Freak show at the Encounter Opening Ceremony
Tuesday 04/01/25 saw the start of the International Festival of Theatre Universities, “Encounter”. It has taken place in Brno for over 30 years, and art universities from different countries meet here annually. This year's audience canlook forward to guest performances from Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Poland, Italy, Switzerland, Germany, Ukraine, and South Korea.
The opening ceremony that officially started the festival took the form of a procession. Students of the Theatre Faculty of JAMU led this march from the building of the theatre faculty to Moravian square where the ceremony culminated. More and more students joined the group on the way and they seemed to wait at their stations. A mass of people followed them. With every little group joining, there were more and more objects which they carried. Whether it was a big head pushed on a wheelchair, another one riding in a shopping cart, hands on scepters, or a big torso someone was “wearing”. Alongside those, the costumes were also eye-catching. Historical-looking dresses and robes were mixed with overinterpreted pieces such as spider legs or the body of a drum on someone's head. This strange company resembled the panoptical freak shows that were popular in past centuries, and it was kind of attractive.
The tempo of the whole procession was adapted to the walking of the performers, so the path to the final location took almost an hour. Sometimes they fell from exhaustion or crawled, an effect which was used after arrival at the stage where they were hurried by the moderator. These beings thus acquired a human dimension. Slow, cumbersome movement in combination with deathly facial expressions, reinforced by masks, created a mysterious atmosphere. The crowd was accompanied by music which contrasted with the mystery. It was energetic, alive, with protesting emotion expressed through resonant drums, whistles, or human shouts. It created a sort of ambivalence of meanings.
When the procession reached Moravian square, the props carried there gained significance. The performers put together a puppet of Leoš Janáček out of the parts of a body that they were carrying in their hands. They symbolically brought him back from the afterlife to open the festival. While the performance continued, the director of the festival, Simona Gallová, introduced the schools that are performing this year, and few introductory words were also said by the ambassador Barbora Bezáková; after her, the dean of the Theatre Faculty, Prof. MgA. Blanka Kolegar, also spoke. Musical numbers followed, and the opening ceremony was completed.
