On 25th August 1968 a slight woman is coming to Red Square in Moscow. She is pushing a pram with her three-month-old son. There is a hand-written banner under the baby blanket. It says For Your Freedom and Ours. The woman is sitting down on the pavement together with seven other people. They are spreading their banners just when the clock at Spassky Tower is striking noon.

The performance is based on the book of the same name by Natalya Gorbanevskaya, who was one of these “Brave eight”. Together with Konstantin Babicky, a linguist, Vadim Delon, a poet, Vladimir Dremlyuga, a worker, Viktor Fainberg, a specialist in English philology, Pavel Litvinov, a physicist, Larisa Bogoraz, a linguist, and Tatyana Baeva, a student, she demonstrated peacefully on the Red Square against the occupation of Czechoslovakia by the Warsaw Treaty armies. The demonstration was dispersed in a few minutes by undercover agents of the State Security Service and its participants were arrested. After that they were questioned, tried, imprisoned, sent to exile, labour camps or psychiatric prison-hospitals.

An impulse for dealing with this topic originated in August 2013 when about ten people were held by security services in Red Square in Moscow on 25th August 2013 because they came there to recall the protest against the occupation of Czechoslovakia in August 1968.

Pavel Štourač, an artistic director of Continuo Theatre, stood up for those unlawfully detained in public, he addressed some of them including Natalya Gorbanevskaya and initiated a petition For Your Freedom and Ours, which was sent to the Embassy of the Russian Federation in the Czech Republic.

Before the authors started to prepare the performance, they did an extensive research, they studied historical documents and they consulted both Czech and foreign historians as well as living participants of the demonstration, their children and other Soviet dissidents of that time.

30 Years of Continuo Theatre

Continuo Theatre is celebrating the 30th anniversary of its founding. Owing to this, the company is preparing several events and projects held during the year 2022. One of them is the 30 Years of Continuo Theatre festival that takes place in Prague on 19 – 24 September 2022.

During the festival we are going to show current performances Please Leave a Message, Noon, Hic Sunt Dracones and MONSTRUM and here I am blind. They will not be common performances. Some great personalities have been invited to take part in our performances. Roberta Carreri, an actress of Odin Teatret from Danish Holstebro and Leszek Madzik, a director and art manager of Scena Plastyczna KUL from Polish Lublin.

During the festival week we are planning some other events, e. g. workshops for students or a conference about the Czech alternative theatre and companies working after the Velvet Revolution and influencing theatre work up to the present. At the same time a publication called Theatre and Freedom will be launched in cooperation with the Arts and Theatre Institute.

www.continuo.cz/en/30years/

Credits

Directed by: Pavel Štourač
Concept:  Divadlo Continuo
Dramaturgy: Divadlo Continuo, Marek Turošík
Stage design: Helena Štouračová and Pavel Štourač
Music: Elia Moretti and coll.
Light design: Jan Hugo Hejzlar
Technical collaboration: Martin Hamouz

Cast: Sara Bocchini, Kateřina Šobáňová, Ludmila Ješutová, Sean Henderson, Felix Baumann, Pavel Štourač
Markéta Lábusová (violin, voice), John Robin Bold (guitars, electronics), Petr Tichý (double bass), Urban Megušar (violoncello)

Photo documentation: Adéla Vosičková, Karel Fořt
Video documentation: Ondřej Kymla
Grafic design: Jakub Štourač
Production: Zuzana Bednarčiková, Markéta Krejčová, Art Prometheus
Booking: Nikola Križková

Premiere: 17 March 2018
Duration: 60 min