Artistic Discoveries in European Schoolyards

pirat07&QueenOfLOve

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.

The production was created as part of the Platform 11+ project as a co-production between Alfa Theatre and Theatro O Bando (Portugal).