A play by a contemporary German author is a stormy symphony of many voices: outbreaks of stressed-out nannies are interrupted by monologues of desperate mothers who get mingled with toddle cries. Only fathers’ voices are actually not heard at all. Maybe they float in the outer space, or they will come home past nine thirty p.m., and maybe today even later or maybe even never…?
Felicia Zeller’s (born 1970) ironic account on the state of Western familiesand bringing up children at the beginning of the new millennium was world premiered only last year but immediately rolled out in several productions, and gained prestigious awards (for example invitation to the Mülheimer Theatertage in 2011, etc.)
Translation of this play was possible due to the support of the Prague Goethe Institute.
Date of premiere 03/06/2012
Press reactions:
“On one hand the text is written in a very complicated manner, it is a demanding language play but on the other it has great flow and fore mostly – it states something essential and at the same time it is very entertaining. Great part of the success of the play lays in Zuzana Augustova’s translation of the play about the girls from „Shlovakia living in Gremany who dream of Fengland.”
Josef Rubeš, Metro Daily, June 6th, 2012
“The stage director Natália Deáková puts on plays in simple yet impressive manner. She has the ability to use artistic short cuts in an amusing way, and with a sense of rhythm and melody of the text, and manages to handle its a bit indistinctive ending. The uneasy play (exquisitely translated to Czech by Zuzana Augustová) unfolds with all gravity as well as humour, which is helped by four actresses who take turns in the roles of nannies, mothers and children. … All of them share a gentle caricature acting ability and intonation precision without which a production of such a play would loose its sense. And therefore the Interviews with Astronauts are proof that creating a formally untraditional, yet attractive theatre with the use of contemporary plays and with a contemporary testimony is not such utopia as it may seem when looking at the repertoire of classical theatres.”
