MEETING POINT 6 EN

EDITORIAL Saying goodbye to the festival means happiness and also sadness. We are looking forward to getting some sleep, but we also have a strange feeling that something amazing has passed by so quickly.

Everyone is saying goodbye today to something or someone. Some of us say goodbye to Brno. Many of us are saying goodbye to people we have met this week for the first time. But we all say goodbye to the 29th edition of the festival.

Everyone enjoyed ENCOUNTER a little bit differently. The jury - and perhaps some of you as well - saw all the performances of the main programme.

Some didn‘t miss a single festival party. All those involved in the preparation, before and during the festival, experienced a lot of feelings this week, including the happiness that it all worked out, but also nervousness while resolving all the problems that came up during the festival itself, and hope that everyone would be happy.

In the editorial office, we spent the festival communicating all day long with many people, trying to meet deadlines, and experiencing the silent JAMU building in the early morning hours. I would like to thank all the editors from JAMU, VŠMU, UPOL, DAMU and MUNI for helping us fill the Meeting Point with reviews and other texts. Thank you very much to all who helped us, and not only with the night printing. I also want to say thanks to the translators and proofreaders of the Czech and English versions. Thank you Monika Řeháková for the pill covers of Meeting Point magazine. But most of all, I would like to thank the editors, namely Adam, Sára, Anet, Venda (the most patient and the best typesetter we could have had this year!) and Barča. Without all these people, the Meeting Point would not have had the form that it had this year.

Goodbye means something different for everyone, but whatever it is, we agree that each of us has had a lot of encounters this week - and I hope that

a lot of them were regenerating. I hope we will all remember them as long as possible. And if you‘re sorry that the festival or new encounters are over, don‘t be sad. Even if we will never again meet the people we are now saying goodbye to, it doesn‘t mean we‘re going to lose them forever. Because as Bolek Polivka told me on Tuesday during an interview: “It is important to see as much as possible.

To soak up as much as possible, because these are the soft and distant echoes that lead to inspiration and they are important in the future”. I wouldn‘t hesitate to transfer this thought to all the encounters of the past week. We can all continue to be inspired and let these encounters linger in us.

I‘m already looking forward to all the encounters of the 30th edition of the festival SETKÁNÍ/ENCOUNTER Sára Matůšová, Editor-in-Chief

1

2

REVIEWS / OFF-PROGRAMME

→

DE PROFUNDIS THE WHOLE THEATRE AT ORLÍ STREET RESONATED WITH THE SOUND OF A PIANO The room was immersed in darkness, and in the middle there was just a soft beam of light falling on the silhouette of the piano. An intimate space in which the spectators hold their breath in excitement, waiting for the artist to arrive and break the nervous silence with the first tone. The microphone is ready, we hear only the rustling of the piano score and the focused breath of the pianist. But what comes next shakes many spectators in the auditorium.

Absolutely precise technique. Several times I think to myself that Sara Medkova‘s fingers never get tangled up. And while playing, she works with sighs, screams, and interjections. The voice with the instrument creates an eclectic two-voice combination where we cannot tell whether the voice determines the rhythm, speed, and intensity of the piano playing, or if it is the flawless fingering that inspires Sarah‘s vocal etudes. After about five minutes, Sarah speaks.

With Oscar Wilde‘s voice, she reads his intimate jail correspondence, and still continues to play. Melancholic tones seem to be the cry of his imprisoned soul. There are spoken words on the wall that combine into phrases that gradually form calligrams.

The intonation of the voice continuously changes, which together with the cacophonic chords symbolizes Wild‘s hedonistic life without inner order.

At the end, Sara experiments with the piano as a drum, and plays on her own body. Out of the wild, struggling movements arises Wild‘s confession to his lover Lord Alfréd Douglas. Then everything gradually calms down, goes silent, and fades out.

The letter has been read, the score is over, and Sara Medková is in the dark again, only now with applause.

photo by Libor Máca

Kristýna Staroštíková, MUNI

3

THE CLOSING CEREMONY ENCOUNTER ENDS, ENCOUNTER BEGINS When asked on stage whether he finally felt healed after the whole festival, student Matěj Beneš answered: “healed, but sad.” Sad because the festival is over now. But every end is always the start of something new. A cliché, but a necessary one. A cliché as the theme of the whole closing ceremony, which could just as well have been entitled Great Pathos - but not in a bad way. Pathos is surely needed when closing a festival.

Balloons, strings of lights, warning tape. Just like during the opening parade, the words of the song “follow me and you’ll never be alone…” could be heard when we arrived at the ceremony, this time with a sense of nostalgia. The ever-present pills, which also made an appearance in the opening parade, now jump around in the same unchained manner, this time welcoming everyone as old friends. Encounter truly took place here, not only at the artistic level, but also on a personal level. Proof of this are the attendants of Atttila Antal’s workshop, who open the ceremony with their performance. In his workshop they not only met each other, but also used video footage to try to connect their inner dreads and insecurities to movement on stage.

Thus they are also being healed in a way, freeing themselves. Then the awards are given, speeches are made, people are moved, they celebrate.

The encounter has run its course and now ends. Or to be more precise, Encounter 2019 ends, Encounter 2020 will begin in a few moments. And the closing ceremony is a promise of healing anew next year, albeit with another subtitle.

Iva Heribanová, MUNI

4

photo by Aneta Jindrová

MUNI’S POINT OF VIEW FEW REMARKS ON ENCOUNTER (IN NO PARTICULAR ORDER): 1. After four days of lovely festival weather simply must come a day when it is horrid and the overall energy drops below a freezing point.

2. Because of that, the attendance at the discussion is rather poor – even the jury didn’t come.

3. It is great to have the freedom of choice whether you want to read the subtitles or observe what is happening on stage yet sometimes literal subtitles are needed for the full understanding of the meaning and their absence hurts.

4. Coffee = an energizing drug the easiest available, with continuance of the festival exponentially growing in consumption.

5. There is nothing like an absolute Russian monopoly on Chekhov, the Bulgarians brought much more gripping and imaginative stage interpretation.

6. The encounter doesn’t necessarily happen only at the festival but even when you are standing in a queue full of foreigners waiting for kebab at 2 am.

7. Although the Filipinos come from a completely different tradition of theatre, the Oedipus’s conflict with fate remains even in the lively Asian form the same.

8. The off-programme performances don’t have to function solely as a schedule filler.

9. You can never manage to attend everything, which is especially true for the festival programme.

10. It doesn’t matter how many parties you do (not) attend, you will be tired anyway.

photo by Martina Řeháčková

Iva Heribanová a Kristýna Staroštíková, MUNI

5

THE LAST AID THE LAST BYE BYE ”Husa na provázku is changing names. Now it’s the Pusa na klobásku [Kiss on a Sausage – It’s funny in Czech, take my word for it]” People you haven’t met, you’re likely never gonna meet again. The last party. And that’s it. „Are you an actor?” – „Freelance… How do you say that in English… Empty legs. Actor on empty legs!”

The last chance, the lash kiss. The last dance. Bye. [insert a dirty untranslatable joke] Fear is the thief of dreams. And that’s why there’s smoke, sweat and encounters with strangers. Did anybody already mention how dancing is a universal language everywhere? Probably. Not a very groundbreaking thought. „It not loud enough!!!!!!” – „I hear you.” – „THAT’S THE ISSUE!” And the one realises what’s the point of it all. Dancing regenerates. And dancing alone isn’t as much fun.

Martin Modrý, JAMU

photo by Martina Řeháčková

6

BEHIND THE SCENES FUNDRISING It’s Tuesday 4. 2. 2019, 7:30 am. My alarm is ringing.

I turn it off. I don’t like alarms. This morning is the same as any other. Shower, coffee, brain working at 5% and all the other things that are typical for Tuesday mornings. At 8:10 I leave my apartment. I go the same way as every morning. I light my morning cigarette in the same spot as every morning. I’m just as cold and sleepy as every morning… I hope that all of you understand by now that this is as normal a morning as it can be. But at the moment when I pass by the Copy Center, the first beams of light shine on my back. I turn around and I see the sun as it tries to light Brno and in that moment it happens. For me, at that moment the festival began.

The feeling of energy, joy, fear, nervousness, doubt, and excitement struck me in one moment and I just stopped on that corner and I laughed. I laughed because I knew that in that moment, one of the biggest experiences in my life had just started.

I wanted to share this feeling with all of you in this article, because I think the festival begins and ends at a different moment for each participant. And it is our decisions and actions which determine all the beginnings and endings.. For some, the festival ends when their performance finishes. For some, it ends with the closing ceremony, and for some it ends with a big hug at the bus station. I don’t know what your ending will be but I hope it will mean something to you. I hope you remember it and store it deep in your heart so one day you can just remember and think to yourself “Damn… it was worth it”.

You know… I was supposed to write about my work in this article, but I think that all of us have the same work. It is to make this festival great so you can enjoy it as much as possible. And I think that it doesn’t matter if my job is to clean some dishes or provide catering for the whole festival. If we do our job with passion and with the goal of making the encounter a little bit better, it is a good thing.

photo by Aneta Jindrová

Jakub Julina The Head of Fundraising 7

MEETING POINT THE INTERNATIONAL FESTIVAL OF THEATRE SCHOOLS SETKÁNÍ/ENCOUNTER 2019

The Head of the Editorial Office Sára Ciancimino Editor-in-Chief Sára Matůšová Typesetting Vendula Hlaváčková Assistants of the Head Adam Harton Barbora Laierová Aneta Tkadlecová Proofreading of the Czech Version Sára Ciancimino Translators Jakub Julina, Frederika Halfarová, Markéta Štefanová, Martin Modrý, Iva Heribanová Proofreading of the English Version Adrian Hundhausen Publisher The Janacek Academy of Music and Performing Arts in Brno Divadelní fakulta Mozartova 1 662 15 Brno IČ: 621156462 / DIČ: CZ62156462