Tomáš Vůjtek (* 1967)
Playwright, translator, dramaturge.
Tomáš Vůjtek was born at Frýdek-Místek in Northern Moravia, went to a secondary school in Poruba. After graduating from the College of Education in Ostrava in 1990 he taught at Ostrava’s Janáček Conservatory Czech and world literature and cultural history. He is co-founder together with his friends of the theatre company Ostravská pohoda [Ostrava at Ease] where he directed his own plays. Later on he started work with professional theatres; his play Výmlat [The Treshing] was first produced at Činoherní studio at Ústí nad Labem (2001) as rehearsed reading. In September 2002 the play had a full production in Ostrava at the Petr Bezruč Theatre. Since the start of 2009/2010 season he began to work at the Komorní scéna Aréna [Studio Space Arena] in Ostrava as a permanent dramaturge. He also works as a translator, writes opera librettos and song texts both for theatres and rock bands.
Tomáš Vůjtek
BRENPARTIJA
M 9, F 3
Drink up your Vodka, time is short!
The play is loosely based on a novel by Věnceslav Juřina A Report on the State of the Slag Dump. In the regional literature, the theme of the gangs of drunken homeless people in Ostrava region is covered quite well and the characters of both the tramp Švenda and the drunken tramp Ferda Prokop seamlessly migrate from one text to another and from century to century. It only depends on the novel’s period setting whether we meet Ferda Prokop in the second half of 19th Century or in Ostrava of the inter-war period; nonetheless he always appears as a man of the same age (nor young nor old, just an ordinary bloke). These texts cover most diverse genres and are of uneven artistic qualities – nevertheless, Věnceslav Juřina’s treatment of the theme has the largest scope among them. Only Jan O. Bor wrote as extensively on the subject, although his work is not on the same level artistically. His 1932 novel Meadow Saffrons of the Slag Heaps included a small dictionary of Ostrava dialect giving the reader a key to slang used by the tramps: thus, a society of tramps living on the slag heaps and drinking adulterated spirit is called brenpartie; truska is the name of the slap heaps in the Hrabůvka district that the homeless people declared an independent “state” – the tramps even used to vote a slag committee and a mayor from the heart of their community; the revolting mixture of adulterated spirit, water and raspberry lemonade, on which they get drunk and stink is called hubičková (the kissing drink); and chachar is an offensive swearword for tramps and drunkards – in Ostrava region, it can be a slander if it is meant as insult, nevertheless it’s usually mostly used as a joking expression nowadays.
Without mastering these terms, the adventures of Ferda Prokop and his buddies from the brenpartie would be absolutely incomprehensible to the general audience in this loose dramatization of Juřina’s book. Despite this fact, or maybe because of it, the dialect based text could also be attractive for audiences outside the Northern Moravian region.
The play opened at the Aréna theatre in Ostrava on October 10, 2009. It was directed by Janusz Klimsza and played to great acclaim at two Moravian-Silesian theatre festivals – Český Těšín Festival and Ostravar Festival.
Some twenty years ago, a play about Ostrava’s brenpartie tramps would be perceived at most as a colourful memory of the times long gone. Nowadays the homelessness became an everyday thing and the play acquired a new dimension – as an image of life on the fringe of society where anybody could end up. At the same time, Vůjtek’s play revives traditions not only by depicting the idiosyncratic environment and human relationships (notice how solidary and sympathetic to each other the characters are) but also by the consequent use of Ostrava dialect in the form it had at the time and at the place. It certainly is not by chance contemporary plays are returning to local roots...
Milan Líčka: Brenpartija suverénně vládne na haldě, www.OstravaBlog.cz, 19.12.2009
After the productions of The Black Julka, Těšín Sky and Such a Blood Poisoning, Brenpartija is another example of original theatre piece exploiting the distinctive North Moravia region. It’s not just the obvious folklore, rough and thus attractive to the audience. It is also a testimony to the vanity of human efforts with a clear wider appeal and urgency.
Jana Machalická: Uchlastat se, to je smysl života, Lidové noviny, 6.11.2009
Klimsza’s Brenpartija in both its style and language follows up indirectly in the footsteps of his legendary production Ilja the Prophet. A story of people on a rubbish heap. Nasty, but most poor. They are relatives of the characters in the famous Akira Kurosawa movie Dodeskaden (1970). They are emanating the same social and moral appeal. It’s brilliantly entertaining, with nostalgia for the time long past, it’s rooted exactly in the locale. And it’s very touching.
Jiří P. Kříž: Klimszův Dodeskaden je ze struskové haldy, www.novinky.cz, 3.11.2009
WITH HOPE, OR WITHOUT IT
(S NADĚJÍ, I BEZ NÍ)
M 2, F 1 (not entirely obligatory)
This play, inspired by historical documents, especially by the memoirs by the widow of one of the victims of the 1950s Communist show trials, won the 2nd prize in the Alfréd Radok Playwriting Competition 2009; as the 1st prize was not awarded this year, it was in fact the winning entry.
The play is loosely based mainly on the memoirs by Josefa Slánská, whose husband Rudolf Slánský, a high-ranking Communist official, was executed in 1952 as a traitor. The character named “She” represents the character of this strange woman who – despite her development from an enthusiastic Communist youth activist, via a prominent Communist, a persecuted widow all the way to a dedicated Charter 77 signatory – remained faithful to her Communist ideals. She is confronted in the play with two characters called The First and The Second who keep changing identity: they are her two interrogators but also historical characters from her life story, as well as the voice of the mob as mirrored in the contemporary press. A suggestive portrait of a woman during a dark age in Central Europe.