A tak tě prosím, kníže

The play by the playwright, screenwriter and journalist Karel Steigerwald, which the author wrote in the 1980s as a critique of the normalization regime, was first performed at the Řeznická Theater in 1982 under the direction of Karel Heřmánek. Back then, the text reflected the times and held up the mirror of the normalizing society. The grotesque portraits of "dead souls" (with Karel Heřmánek and Zdenek Dušek) were, at the time of their first presentation, a bold hyperbole of sick humanity demoralized by Bolshevism. It is a wonder that this play, based on the motifs of two Russian short stories by Chekhov and Saltykov-Shčedrin, could be staged at all in 1982.

In a funny and cynical dialogue, two impoverished jesters (Jiří Štrébl, Patrik Děrgel) show the opposite face of the present day. The same is performed by two impoverished singers (Eva Salzmannová, Anežka Hessová) in Aleš Březina's songs to lyrics by Charms and Steigerwald. The dialogue, or rather two intertwining monologues, gradually reveals the character distortions of both grotesque fraudsters, and the viewer's consciousness forms a picture of the rotting society that formed these servants and at the same time parasitic creatures. The two monologues are interspersed with texts set to music by Daniil Charms and Karel Steigerwald, set to music and staged by Aleš Březina for the upcoming production.