Plays Database
The Mystery of Jack and the Clones of Chaos
A time-traveller from the future journeys back to 2010 to investigate the strange case of Jack, a thirteen year old boy who believes his life is being taken over by alien clones of himself. The clones look and sound just like him, but behave in ways he never would. They are messy, dirty, rude, destructive, obsessed with girls, clothes and music, sometimes childish, sometimes violent and frightening and get him into all sorts of trouble with his mother, his friends and teachers. When they invade his bedroom, Jack teams up with a famous female pop singer in a final battle to regain control of his life. The time-traveller is revealed as Jack, now grown up, revisiting his own adolescence and coming face-to-face with his younger self. A comedy-drama play about the confusions and battles of growing up, it runs for 45 minutes and is performed by one adult male actor and one teenage male actor with multi-role playing.
NOW 55 31 13 me - The boundary path of realities. One day in the life of adolescents
The script contains the entire text of the production. The actors for the most part play themselves, sometimes becoming fictitious characters.
NOW 55 31 13 me is not a theatre play in the true sense of the word, but is literally a theatre script. This is because it was created during the rehearsal process and is based on the testimonies of particular people. It is composed of both fictitious and documentary parts. The authors of the texts used in the script are writers Bára Gregorová and Blanka Josephová-Lu?áková, with use also being made of conversations and discussions between the actors in the production. Last but not least, it is important to mention that the play draws on the contributions of teenagers studying at a Pilsen grammar school. The fictitious part of NOW 55 31 13 me takes place over the course of a single day. The students get up in the morning and drag themselves into the classroom, going on to spend the afternoon on the internet. Their day is composed of images of mundanity and stereotype, but one thing about it is out of the ordinary. One of their fellow students has committed suicide by jumping off a roof. What form and likeness is taken by this magical NOW, in which children become adults?
Most of Petra Tejnorová’s auteur-style productions are created with no text to begin with, by means of improvisation, and it is thus relatively difficult to provide precise information ”about the author”. The authors of the script are the actual actors in NOW 55 31 13 Me, plus second-year students at the František K?ižík grammar school in Pilsen, playwright Blanka Josephová-Lu?áková and writer Bára Gregorová. The script contains the entire text of the production. The actors for the most part play themselves, sometimes becoming fictitious characters. This script is fulfilled only on stage, when acted in front of an audience, since it is closely interconnected with the action on stage.
Cyber Cyrano
Based on a true story, with devastating consequences. An isolated schoolgirl (Zsuzsi) is secretly in love with one of her classmates (Máté), who treats her quite badly. When a new girl (Heni) joins the class, Máté soon falls for her, making Zsuzsi’s case even more hopeless. In response, Zsuzsi creates some characters on a social networking site, which her classmates believe to be real. First she creates a boy, “Viktor”, the son of a diplomat, who lives abroad, spending his time sailing and horse-riding. She introduces Heni to Viktor (virtually, of course) and Heni falls in love with this glamorous boy who always tells Heni what Heni wants to hear.
Instead of Máté losing interest in Heni (as Zsuzsi had intended), he becomes very jealous of Viktor. So Zsuzsi creates another character, this time an exotic girl – Viktor’s “sister”, Moira. Máté immediately shifts his attentions to Moira. From that moment on, Zsuzsi is in control of both Máté and Heni’s love relationships, a puppeteer pulling the strings, influencing their feelings.
Months pass, and it is no longer possible to avoid a real meeting between the lovers. Operating behind her two characters, Zsuzsi creates the illusion of a grand ball – Viktor’s 18th birthday party – for which Heni and Máté will have to learn to waltz and wear fine clothes. The evening of the party finally arrives. The three – Zsuzsi, Heni and Máté – wait outside for the limousine which will take them to the castle. Of course, the limousine never comes.
Trapped now in a fiction of her own creation, Zsuzsi tries to finish it by “killing off” Viktor in a tragic horse-riding accident. Máté begins to suspect something, and confronts Zsuzsi. The realization that it was Zsuzsi all along devastates Heni, who cannot come to terms with the fact that the boy she was so in love with never existed. She has a nervous breakdown and tries to commit suicide. Zsuzsi is expelled and starts in a new school where she observes her new classmates. The play finishes with Zsuzsi thinking about which new characters she might now create…
pirat07&QueenOfLove - A Comic Style Story
A comics-style story about one fateful meeting that had to take place twice.
Karel, or Kájínek as his mother calls him, likes to draw maps. However, they are the sort of maps you won’t find in an atlas. They are charts that can only be used for navigating in one place, the virtual world of the internet. Karel lives alone with his mother. Since his mother isn’t at home very often, she doesn’t even notice that Karel is already thirteen. She treats him like a child, or else she isn’t there. And to cap it all, Karel’s girlfriend starts going out with his arch enemy….All of which makes it better to stay on the internet, in a virtual identity.
T. or Teresa, on the other hand, lives alone with her father. That is not good, since he is a dinosaur who has no idea what unhappiness T. suffers in the name of love. Her unrequited love for an ideal man named Zeca can only be cured by another, much stronger passion. One that she can experience with someone who is a real pirate. And so pirat07 and QueenOfLove meet somewhere in the virtual world, although he is Czech and she is Portuguese.
They spend a nice time in their virtual indentities. Conquering new worlds, dance in the air, even virtual wedding, so they could be man and wife. And they had Cote d`Azur, the place which they made new home. The colors are different in this fantasy world compared to the reality with which one has to live every day. In time their existence became virtual and their bodies walked in reality without life.
Luckily, one day a chance comes up to go to the real Cote d`Azur. It was in the holiday catalogue and Karel`s mother agreed to go. Also Teresa convinced her father, so the dream journey came true. And it was really a journey for change, although nobody may have noticed. But after thousands of kilometers there is something new between children and parents.
The meeting in France was… not successful. Without their virtual identities, there was no big love. It`s a pity, that you have to travel thousand of kilometers just to find out. But the parents apparently found themselves liking each other. And Karel`s dream of steering a catamaran became true. And Teresa learned a big portion of the French language with the beach boys. So, in the end, it wasn`t so unsuccessful. And Karel and Teresa have become good friends since then.
This story of love in a virtual world is inspired by comics, and tries to find a narrative form that brings this literary genre into the theatre. The result is not only comics-style poetics, but art design that rustles with paper drawings.
MAKE&BREAK
(Written for DUS – the Norwegian version of the British “Connect” – program)
“Make&Break” is about six young people who are chosen to take part in “Make&Break”, a reality show in which the participants compete for several hundred thousand kroner. Each of the six has been diagnosed with cancer and only has a relatively short time left to live. What is important in life? Does one become a better person when one is about to die? Does one become more desperate? Does money still mean anything? Is it ok to burn your candle at both ends? Amongst the audience there’s a couple watching the reality show. They decide who is to be voted out. But does the audience have a life when they just sit watching such things? “Make&Break” is a theatre piece packed in a reality show. Or is it the other way round?