A.T.I.S.M.I.A

In his book Ghosts of my Life, the recently deceased British music critic Mark Fisher writes about "slow cancellation of the future". Reflecting the evolution of music over the past fifteen years, he notes that pop stars and successful bands produce music that could easily have been produced in the 1960s or the 1980s. Fisher explains this inability to come up with music that would actually belonged to the 21st century as a manifestation of a universal phenomenon - the pansocial inability to imagine a utopian future.

A.T.I.S.M.I.A. is the result of work of the director Peter Gonda and collective with a group of non-actors, who together created a musical performance that explores the utopian imagination of Prague residents .Is it true that our ability to imagine a different future, different social and egalitarian economic systems is impaired? Is it easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism? Is utopia a swear-word? What do the residents of Prague think? And how to translate this into a non-dramatic and musical performance?
 
Concept and Director: Peter Gonda
Dramaturgy and production: Dominika Andrašková
Music dramaturgy: Michal Cáb
Light design: Robert Palkovič
Design: Margaréta Fehérová
Performers: Romana Dériková, Linda Fribert, Olga Fridrichová, Jan Froněk, Marie Haisová, Michal Hartl, Nikol Havlíčková, Lucky Lukáš, Jaroslava P, Vladimír Smejkal, Jakub Vlček
 
Peter Gonda graduated on KALD DAMU. In hisr performances he often works with non-actor: Unrest (2014) and The Last Case of Detective Rectum
(2015) were developed during an intensive period of several months when Gonda worked predominantly with non-actors among the patients of the Bohnice psychiatric hospital. The performance was conceived as platform to engage non-actors in encounters with the audience, the content of which
drew from drama and improvisations Gonda and his collaborators had carried out in Bohnice with the participants. Gonda's lates  A.T.I.S.M.I.A. performance (produced by the Petrohradská collective, 2018) and Rilato (commissioned by the Slovak drama company festival KioSK, 2017) are based on work with volunteers who are applied for participation in an intensive theater workshop, resulting is a premiere of the theatrical performance.