inspired by Farid us-Din Attar’s 12th century Sufi poem
Director: Vít Hořejš
Assistant Director/Producer: Bonnie Sue Stein
Project Illustrations by Peter Sis, from his book “Conference of the Birds”
Music Composed by Avi Fox-Rosen (AFR) with help from Izzy / Music arrangements by AFR with the band and cast / Lyrics adapted by AFR from “Conference of the Birds” by Peter Sis
Production/Scenic Design: Tom Lee and Theresa Linnihan
Choreography: Martha Tornay with the cast / Costumes: Michelle Beshaw
Production Supervisor: Rebecca Werner/ Assistants: Nora Iammarino, Alex Church-Gonzales
Project dramaturgs: Michael Posnick/ Project consultant: Frank London
The Fowl Play Band: Avi Fox-Rosen, guitar + voice / Rima Fand, violin + keys + voice / Eleonore Weill, flutes + keys + voice / Jesse Chevan, drums + percussion
illustration by Peter Sis
Czechoslovak American Marionette Theatre (CAMT) is produced byGOH Productions, a nonprofit organization and receives public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts, New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, National Endowment for the Arts, and NY City Council. Additional support: Bohemian Benevolent and Literary Association, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Czech Republic, Czechoslovak Society of Arts and Sciences, Czech Center, Materials for the Arts, Maturity Works, and BrouCzech Beer.
Host: Riki Colon, Poems by Loisaida Poetas read by Carlos Rodriguez
2pm CZECHOSLOVAK AND BENGALI STORIES WITH PUPPETS / The Naughty Tiger performed by Sayma Karin & The Devil and The Lawyer & The Twelve Months, performed by Vit Horejs / By Czechoslovak-American Marionette Theatre / Created and performed by Vit Horejs & Sayma Karim
3pm: EL TENDEDERO / Presented by Something from Abroad / Written and Directed by Regina Romero / Performed by Regina Romero, Silvana Gonzalez, Pelayo Alvarez and Martha Lorena Preve
4pm: OUR DAD IS IN ATLANTIS / Written by Mexican playwright Javier Malpica / Directed by Roman Primitivo Albear/ Performed by Daniel Gutierrez Isaiah Garcia
5pm: LORCA’S LAST NIGHT / Written and directed by Charles Krezell / Directed by Daria Fain, Music by Leonid Galaganov / Performed by Leonid Galaganov, Rocco George, Jhonathan zapata Garcia, Owen Engesser and David Fasano. Guitar by David Barish
The 3rd Annual LUNGS Summer Theater Festival is supported in part by the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council. Curated by Erez Ziv, Riki Colon, Roman Primativo Albear, Bonnie Sue Stein and Charles Krezell. Special thanks go to 6B Garden, Sally Young, and Rina Root. Festival banner by Theresa Linnihan
Recently, I saw the Czechoslovak-American Marionette Theatre’s short-lived but wonderful production of “Audience,” by the great Czech writer and statesman Václav Havel, at the Bohemian National Hall, on the Upper East Side. The play, which is semiautobiographical, depicts a writer named Ferdinand Vanek—a stand-in for Havel—who is consigned to working in a brewery after running afoul of the Communist regime. He engages in a long, comic, increasingly menacing conversation with the facility’s brewmaster, showing how even innocent-seeming language can be made to bend to the authoritarian Big Lie. Two performers, Vit Horejs and Theresa Linnihan—who also conceived the production—manipulated a battery of puppets, giving silent but substantial (often hilarious) form to the entire terrorized social world of the brewery. Through the fog of official obfuscation, this sly production seemed to say, the real story makes its way out in even the smallest gestures.
Here’s hoping that’s true. Stuck at a hinge in history, we’re cloaking ourselves in new fables, making desperate, wholesale attempts at self-reinvention through the slipperiness of stories. Voices like Havel’s, and like Karski’s—spiky with undigestible and often incommunicable truths—will have to keep struggling to be heard. ♦
Published in the print edition of the September 26, 2022, issue, with the headline “In the Retelling.”
Since 1990, Czechoslovak-American Marionette THEATRE (CAMT) has performed re-imagined productions of century-old traditional marionette plays of itinerant puppet companies and original scripts. For the first time, CAMT presents a play by a contemporary author, Václav Havel’s “Audience.” Based on the personal experience in a regional brewery, it is [arguably] the funniest play by the formerly banished absurdist playwright who went from the prison cell to the presidential palace of Czechoslovakia. A part of autobiographical “Vanek Trilogy”, Havel’s Audience follows his fictional alter ego Ferdinand Vanek. The distinguished writer is reduced to manual work in a brewery, as punishment for writing plays that criticize the oppressive regime in 1970s Czechoslovakia – though the situation could be in any country where dissident thought is punishable. Summoned by the brewmaster, the writer takes part in a game of cat and mouse — pointless chat, clumsy interrogation, flattery, and alcohol consumption — with the implied threat of a more dire consequence – the loss of even such menial jobs or imprisonment. One way out of his predicament is for the writer to help his boss write weekly reports on himself, which he refuses to do, further offending his superior
VÁCLAV HAVEL (5 October 1936 – 18 December 2011) was the last President of Czechoslovakia from 1989 until its dissolution in 1992, and then the first President of the Czech Republic from 1993 to 2003. A statesman and former dissident, he was known in the literary world for his plays, essays, and memoirs. His political activities brought him under the surveillance of the secret police and he spent multiple stints in prison, the longest being nearly four years, between 1979 and 1983. Produced widely around the world, Havel’s plays were banned from the stage in his own country, and he was unable to leave Czechoslovakia to see any foreign performance of his works or to accept his three Obie awards in New York. Note: In 1989, Vít Horejš & Bonnie Sue Stein interviewed Havel in Prague, days before he became president. Village Voice cover story: Jan 16, 1990.
CZECHOSLOVAK-AMERICAN MARIONETTE THEATRE (CAMT) is dedicated to the preservation and presentation of traditional and not-so-traditional puppetry. CAMT’s first New York season in 1990 featured Johannes Dokchtor Faust, a Petrifying Puppet Comedye with a cast of antique Czech puppets discovered by Vít Hořejš at the Jan Hus Church, like Bohemian National Hall, a historic cultural center here in the heart of Manhattan’s original Czech neighborhood. Since 1992, before the renovation, CAMT performed here many times including productions that traveled throughout the formerly decrepit building. CAMT’s 1994 Faust was presented as part of the Obie Award-winning Faust Festival in SoHo. At La MaMa E.T.C., the company performed Once There Was a Village; The Life and Times of Lee Harvey Oswald; Don Juan, or The Wages of Debauchery; The Prose of the Transsiberian and of the Little Joan of France; Rusalka, the Little Rivermaid; and Golem, co-produced by La MaMa and was later featured in the 1998 Jim Henson International Festival. Other New York City and touring: The Very Sad Story of Ethel & Julius, Lovers and Spyes, and about Their Untymelie End while Sitting in a Small Room at the Correctional Facility in Ossining, N.Y.; The Bass Saxophone; Hamlet; Twelfth Night; Kacha and the Devil; The White Doe, Or, The Piteous Trybulations of the Sufferyng Countess Jenovefa; A Christmas Carol, OY! Hanukkah, Merry Kwanzaa; and Twelve Iron Sandals. The company has played in 37 states in the U.S.A. and at international festivals in Poland, Turkey, Pakistan, and the Czech Republic.
VÍT HOŘEJŠ (translator/director, Vanek) was born in Prague and escaped Communist Czechoslovakia in 1978. In 1990, with fellow émigrés, he founded Czechoslovak American Marionette Theater (CAMT) in New York. He has translated, written, adapted, and directed over two dozen marionette plays for CAMT, is a resident artist at La MaMa Theater and has performed on stage, film, and TV. Published works: Twelve Iron Sandals (1985); Pig and Bear (1989); and Faust (1993). During the Pandemic, Vít, his marionettes and longtime musical collaborators streamed a series of 16 installments of Naptime Stories for the Absurd Times from a number of US and worldwide locations, starred in an Onur Tukel feature Film, Scenes From an Empty Church, (release July 2021) and Carnegie Hall/Centro Primo Levi film The Scandal of the Imagination. He co-produced “Faust on a String,” an award-winning documentary about Czech puppetry, and wrote the lead essay for Czecho-Slovak-American Puppetry (GOH Productions, 1994). Horejs has received commission grants from Henson Foundation, Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust, Foundation for Jewish Culture, Columbia University & New York Foundation for the Arts. In 2018, he received the Czechoslovak Society for Arts and Sciences (SVU) Award in recognition of a lifetime achievement in fostering the art of Czech and Slovak puppetry.
THERESA LINNIHAN (Brewmaster, puppet maker) joined the company of CAMT in 1996 playing Polonius in their production of Hamlet. For the next two decades she served as performer, designer and associate director as the company developed original, provocative productions, re-imagined classics and toured to puppet festivals in Turkey, Pakistan, Korea and The Czech Republic. In 2016 she relocated to Minneapolis, MN. There, for the past five years she’s worked with In the Heart of the Beast Puppet and Mask Theater and Barebones Puppets, building and performing for parades and pageants which reflect the sorrows and celebrations of a community that ignited a global call for justice and healing. Theresa is also a long standing member of The Puppeteer’s Cooperative currently producing an online, animated version of The Tempest as well as The Decameron of Now, an online invitation for stories in the era of Covid.
ALAN BARNES NETHERTON (Production Design) has performed many roles for the Czechoslovak-American Marionette Theatre, as well as many other theater and tv/film companies, on stage and screen. He is a master puppeteer and all things theatre. A raconteur, mount maker, carpenter, poet, project manager, prototyper, artisan manufacturer, amateur astronomer, an artist and a bonafide, verified, certified real-deal walking renaissance man. (www.TheABN.nyc) But well above all these things, first and foremost, at the pinnacle of his being – Alan Barnes Netherton is a dedicated Father and Husband.
SUZANNA HALSEY (Pre-show video) was born and educated in Czechoslovakia, and has lived and worked in New York for more than 40 years. Since her arrival in New York, she has worked as a Czech language specialist and teacher, studied filmmaking and for more than 6 years worked in the film/video industry as an editor. She became active in non-profit organizations, such as the Czechoslovak Society of Arts and Sciences (SVU-NY) and Friends of Czech Greenways, produced several multimedia shows, founded Ex Libris Czechoslovakia to promote Czech literature in English translation and coordinated the promotion of cultural and environmental preservation and sustainable tourism along the Czech Greenways. Suzanna enjoys the cross-cultural matchmaking of ideas and people, and is always open to new challenges and experiences. www.czechmatters.com
KIKA VON KLÜCK (Live video)was born in Brazil during the military dictatorship. After graduating in Theater, she arrived in New York City in 1992 and went to NYU Film School to study Film Editing. Throughout the 90’s and early 2000’s, she defined herself as a Multimedia Facilitator and worked as a Fashion Stylist, Art Model, Translator and Interpreter, Researcher, Photographer, wrote and compiled reports on Cultural Trends, Demographic Segmentation and Behavior Economics. Throughout this whole time, she has been developing Performance Lectures and Ritual Actions based on Feminist Archaeology and Comparative Mythology. Currently, Kika focuses on Brand Strategy, Technology Trends and Innovation Research.
AMBER RIGGLE (Stage Manager) is a freelance stage manager and technician. She graduated from Ball State University with a Bachelor of Science in Stage Management (favorite credits include Fun Home, Constellations, Shrek the Musical, and Pericles, Prince of Tyre). She left the Midwest to work onboard Carnival Cruise Line as a Backstage Manager, and moved to New York City during the halt in operations as a result of the pandemic. She now works primarily at 59E59 Theaters as a Production Technician, in addition to regular gig work around the city (favorite gigs include the Belfast Girls at Irish Repertory Theater, MetFest at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the East to Edinburgh Festival at 59E59 Theaters). This is her second production focusing on the works of Václav Havel, and her third with GOH Productions. In her free time she enjoys writing, exploring NYC’s hidden worlds, and visiting the Tompkins Square dog park with her godson, Juniper.
BONNIE SUE STEIN (Producer/Rehearsal Director) is a producer, director, performer, writer, and artist; Executive Director of GOH Productions, founded in New York City in 1984. She has worked in production and international exchange in over 25 countries. With Bohemian Hall and Vaclav Havel Library Foundation, she has been production manager for Rehearsal for Truth Festivals and Annual Galas. She has been involved in all of CAMT shows, including some of the first productions at the decrepit Bohemian Hall in the 1980s. In 1989, with Vit Horejs, she interviewed Vaclav Havel days before he became president of Czechoslovakia for a feature story in the “Village Voice”. She creates lens-based artworks with IGUANA Collaborative with Sherry and John Erskine. gohproductions.org
Czechoslovak American Marionette Theatre (CAMT) is produced by GOH Productions, a nonprofit organization and has received public funds from SBA; the New York State Council on the Arts, the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs and Council Member Carlina Rivera. Additional support: Bohemian Benevolent and Literary Association, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Czech Republic, Czechoslovak Society of Arts and Sciences SVU, Czech Center, and Materials for the Arts and BrouCzech Beer.
Czechoslovak-American Marionette Theatre/GOH Productions/309 4th St, Suite 3B, New York, NY 10009 info@czechmarionettes.org www.czechmarionettes.org
Press Agent: Jonathan Slaff Associates,www.jsnyc.com
Special Thanks: Milan Babík (Havel and Our Crisis/Conference Convenor), Captain Lawrence Brewery, Pavla Niklova, Marek Soltis, Josef Balaz, Rome Brown, David Morrison, Roy Rosenstein, Barbara Cox, BrouCzech Beer, La MaMa Theatre, Theater for the New City.
In Memoriam to artists we admire: Tiina Aleman (editor, translator), Jemeel Moondoc (composer), Peter Brook (director), George Bartenieff (director), Sizzle Ohtaka (musician),
Hair by Don Juan’s Barber Shop, 303 East 4th Street, NY NY 10009, Phone: (646) 996-3132
The funding will allow GOH Productions to bring some of our pandemic virtual programs LIVE to venues and locations around New York City and Upstate, including Naptime Stories for the Absurd Times, with storytellers and musicians, and performances by our roster of amazing artists.
Lisa Gutkin (violin) and Lisa Alcott (banjo)
Shoko Nagai & Satoshi Takeishi
Vit Horejs
Stay tuned for events as they unfold!
Here are some of the activities we are doing as part of Restart NY!
#restartNYgrantee! Twitter @NYSCArts and Instagram @NYSCouncilontheArts.
–International Puppet Fringe Festival,”Czech Tales with Strings” Aug 13, 14, 15 with musicians Tine Kindermann, Shoko Sagai
–LUNGS Festival in the Lower Eastside: Fri, Sat. Sun, Oct 1, 2, 3 with musicians Shoko Nagai and Satoshi Takeishi
At GOH Productions, we continue to do our best, like everyone around us, to stay focused on what is essential during this unprecedented time.
We have taken part in some awesome online programs; and our artists and leaders are trying to stay positive. I personally am staying informed, by joining citywide and smaller cultural zoom calls; while seeing where our programing might land in the next year or two.
We mourn the loss of friends and colleagues; and we work in solidarity with movements for justice in society and culture in every walk of life.
And we mourn the loss of our gorgeous dance studio at 55 Ave C, which was lovingly transformed in 2010 by Chris and Martha Tornay from a decrepit storefront. We had a great 10 years in the space.
We are confident that the theater and performing arts world will come back, but in the meantime we offer ONLINE, VIRTUAL programming with some of our artists, who are able to do this extraordinary transition. Czechoslovak-American Marionette Theatre, led by Vit Horejs is continuously presenting stories with some puppets and ‘live’ online music; Carrie Beehan/Trystette has the Pande-mic program which features many of our GOH artists; and East Village Dance Project continues online dance educational and performance programs by young emerging dancers. Art in Odd Places annual Festival will take place in May 2021, instead of Fall 2020, but forges on!
Please do stay in touch. Call or write. Be part of the change we need.
with love and care,
Bonnie Sue Stein, Executive Director
GREY ROCK Written and directed by Amir Nizar Zuabi
Performed by Khalifa Natour, Ivan Kevork Azazian, Fidaa Zaidan, Alaa Shehada, and Motaz Malhees
Set and Projection Design by Tal Yarden
Lighting Design by Muaz Jubeh
Sound Design by Katie Down
Producers: Alexandra Aron, and Remote Theater Project
Co-Producer: Bonnie Sue Stein, and GOH Productions
GREY ROCK is commissioned and produced by Remote Theater Project in association with the non-profit organization GOH Productions.
Czechoslovak-American Marionette Theatre (CAMT) re-imagines its perennially popular “Johannes Dokchtor Faust, a Petrifying Puppet Comedy,” translated and directed by Vit Horejs. The story of the learned Johannes Faust, who sold his soul to the devil for ultimate knowledge, is staged with age-old technical tricks of Czech puppetry, including fire and thunder, hellish gargoyles and underwater creatures. A classic of the Czech marionette repertoire, the play traditionally contains satirical pokes at contemporary authority figures, such as a king, a congressman, or a local mayor. The company’s adaptation was initially developed in 1990 and its topical references are updated to the current topsy-turvy political climate.
With Michelle Beshaw, Deborah Beshaw-Farrell, Vít Hořejš, Jane Catherine Shaw and Ben Watts, Music: Melissa Elledge, accordion
SAT, Oct 6th & SUN, Oct 7 | 11:30 am to 9pm |BOHEMIAN NATIONAL HALL | 321 East 73rd Street | NYC
OCTOBER 11 – 27 | JAN HUS CHURCH | NYC
We celebrate two auspicious anniversaries: the Centennial Anniversary of the founding of Czechoslovakia (1918) and the Millennial Anniversary of the unification of the Lands of the Czech Crown, under Duke Oldrich (1018).
Featuring Czechoslovak American Marionette Theatre in the US Premiere of the mainstage marionette production, “Duke Oldrich & Washerwoman Bozena: the True Story,” and a one man family “Water Goblin” and Czech and Slovak fairy tales. Plus music concerts, film screenings, a folk songfest sing-along, traditional costumes and Czech delicacies!
Introducing, in her first US appearance, the folk singer and musician, BEATA BOCEK, who will be performing in Oldrich & Bozena, as well as in full evening concert.
10/6-7 Bohemian National Hall, 321 E 73rd Street
Oct 11-27 Jan Hus Church, 351 East 74th Street through October 27.
FESTIVAL SCHEDULE (SUBJECT TO CHANGE)
Saturday October 6
11:30am Water Goblin and other Czech & Slovak Tales (THIS SHOW IS SOLD OUT)
1:00pm – Documentary and Animated Films
2:00pm – Traditional modrotisk (indigo) textile print presentation by Petra Valentova Gupta, followed by participatory hands-on block printing for families.
4:00pm – “Feels Like Home” Folk singalong w/ traditional music and dance
7:00pm – Oldrich and Bozena, The True Story (Czechoslovak American Marionette Theatre)
Sunday October 7
11:30am – Water Goblin and Other Czech & Slovak Tales/ Czech Fairy Tales in English performed by Vit Horejs
1:00pm – Strings! Camera! Akce! (Action!)
Film screenings of Animated and documentary puppetry films
2:30pm – Oldrich and Bozena, The True Story (Czechoslovak American Marionette Theatre)
4:00pm – A DANCE LESSON WITH LIMBORA DANCERS
A presentation about Slovak folkdance tradition with a dance lesson for the audience.
6:00pm – 8:00pm TWIN CONCERTS
6:00pm “Tribute to the Art of Folk Song” with New York Voices including: Hanka G, Gabriela Mikova, Katerina Vizina, Klara Zikova and more.
7:00pm – “Beata Bocek in Concert” (musician, vocalist) in her US debut Born in the Polish minority region of Silesia, Bocek’s trademark songs are performed in a variety of languages including an invented one to emphasize minority status.
OCT 11-27 | JAN HUS CHURCH | 351 E 74th St, NYC
Czechoslovak American Marionette Theatre
Saturdays: October 13, 20, 27 11:30am Water Goblin and other Czech & Slovak Tales, one man show by Vit Horejs and folk marionettes 2:30pm Duke Oldřich & Božena: the True Story
Wednesdays to Fridays: October 11, 12, 17, 18, 19, 24, 25, 26 7:00pm Duke Oldřich & Božena: the True Story
The festival is produced by GOH Productions in cooperation with Bohemian Benevolent and Literary Association (BBLA), Czechoslovak Society of Arts and Sciences (SVU), CzechMatters, and the Slovak and Czech Consulates in New York.
