SOLILOQUY

Soliloquy affiliates three distinctive creative personalities – the writer and translator Pavel Novotný, the musician and audio designer Jan
Burian jr. and the audiovisual artist Jaroslav Hrdlička. The production is an adaptation of texts by Pavel Novotný, which are interpreted and commented upon within an environment of a morphing projection table in the presence of three mystical voices. The authors are interested in the boundaries of comprehensibility, the unknown, shifts of perspective, new languages, surprise, mystery and humour. They work with the principles of the phenomenon of ASMR (Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response), and are also inspired by the practice of Deep Listening from the American musical composer Pauline Oliveiros.

Text: Pavel Novotný
Music: Jan Burian
Stage set/video/lighting: Jaroslav Hrdlička

Premiere: 28. 9. 2020, Alfred ve dvoře

Pavel Novotný (born 1976) Pavel Novotný is the head of the Department of German Language at the Technical University of Liberec. He writes poetry and song texts, and has published the poetry collections Sběr (Collection), Mraky (Clouds) and Havarijní řád (Emergency Rules). Together with Helena Skalická he has also published the prose work A to si pak můžeš řikat, co chceš (And you can say what you like). His lifelong creative project is Tramvestie (Tramvesty), in principle an endless collection of audiovisual and text recordings mapping the tram journey between Liberec and Jablonec nad Nisou. Together with Jaromír Typlt he processed Kurt Schwitters’ Dadaist composition Ursonate for stage presentation. He has created a series of radiophonic compositions for Czech Radio 3, e.g. Vesmír” (Universe), Tramvestie (Tramvesty) and Promeření (Measurement)). He has published a dissertation thesis on literary collage and montage via the German language publisher Arco, and focuses on the theory of acoustic literature. He translated primarily from German (H. M. Enzenzberger, Gerhard Rühm, Konrad Bayer, Volker Braun, Anja Utler etc.) His most recent translation is an anthology of the Wiener Gruppe (together with Nikola Mizerová, Rubato 2015).

Jan Burian (1976) is a Czech musical composer and audio designer. He has co-operated with various theatre artists (Min Tanaka, Dogtroep, Peter
Schumann, Living Dance Studio Beijing) and filmmakers (P. Koutecký, V. Švankmajer, M. Mareček). For over ten years he has been working
together with the therapist Marie Madeira, and has composed the music for her two books. He composed and recorded the music to accompany
the restored film Takový je život (Such is Life) for the NFA, and at present he is working on the soundtrack for the restored first Czech films by Jan Kříženecký. He leads workshops in audio design, the art of listening and a creative approach to electronic musical instruments (Archa International
Summer School, FSV UK, Ableton User Group Prague). He is a founding member of the musical projects Tyto alba and Kyklos Galaktikos.

Jaroslav Hrdlička studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in the New Media atelier. For several years he has experimented with the use of projection
and new technologies in several theatre productions (e.g. Ordinary People, presented among other matters at the Festival d’Avignon in France), concerts and exhibitions. He is a member of the musical theatre group Kyklos Galaktikos. He was the main programmer of the computer game Dark Train from the Paperash studio, which was named game of the year for Best Visual Presentation, and is also one of the animators of the new serial Tlačenka (Headcheese) on the portal binarycode.one.