A small room stuffed full of pictures and guests becomes the stiflingly-cramped location of an artistic dinner, at the beginning of which we are waiting for an actor from the National Theatre. He is a top actor, very famous, one of the greatest alive, and duly conceited. Without being asked to, he shares his various pieces of wisdom, experiences from his acting career and pseudophilosophical musings on our mission in life. All this in Bernhard’s angry style, with his sharp humour, observational talent and ability to formulate our falseness. In the stylistically polished prose of Woodcutters aka Cutting Timber: An Irritation (1984) Thomas Bernhard returns to his lifelong subject – the closeness of death and art. He focuses on the problem of the authenticity and inauthenticity of artistic existence, and mercilessly reveals the aestheticisation of empty life forms to be an escape from truth and responsibility.
About the company
The Theatre on the Balustrade is a leader in current theatrical trends and has received some of the highest honours in Czech theatre, including: Theatre of the year 2014; and Best Performance of 2013 (The Golden Sixties), 2014 (Velvet Havel) and 2017 (Macbeth - Too Much Blood). In recent seasons, the theatre has been invited to prestigious festivals in Austria, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Serbia, Germany, Columbia, France, the United Kingdom and the USA.