The upcoming film Amerikanka by producer and director Viktor Tauš will be heralded by a new production called Snowflakes on the stage of Jatka 78 in Prague from Wednesday, September 6. It combines a musical, a drama and a fashion show. It is intended to serve as a live trailer for the film, which will be shown in theaters on May 23 next year.
The theatrical show will include authentic confessions of the children who play in the film. They come from children’s homes and separated groups, said director Tauš this Wednesday.
“During the two years of work that we spent with the children, they really infected us with a kind of combativeness, joy and vivaciousness. One of the reasons why the show is created is so that the audience becomes infected as well. The strength of children invites us into life,” adds Pavla Beretová , who will play the title character in the production with Lucía Žáčková.
In addition to more than 30 children, viewers will see the Slovak singer Adam Pavlovčin alias Adonxs, as well as Tomas Sean Pšenička, who is only known as Tom Sean on Tiktok is watching 146 thousand people, or the singing rapper Annabelle. As part of the Energy for Culture festival, the project will visit České Budějovice, Třebíč, Ústí nad Labem and Pilsen. The creators are discussing the launch in other regions.
“We will also perform the production for schools and children’s homes. There, the theater will also be accompanied by a debate with Mrs. Veronika Kašáková, who herself grew up in a children’s home and today, through her foundation, helps these children on their way to an independent life,” says director Tauš, adding that as a bonus, visitors will see a five-minute clip from the film as part of the production.
Next year, he will present a new vision of the story of the American woman. Unlike the original theater drama with actresses Tereza Ramba and Eliška Křenková, which focuses on eight years in the life of one girl, the film tells the story of her entire life.
The American woman, who received a nomination for the Mark Ravenhill Theater Award, was inspired by a true story from Husák’s Czechoslovakia in the 1980s.
The protagonist is a minor girl, Ema Černá, who grows up in a dysfunctional family. Her mother, who could not even take care of herself, left her, and her father allegedly left for America long before that.
Socially and socially outcast, Ema goes to a children’s home, spends some time in foster care, and ends up in a foster home. An indomitable belief in herself, a desire for freedom and an enthusiastic illusion that one day she will meet her father and see the fabulous America help her to endure cruel hardships, bullying and humiliation.
“Ema Černá’s rough story could be a psychologically demanding spectacle, fortunately the director and the actresses also filled it with humor. Gentle, situational and childishly naive. Voříšková and Křenková have appropriated Ema, each bringing her to life with courage, audacity and fragility in their own way,” Aktuálně wrote. cz in a review of a production that quickly became popular. Last year, the creators calculated that around 30,000 viewers had seen it.
The girl, after whose nickname the project is named, shared her story with Viktor Tauš at a time when he himself lived as a homeless person. David Jařab later translated the material into theatrical language. He came up with the idea not to conceive the story as a scenic monologue, but to create two variants of the heroine, who conduct an internal dialogue and fight with each other.
A trailer from the original theater production American Girl, which has already been seen by tens of thousands of people. | Video: Heaven’s Gate
“If a person feels hope, even if it’s a false one, he can really overcome a lot,” noted Jařab at the time, who described American Girl as “a portrait of the dark moments of children from problematic families in the era of totalitarianism, but at the same time a story that, in certain variations, could happen at any time.” , as he said. “We are not immune to indifference to others, even if we have a democracy and live in relative prosperity,” added Jařab.
The theater production Amerikánka premiered in 2018. It is accompanied by a book of photographs by Tomki Němek, who maps the life of Amerikánka in all its forms. In the original version, all characters are played by Tereza Ramba and Eliška Křenková.
Later, Amerikánka was one of the first works of the Live Film project, which was born from the initiative of Viktor Tauš. Thanks to him, several performances got onto cinema screens, which were captured by a small crew in non-theatre spaces. He filmed the productions, including the American woman, in one continuous shot and broadcast them live.
As part of this project, Tauš also “took” the American woman to other, atypical spaces: to the runway, to a sandbox, a cage for hyenas or an abandoned children’s sanatorium.
“Individual environments alternate irregularly and unpredictably in front of the camera, sometimes even in the middle of a sentence. Although the unity of place, time and plot is not observed, thanks to the captivating performances of both protagonists, the result does not seem fragmented,” Aktuálně.cz wrote in the review of the film footage.
