Laterna Magika´s Wonderful Circus: 35 Years on Stage

The Wonderful Circus was performed as many as 5,630 times in the Czech Republic and 540 times around as many as 50 cities in 16 other countries of the world (D, SK, NL, USA, B, SSSR, I, CAN, F, BG, A, Israel, E, S, TR, DK). The extraordinary success of the show is reflected in theatre reviews dating from the first decade of its existence: “... the fixed metaphor of clowns being born of an egg and striving to fulfil their destiny is here transformed into theatre magic stronger than ever before. (…) Applying the black-light theatre approach, the authors of the piece have created a bewildering theatre piece. I was simply bewitched.“ Clive Barnes, New York Post, 23.2. 1979 Another striking piece of statistical data is that if the show had been performed once every night it would have filled the theatre's calendar for as long as sixteen years. The show also brought up several generations of theatregoers and dancers: to date, the production has featured as many as 21 Sad Clowns, 23 Jolly Clowns, 21 Seducers and 29 Venuses. “The Wonderful Circus is an emblematic piece of Laterna magika and a unique piece in the whole history of Czech theatre. I am very pleased that, together with the Club of Donators of the National Theatre, we have managed to provide for new energy for the piece in the form of the digitalization of the film strip,” comments Ondřej Černý, the director of the National Theatre. The poetic story on the eternal search for beauty revolves around the pilgrimage of two clowns in search of an unattainable Venus while they have to overcome plots of the Seducer who brought them to life and who longs to control them. It has enchanted thousands of spectators by the changing of sets that had been shot in the outside scenery around the whole Czechoslovakia. Other assets of the show are its humorous scenes and the choreography, designed by five choreographers, with Karel Vrtiška in the role of the leading choreographer. Still today the piece conveys a very strong signature of the extraordinary team that has created it: the direction was done by Evald Schorm, the scenic design by Josef Svoboda, the puppets by Jiří Srnec, the founder of the Backlight Theatre, the setting of the puppet scenes by Jan Švankmajer. Oldřich F. Korte was in charge of the original music and music dramaturgy and Zdeněk Seydl designed the stage and the costumes.

A real circus tent was built up on one of the large meadows in the park Stromovka. We heard the sound of the trumpet, the sun was rising from the waves of the sea. All the searching, offering and finding... All of that witnessed by the smiling, kind and serene Evald Schorm, the director with a black halo of his hair.
I had a script ready for the hot air balloon scene. I went to talk to Evald because I needed a film for it. He said: -“Shoot it yourself.” -”I've never done it before.” He replied: “Everyone is a filmmaker until they have proved not to be one.” … and so it was, that's how the scene with the beautiful music by Oldřich Korte was done.” The Wonderful Circus fuses film, theatre, music and dance. According to the official evaluation text on the piece written by the artistic director of Laterna magika at the time, Jiří Srnec, its primary goal in 1977 was to “examine whether Laterna Magika is an open system and in what ways it should be effectively developed towards poetic theatre.”
Given the conditions of the late 1970s, the creation of the piece was rather difficult especially in terms of production and coordination. For example, each role was rehearsed with two alternations. Also, for the sake of Josef Svoboda's scenic design a specific film needed to be recorded simultaneously on three cameras: in total, the film required 53,000 meters of film material. The neuralgic points of the creative process are documented in a report by Josef Svoboda: “The film could only be edited on a multiple editing machine: only the institution of Krátký Film had one at the time and they had very strict policy on not lending it to anyone. However, there was another machine of the kind in the Czech Republic: Artcentrum had borrowed one from abroad and they allowed us to use it rather illegally at nights and during weekends. This naturally meant that our work was proceeding very slowly. Hundreds of boxes with film material needed to be transferred back and forth so that no one found out that we were working at Artcentrum. (...) It should also be noted here that Laterna magika disposed of a microbus the driver of which only worked from 7.00 am to 3.45 pm and who was not willing to carry anything in his hands because, as he explained: “He was just a bus driver.”
The original film is now in the process of digitalization at the Barrandov Film Studios. This has been kindly enabled by financial support from the Club of Donators of the National Theatre. April 14th will thus be one of the last dates when the show will be performed with the original film strip.
