Václav Gabriel Piňos is currently reading English Language
& Literature at the University of Oxford; he writes short stories and poems
as well as drama.
Ian Mikyska is about to begin studying classical composition
at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama in London, and works mainly as a
composer of concert music and music for the theatre.
First and
foremost, in your own words: what is “The Analyses” about?
Ian: The subtitle of the show is “The Story of Little Miss
Reading.” Misreading and the way texts can be manipulated - and the disparate
motivations that are at the basis of these often wilful misreading – are at the
centre of the play, in this particular instance the texts are musical, written
by the main character, a composer.
Václav: The eponymous analyses occupy an ambiguous space.
Partly they are critical accretion on the composer’s work, but they are also,
in their wilful and often absurd methods and conclusions, aesthetic objects in
their own right. As such they aren’t divorced from the world, however, but are the
tool in power-struggles (which we focus primarily on questions of sexuality and
gender) enacted beneath the veneer of interpretation.
What was
your muse (a book, poem, musical piece) when writing the play?
Václav: The narrative of the piece is traditional – the
futile attempt to understand a single simple factual point about an artist’s
mind which could immediately elucidate all of her or his intellectual output. “Svatý
Xaverius! by Jakub Arbes and Henry James’ “The Figure in the Carpet” are just
two texts which exemplify this narrative.
Ian: The other strand was more direct – the life of the
composer Alois Piños (1925-2008), Václav’s grandfather. Rather than try and
research his life and write a “bio-pic,” we decided to take on his role in a
more general sense, particularly in relation to the themes of legacy and
heredity that were already mentioned.
What was
the biggest challenge when writing or realizing “The Analyses”?
Ian: The play features a lot of extremely dense, fast,
academic dialogue which will seem absurd when heard on stage, but which
develops the dynamic and relationships between characters. The trouble was to
get those things across through the actors whilst still occasionally trying to
get the meaning of certain lines across without slowing down the pace or
simplifying it too much.
If you
were to condense “The Analyses” in a single sentence, what would it be
(its
genre, main theme – ex. “A story of…”)?
Václav: A playful if alarming parody of gender, conveyed
through semanticized absurdism and an old man’s existential doubts.
When and where can one see your creation?
The 11th
to the 13th of April at Divadlo Inspirace on Malostranské náměstí. You can
watch the trailer on https://vimeo.com/62767158 and
reserve tickets on http://www.blrtheatre.com/#!analyses/c1rwx; group
ticket discounts are available. More information available on the event’s
Facebook page http://www.facebook.com/events/562902813743256/?fref=ts.
