FIVE TIMES AROUND THE WORLD

ABOUT THE PLAY

An open-air family show inspired by the adventures of the traveller Barbora Markéta Eliášová, who set off on her first round-the-world journey in 1912.

She travelled by train across Russia to Vladivostok. From there, a three-week steamer journey took her to Japan, where she worked as a governess for children of an English professor and taught at a postal school. She learned Japanese, ate with chopsticks, wore a kimono and became the first European graduate of an ikebana course. From Japan she travelled by sea to America, returning to Prague by ship via Chicago and New York. She later went around the world four more times choosing a different route each time. She experienced the haughtiness of the Dutch colonizers in Java, the vitality and suspiciously carefree nature of Australians, and wrote diaries, articles, travelogues and novels about all this.

Tygr v tísni created a travelogue puppet show about a girl who grew up without parents but was able to transform solitude into independence and make her dreams come true in an age when women didn't even have the right to vote.

Czech with English subtitles.

• 60 min.
• Age category:6+
• Directed by:Zuzana Burianová
• Dramaturgie:Marie Nováková
• Music by:Marek Doubrava
• Designed by:Tereza Havlová
• Premiere:2018
• Starring:Alžběta Nováková, Jiří Kniha, Karolína Novotná

About the theatre:

The independent theatre group was formed at the Theatre Faculty of the Prague Academy of Performing Arts in spring 2010. It focuses on devised theatre, adaptation of 20th and 21st century literature and searching for new forms of theatre in non-traditional spaces.

The company's dramaturgy explores the space beyond the conventional waters of interpreting a fixed dramatic text. It offers the audience a theatrical experience of productions based on author's personal interpretation of non-dramatic (fiction, biography, autobiography, documentary, essay, poetry) works of literature in a classicist villa on Štvanice Island, or at unusual venues (Mill in Zlatá koruna, Žižkov Freight Railway Station, Fuchs Café, etc.) They discover literary curiosities, valuable authentic materials, and dramatic stories of the 20th century. They experiment with the forms of cabaret, montage, site-specific, staged lecture, musical or immersive theatre. Through adaptations of biographical and autobiographical literature and major works of modern literature, they bring the audience the perspective of today's young artists on political and cultural history. Tygr v tísni organizes the Ancient Štvanice open-air theatre festival.

The leading personalities of Tygr v tísni are director Ivo Kristián Kubák, dramaturg Marie Nováková and director Zuzana Burianová.