Why the Child Is Cooking in the Polenta

Aglaja Veteranyi

God is a cook

I only know my homeland by smell. It smells like my mother's food. My mother's food tastes different abroad because of the sorrow. My favourite food: polenta with salt and butter. Cotton candy. Semolina cake for the dead, decorated with smarties. My father is a clown in a circus. My mother is an artiste. And God is a cook.

The life of a circus family on the run from the Ceauşescu regime. Through the eyes of a frightened child. The bewitching novel by a Swiss author from a Romanian-Hungarian-Roma family is as raw as a Tatar steak. And at the same time, it is unusually pictorial and full of childish wonder at the world. Home is so far away that it ceased to exist. What's it like to be a stranger everywhere? For how many children on the run, today's world is just a plate brimming with anxiety, and where have all those from whom we wanted to entrench ourselves disappeared? Chilling circus spectacle directed by Ondrej Spišák.

 

Ondrej Spišák (1964) is a prominent Slovak director, co-founder and creator of the legendary travelling theatre Teatro Tatro. He wrote his metaphorically unrestrained directorial script, which grew out of the traditions of folk and puppet theatre, among others, to dozens of award-winning productions in leading Czech, Slovak and Polish theatres. He will be introduced to the Brno audience or the first time at The Goose on a String Theatre.

 

stage production team

  • director: Ondrej Spišák
  • dramatization: Vladimír Fekar
  • Dramatizace a dramaturgie: Viktorie Knotková
  • translation: Eva Hermanová
  • scenography: Szilárd Boráros
  • costume designer: Sylva Zimula Hanáková
  • music: Ivan Acher
  • choreography cooperation: Inna Aslamova and Dominik Teleky
  • assistant director: Kryštof Šimek
  • Assistant dramaturgy: Veronika Onheiserová
  • photographer: David Konečný
  • stage manager: Lucie Cimburková

persons and cast

premiere

Feb 4, 2022 - provázek.sál

time

140 min.