07.06.2021 at 5 pm – Live stream on the Ballhaus Ost website with audience Q&A

Available for viewing on www.ballhausost.de until end of June.

The Depresivní děti touží po penězích theatre group (‘depressive children longing for money’) was scheduled to present their production The Fall of the House of Usher at the Ein Stück: Tschechien Festival 2021 at Ballhaus Ost. Instead of coming to meet their Berlin audience, they will take us on a satirical tour through the cult venue for theatre and their artistic home, Venuše ve Švehlovce.

The old dance hall, built in the style of Rondocubism, is located in Prague’s happening Žižkov neighbourhood. Join us for a peek behind the set of a stage that may be empty, yet is brimming with desire for live theatre and an audience. You’ll get a glimpse of its most intimate spaces and find out about the inner life of a theatre organism that has developed alternative survival strategies. What do the actors do when they can’t be on stage? And is there really no theatre happening at all?

Afterwards, we’ll talk with the artistic director and stage director of the theatre, Jakub Čermák, this year’s winner of the theatre critics’ award in the category “pandemic theatre”, and discuss his work with the group and their current projects.

In Czech and German with interpreting in both directions.

The Depresivní děti touží po penězích theatre group was founded in 2004 with stage director Jakub Čermák as its artistic director. Their work operates between the genres of happening, performance, site-specific theatre, video art and acting. They often take the classics and adapt them in an experimental way – such as with their production of The Fall of the House of Usher (2018). Čermák uses E. A. Poe’s classical horror tale and relocates the plot in Sudentenland, which was left a ghost landscape after the German population had been driven away. They also experiment with immersive formats – the spectators of Bordel L’Amour (2018) for example were presented with various kinds of love in private rooms. In 2020, Čermák received the Czech award for innovative theatre, the Česká divadelní DNA for his contribution to new theatre, and in 2021, his video adaptation of Camus’ Plague entitled (MEMENTO) Mor, received the theatre critics’ award for the best theatre during the pandemic.

In collaboration with Ballhaus Ost and the Czech Centre Berlin.

Funded by the Deutsch-Tschechischer Zukunftsfonds.