trauma together, and perhaps eventually find the strength to move on.

Gisèle Vienne creates an inverted-time space on stage, where the present, the past, the future and memories co-exist simultaneously. The author thus proposes a novel way of perception where the young adults get a chance for a fresh start. Indeed, the title of the production, Extra Life, refers to an ‘extra’ piece of life, a life ‘beyond’, a chance for a new post-traumatic existence.

The show is also magical in that you can completely omit the sibling plot and let yourself be carried away by the psychedelic atmosphere, peculiar lighting design and unique choreography.

>> November 19 & 20, 2024 at 8 p.m. at the New Stage <<

Tickets are currently available at the National Theatre box office and online on the website.