JAURÈS

Egon Luděk Tobiáš

Cast: 3 men, 3 women

In the summer residence of doctor and poet Adam Baturin a small company - the doctor’s sister, his two girlfriends, an unknown artist Navid and a writer Jaurès - is gathering. The company is playing a “detective game” word chess with passages from letters, from memories. It is early on a Sunday evening in summer, a time for doing nothing. Oscillation between the game and an unexplained tragic story of “drowning in a well” increases the mystery of the text. Here we have a drama-sketch, in which nothing happens. The story feels almost abstract. Unfinished sentences, thoughts and behaviour create the magical and dreamlike world of the play. The author is not, however, paraphrasing nor interpreting modern Russian classics. He only reflects the heavy motionlessness of stopped time and its melancholy.

“The play, or rather playlet, Jaurés by Egon Tobiáš has nothing to do with the French socialist Jaurés [...] it is a kind of punishment of prose by Ivan Bunin. It is closest of all to his brief anecdotes of a few lines. However, Tobiáš detaches moods or dramatic dialogues from the sources or situations which created them virtually by a laboratory method.” Josef Mlejnek: Ivan Bunin ripped into film shots, Lidové noviny, 19.9.1997

  The play is available also in English, Spanish and Russian translation.