Petr Kolečko (*1984, Broumov, Czech Republic)
Studied dramaturgy and playwrighting at the Academy of Performing Arts (DAMU) in Prague. His first play staged in professional theatre was Without Orientation, opened in Theatre Na Prádle, Prague in 2004. He finished his studies with play Love, Dude in DISK Theatre, premiered in December 2007. His play Britney Goes to Heaven was produced by the Petr Bezruč Theatre in Ostrava. It was translated into English and a rehearsed reading was performed in December 2007 by the Immigrants Theatre Project in New York´s Public Theater; there was also a rehearsed reading of a Polish translation at the Teatr pod Ratuzsom in Cracow in March 2007. In 2008, he won a month long International Residency at the Royal Court Theatre in London. There he finished his further play The Gods Don´t Play (Ice-)Hockey, which premiered in Činoherní studio in Ústí nad Labem later the same year. Since September 2009 he is Artistic Director of one of the Prague´s best fringe stages A-studio Rubín. The theatre has already produced five of his plays, of which The Salome Case, was nominated for the prestigeous Alfréd Radok Award for the Best Czech play in 2009. Recently he also cooperated with director Tomáš Svoboda on two plays which have won big popular success: Jaromír Jágr, the Kladno Lad is a show inspired by the personality of the famous Czech hockey player (premiered in Středočeské divadlo, Kladno), Porn Stars is a musical set into the world of porn video industry (premiered in Roxy Club in Prague in December 2009).
Petr Kolečko also works for the Czech radio. His modern classical tragedy The Gloom of Points was recorded by the Czech radio in 2006. He is also a member of the writers team of series called Life is a Dog created by Czech radio. He was a storyliner of a TV Nova series The Street. During the years 2003-2005 he was a member of a Brit pop group The Slots, having played saxophone. Occasionally he writes lyrics for Czech groups, both in Czech and English.
List of Plays:
• Změna, 2003/2004, premiére Divadlo Na Prádle, Praha
• Bez orientace, 2004/2005, premiére Divadlo Na Prádle, Praha
• Britney goes to heaven, 2005/2006, premiére Divadlo Petra Bezruče, Ostrava
• Soumrak bodů, 2006/2007, premiére Divadlo DISK, Praha
• Láska, vole, 2007/2008, premiére Divadlo DISK, Praha
• Zlatý prsten Jana Třísky, 2007/2008, premiére A Studio Rubín, Praha
• Bohové hokej nehrají, 2008/2009, premiére Činoherní studio Ústí nad Labem
• Soprán ze Slapské přehrady, 2009/10, premiére A Studio Rubín, Praha
• Kauza Salome, 2009/10, premiére A Studio Rubín, Praha
• Díra, 2009/10, premiére A Studio Rubín, Praha
• Jaromír Jágr, Kladeňák, (with T. Svoboda), 2009/10, premiére Středočeské divadlo Kladno
• Pornohvězdy, (with T. Svoboda), 2009/10, premiére NoD/Roxy Praha, 2010/11 Petr Bezruc Theatre, Ostrava
• Kouzelník (with A Studio Rubín Company), 2009/2010, premiére A Studio Rubín, Praha
Coming soon - 2010/2011:
• Game Boy, (with T. Svoboda), 2010/11, premiére Středočeské divadlo Kladno
• Septik (Septic Tank), (with T. Svoboda, J. Uhrin), 2010/11, premiére Středočeské divadlo Kladno
• Úl (Beehive), 2010/11, Národní divadlo - Nová scéna Praha
• Vejce (Egg), 2010/11, NoD/Roxy Praha
Plays in Translation:
• Britney Goes to Heaven - English, Polish
• Bohové hokej nehrají / The Gods Don´t Play Hockey - English
BRITNEY GOES TO HEAVEN
M 4, F 2
Five dead people meet in an intertemporal interspace. They are bored, don’t understand each other, don’t know where they ended up or where they are going. Each of them deals with the situation in his or her own way. Britney Spears rehearses new elements for her dance creation – but she lacks an audience; under-age soccer fan Hool keeps smoking and giving Nazi salute, beating everybody up and waiting for “one hundred skinheads with their saxophones”; the alcoholic failed mother Marie tries to put together a Holy Family; a mafioso called Bruno uses routines from psychologic interrogations shooting left and right; Kolben the worker fulfils his deepest and most intimate dreams and gets away scot free... But all of these characters aim to get to Heaven. During their “stay” each of them goes through various therapies, both group and individual, led by Gabriel the Angel, and finds gradually out they are all involved in a quirky reality show with promotion to Heaven at stake. The play begins.
How far are these “people” ready to go in order to win? Which means do they plan using? How can Gabriel the Angel deal with all this? Will he succumb to the “divine” Britney and let her seduce him? Will he let her organize a concert of doom for his “boss”? Will he be able to resist Kolben the Worker’s blackmail? Will the Holy Family of Marie, Hool and Bruno fall apart due to circumstances? Who will stay in the game, who will be thrown out? And who has the paperwork related to the “truth most right”?
The play was staged with resounding success at the Petr Bezruč Theatre in Ostrava in 2005, it was translated into English and presented as a rehearsed reading by the Immigrants Theatre in New York in December 2007. A rehearsed reading in Polish translation took at the Teatr pod Ratuzsom in Poland in March 2007.
Translated into English by Kristina Molnárová and into Polish by Agnieszka Pátá-Oldak.
THE GODS DON´T PLAY (ICE-)HOCKEY (BOHOVÉ HOKEJ NEHRAJÍ)
M 6, F 2
an Industrial Comedy
Tomáš is a full back in a local extra-league ice-hockey team famous for his tough and unyielding approach. In his private life, though, he is a very sensitive, poem-writing man. Kristián is a folk singer neither very well known nor successful. He is in fact a total opposite of Tomáš: he tries to write lyric songs but is very cynical in his personal life. One day they both meet in a bar, become friends after an initial quarrel, and their lives are changed. Moreover, an 18 year old Gypsy called Žaneta gets involved in their lives...
A comedy with some elements of Ancient Greek tragedy is set in the milieu of the lowest classes in an industrial town in the North of the Czech Republic. The first draft of the play commissioned for the Činoherní Studio Theatre in Ústí nad Labem had a successful rehearsed reading at the Petr Bezruč Theatre in Ostrava.
The play was also developed during International Residency for Emerging Playwrights, organized by The Royal Court Theatre in London in July/August 2008. The world premiere took place in December 2008 at the Činoherní Studio Theatre in Ústí nad Labem.
Translated into English by David Short.
Petr Kolečko - Tomáš Svoboda
PORN STARS (PORNOHVĚZDY)
M 4, F 3
This original Czech musical with music by Petr Wajsar opened at Christmas 2009 at the theatre venue of NoD/ROXY in Prague.
Two porn actors, Maruška and Marek, Jan the director, a producer who used to be a priest, and a sound technician Dušan are working in porn movie industry, yet they are ordinary heroes with both complicated relationships and colourful life stories. They were all brought to porn industry by unhappy circumstances. Maruška was abandoned by her family in a pram on a village green, then found by an old lady who brought her up. When, through Maruška’s fault, the old lady’s village church burns down, the young woman decides to do penance by sacrificing herself as a porn actress to ensure a dignified life for the old lady. The priest strived all his life to follow the God’s word as much as possible, but the God was not merciful and let his church burn down. As a consequence, the priest decided to get the best out of life by getting stinking rich and became a producer of porn films. The director Jan ruined his theatre career by seducing the wife of the National Theatre’s artistic director; his life was then changed when he found out he spawned an illegitimate daughter with her. To be able to pay for the child’s considerable maintenance, he decided to use his talent as blue movies director. As for the porn actor Mark, he’s been tormented since his childhood by the hatred of women; this culminated when he took away his newly born sister from his hated mother in a pram, and now he is trying to heal his hatred by acting in porn. The industry saved the sound engineer Dušan from the abuse by his father: as a child he used to watch porn videos so that he would not hear his parents’ arguments, now he’s providing soundtracks for them.
It’s Christmas, and the porn stars are about to meet their demons. What will the Sound Engineer do when he finds out Maruška doesn’t love him? How will the director Jan deal with the fact Maruška is sharing the flat with his daughter whose alimony he pays yet who was never supposed to find out the way he makes his living? And what about Marek? Under the Christmas tree he finds out that he had “worked” all this time with his own sister, the same he had once abandoned in the pram. The porn-producing Priest finds out that his own children are making money for him by making blue movies. Will he be able to find the road to God again? Will the others? They will – it’s Christmas, miracles can happen and the characters are not worse than us; we are all porn stars.
Should there be theatre awards for the “Daftest Production of the Year”, one of the clear candidates – and probably clearly the leading one – would be the team Kolečko-Svoboda-Wajsar that since last December shows their musical Porn Stars at the Prague venue of NOD. (…)
…Petr Wajsr’s brilliant music combines almost all possible genres (from opera via disco to village rude folk songs) which is quite rare in today’s world of “one hit” musicals where the lead song is repeated over and over again. Each tune is catchy, and has an original musical idea. (…)
This freewheeling “porn show” aspires to become one of the main events of the theatrical season; its provoking subject is attractive and doesn’t let you down from the very beginning – on the contrary, it’s gripping. If you like musicals, this one should become a part of your collection. If you like original, crazy theatre that experiments and provokes the audience, you also should go and see it. And should you strictly reject the show because of its theme – go anyway: the team at Roxy will persuade you even pornography can be done with detachment and open to under eighteens.
Petr Smyczek: Pornohvězdy v Roxy, www.nekultura.cz, 12.2.2010
Mixing aesthetics of porn industry with the form of musical and kitsch, one can get various results. In the case of Petr Kolečko, Tomáš Svoboda and their production of Porn Stars, it produced a fresh statement about the sometimes too crazy time we are living in. (...)
The monstrous ridiculousness of porn industry works here as a grid that makes everything seem much clearer. It’s not by chance both are linked through the desire of money as the authors a constantly playing with the following consideration: is physical prostitution worse than the spiritual one?
Jana Machalická: Muzikál Pornohvězdy: vybalancovaná chůze po hraně, Lidové noviny, www.lidovky.cz 19.12.2009
With one decisive leap, the opening nights of Porn Stars last Tuesday and Wednesday far and wide surpassed much of what we could see at Czech theatres so far both in intentions and in the result. (...)
Provoking through slimy hollow porn eroticism, the story transforms into a reflexion of our lives since the 1960s. Its authors did not shrink away from self-ironic personal recapitulations. They brilliantly grasped the difference between the dreams about arts and the reality of the culture in the sewers of the marketplace.
Jiří P. Kříž: Pornohvězdy nezabloudily, vědí kudy kam, Právo, 17.12.2009
THE SALOME CASE (KAUZA SALOME)
M 2, F 2
The author was inspired by Oscar Wilde’s famous and scandalous play from the turn of 20th Century putting both Biblical characters – Salome and John the Baptist or Jochanaan – into the decadent world of late Victorian world, ironizing it, sending it up and using cleverly Christian quotes and references.
Kolečko updates the subject matter – Salome is sixteen, a daughter of an oil magnate, and can have anything she asks for, even a “tamed crocodile who could shit into a rubbish bin”. Her father Herodes is erotically obsessed with her and ready to fulfil all her desires. The only person Salome is unable to dazzle with her riches is Jochanaan, a homeless man suffering from apocalyptic visions and shouting Bible quotes from the rich man’s garden. Driven by a perverse whim, Salome asks to be “kissed” by the homeless man – but she is refused. Then she demands revenge: she wants Jochanaan’s head as a present that all her friends would envy her at her birthday party. Her father refuses at first but then – after the daughter makes sexual advances to him – changes his mind and obliges. But, perhaps because of bad conscience, he then beats his daughter to death. An epilogue closes the play in which both lovers smoke dope in heaven, repeating: “We are dead, it is so cool...”
The play that opened at the A Studio Rubín in Prague in May 2009 is a “wild, punk, underground yell with marked elements of contemporary, openly ‘in yer face’ aesthetics. It explores both language and situations to a maximum effect in order to depict the extreme dehumanisation and perversion of the nouveau riches post-November 1989 generation X and their children.” (V. Hulec).
LOVE, DUDE (LÁSKA, VOLE)
M 6, F 4
A teenager comedy with elements of a horror drama. A fresh text full of original one-liners shows a basic conflict between a punk and pop-music band on a joint tour. The action is mostly set in the backstage of a music club where the two groups (and the two different music worlds) are forced to coexist for production reasons. At the same time they are linked by the common hit song “The Pigs Are Coming” – albeit in two very different musical versions. The original “style” animosity has to take back seat when it becomes apparent that the (female) punk singer Tequilla’s sister lives with the “diskant” leader Étien who was entrusted by the big boss, the manager of both bands, with looking after a beloved poodle. After a visit to her sister, the alcohol infused and depressions prone Tequilla falls in love with the said little poodle, speaks to him in Shakespearean blank verse and leads him out into the night. The mad action by Étien who’s trying to find the dearest possession of his boss takes a unexpected turn, with the emotional climax of both the sad dog and depressed Tequilla at the end. The cool-like punch line brings an Ancient Greek tragedy catharsis and a body on the stage.
This is the play about young people living in the fake world of lifestyle magazines and TV soaps. Overwhelmed by the images of perfect happiness and true love they are unable to experience true love or perfect happiness anymore themselves. The relationships they start are all aimed at a specific goal: it is more important who I am seen with than who I do live with – in the same way it is more important how I look to who I am.
The play won the Evald Schorm Award for 2007 and was produced in the 2007/2008 season at the Prague Drama Faculty of Performing Arts stage at the DISK theatre.
A SOPRANO FROM THE SLAPY DAM (SOPRÁN ZE SLAPSKÉ PŘEHRADY)
M 1, F 3
A play about a man who went out to buy milk and returned home with it. Will Láďa find somebody to listen to him? Maybe at the popular swimming place at the Dam of Slapy? Or are all the summer guests around in their local summer houses as deaf as everywhere else?
A young budding director wakes up in a strange bed after a night spent drinking. During his morning-after hangover he tries to figure out why he should have ended up in a flat of a passionate seventeen years old intellectual female. He would much rather disappear the French way but does not want to make impression of being reckless bastard. As a consequence, he keeps behaving in a civil way to the girl – but is unable to escape as he promised her a romantic weekend at her parent’s place at the Slapy dam. Finally he grits his teethes and follows his short-time acquaintance to her parents summer house.
The plot here is presented through looking into the mental process of the young man. He keeps commenting his actions by his comments (without censuring or auto censoring them) expressing his actual views of the problem, and sometimes using provocatively vulgar language adequate to both characters and situations.
The next act is an idyll for the girl and the real martyrdom for the young artist. The young man is haunted by the idea his partner does not understand him. She makes him go to a neighbour to get free milk. An old, half-deaf lady tries to explain her opera past to him and asks him to tell her something despite her poor hearing. The young director accepts as this is the only way for him to express aloud what he actually means. Both characters get together quite quickly – the old lady even makes an offer of sex unexpectedly, and without result. The visit ends with a conversation with a personified cow giving milk to the young director. The story is resolved by fairy tale(ish) simple waking up of the hero and his acceptance of the young philosopher as a partner who will bring him both luck and happiness.
The play was premiered (in Tomas Svoboda´s direction) at A-Studio Rubín in November 2008.