My Country

The first ever theatrical, dance and puppet rendition of a Czech national treasure.

Bedřich Smetana & col. (Forman, Ivanović, Jirků, Pechar, Sodomková)

Bedřich Smetana’s My Country is a magical piece of music. Many of us are filled with a touching, melting beauty and perhaps even national pride when we listen to the first notes. Don’t you recognise the Vltava? For a native of this country, that is impossible.

You may remember the first time you heard this musical gem. At school? On the radio? In the car? At a concert? Probably not in a theater. Because in the theatre, as we found out, no one has ever done this entire work.

The creative team of the musical-theatre-dance performance The Jungle Book teamed up with other artists to stage that beautiful “first time”. The first encounter with My Country, this masterpiece of Czech classical music, will take place in the tent of Azyl78, in a setting rather romantic than concert-like.

Several artists will be working together on My Country. Where will their paths lead? What do they have in common and what moment will each of them have in their journey through this magnificent musical story?

Marko Ivanović, with his extraordinary talent, will transfer the musically colourful richness of the symphony orchestra from the concert halls to the roof of the circus tent.

Matěj Forman and a team of close collaborators will create the scenery and the overall visual world. He will direct some of the poems and meet the other co-creators on the way to telling the story.

Štěpán Pechar is the main choreographer of the whole project and will try to express some of the captured feelings of a wanderer passing through the Czech landscape in movement poems without words.

Janek Jirků will invite the spectators to walk through the selected poems in an attempt to find new puppet and artistic ways where “only” music has been enough for storytelling so far.

My kluci, co spolu chodíme, the popular improv group from Jatka78, along with other dancers, actors, puppeteers and true theatrical “patriots” will accompany My Country with their talent and raw will to collaborate.

The performance is intended for audiences of all ages – for lovers of music, dance, improvisation, puppets, art and narrative theatre scenes.