The Ensemble Spitfire Company Presents the Co-production Project Sniper's Lake, Inspired by the Theme of Refugees and Lone Shooters
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At the beginning of April The Spitfire Company, which has recently introduced the projects One Step Before the Fall, Antiwords and Animal Exitus, will present their new project Sniper's Lake to Prague audience. After their previous performances with the themes such as exhaustion, Parkinson's disease, and coping with trauma and childbirth, the Spitfire Company now focuses on the issues like refugees, migration and the role of today´s lone shooters. The performance is produced in co-production with the Norwegian theatre arena Baerum Kulturhus and thanks to the financial support of the EEA grant. The premiere will take place on March 26 in Oslo and then on April 7 and 8 in the Ponec Theatre in Prague.Since the World War II there have not been as many travelling immigrants as nowadays. Not only do they flee from something, but also to get something. The invisible threat is an integral part of our reality. It paralyzes us, but it also triggers the reaction of overcoming oneself. Lone shooters and refugees are motifs that we encounter in everyday life. ”The performance Sniper's Lake began to acquire solid contours during the crisis in Kiev, which resulted in the massacre at Majdan. The subject of a lone sniper standing against civilians resonated very strongly with that time. The authors did not know what would happen in Paris and a few weeks later in Uherský Brod, Czech Republic. We prepare new performances and we try to respond to the world in which we live. We look for the means to achieve the common emotion,” explains Petr Boháč, the artistic director of the Spitfire Company, the dramaturge of Sniper's Lake and at the same time the performer of the shooter.
The theme of the performance will be realized through a shooting figure in the auditorium. Petr Boháč adds: "When we were looking for an adequate means of expression, we found paintball. Some paintball sniper rifles are indistinguishable from the genuine ones. I wonder what happens when I start to fire at the performers. What will the reaction be? We are practising to be perfect to avoid injury – each paintball shot really hurts. It is similar to tightrope walkers. They also must not make a mistake.” The next step to make such a complex topic authentic was that the entire creative team had several meetings with refugees who will never forget their run. For example, we met Fatima, who escaped from Afghanistan with her parents and siblings - she and her brother wanted to go to school but it was forbidden to them on pain of death.
Sniper's Lake is closely linked to the previous projects like One Step Before the Fall and Animal Exitus and it forms the loose trilogy Man in extreme situations. The genre is physical and dance theatre with very strong visual and emotional components.
Thanks to the extreme physical deployment that provokes strong emotions, past projects of the Spitfire Company and the protagonists have received several domestic and international awards, including the Herald Angel Award, a nomination for the Total Theatre Award at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, a nomination for the Thalia Award and the Divadelní noviny Award (Theatre Newspaper Award). This year the ensemble received an invitation from Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Germany, Korea, the USA, Poland, Scotland and Slovakia.
The music was composed specially for the project by the American composer Sivan Eldar. Since the very beginning the dance performance Sniper's Lake has arisen in collaboration with the Norwegian Baerum Kulturhus and the civic association Tanec Praha. Source: Spitfire Company