GALLERY: FESTIVAL MALÁ INVENTURA TURNED 20 THIS YEAR

At the end of this month – 18 to 26 February – the festival offered thirty-three theatre performances at seventeen venues in Prague. Malá Inventura featured the most significant projects of new theatre created in the past year, an extensive networking programme with new formats, discussions as well as events for children. It also offered a special online presentation for both foreign and Czech festival guests.

Malá Inventura opened this year with the Czech Theatre DNA Awards ceremony at La Fabrica. The awards are given every two years for outstanding contribution, development and achievement in the cultural area. Partners of the Czech Cultural Network Nová síť select three laureates from tens of final nominations. One award is traditionally given for a long-term contribution.

Malá Inventura artistic director Petr Pola together with co-curators Petra Tejnorová and Karolína Plicková have prepared this year’s SHOWCASE of theatre performances that represent in its own right what could be considered the novelty in the contemporary independent scene. The main key they used for the selection was a question whether a particular performance truly require an independent spectator and whether it consider the audience to be its organic part. They paid attention to various formats of these encounters with audiences and the temporalities in which they take place.

The 2022 edition provided significant space to emerging and established contemporary female artists. For example Miřenka Čechová, Tereza Ondrová and Petra Tejnorová, Marie Gourdain, Jana Burkiewiczová, Eliška Brtnická, Apolena Vanišová, Lucie Kašiarová, Martina Hajdyla Lacová, Renata Piotrowská-Auffret, Ridina Ahmedová, and others. The festival featured a series of performances that play with the audience’s attention, such as Petr Gonda’s OK Carbon, Jan Mocek’s Present: Perfect, or a thirty-hours-long Slow TV event entitled We Are Not Alone.

A new programme section, CHANGE OF PRACTICE, was created especially for this year’s edition. It reflects on perspectives of change in various areas of contemporary theatre practice. As usual, this year was Malá Inventura also the centre of live networking for theatre organisations and professionals, artistic groups, performers and expert public with its last programme section ARTS SERVICE & NETWORKING.

“This year the festival celebrated twenty years. But we were not looking back to the past too much,” explains Petr Pola, Artistic Director of Malá Inventura. “In this edition, we wanted to focus on opportunities for a change that we can initiate in theatre environment not only in the Czech Republic. We hope that the festival has become close to a ‘small inventory’ of the results as well as of individual practices, and brought to light issues that are harder to see.”

“There were great choices for both the ordinary spectators and the professionals this year. After the past, a more modest hybrid Covid edition, Malá Inventura is transformed back in shape. We paid special attention to networking, feedbacks, and formats that support new viewpoints and approaches. Today, those are the most needed,” adds Adriana Světlíková, Festival Director. “We were delighted to see a great interest from abroad as well as from Czech regions. No doubt Malá Inventura had much to offer!”

Malá Inventura Festival will take place also in May and from September to October in selected regions of the Czech Republic (Kuks, Jičín, Karlovy Vary, Jihlava, and České Budějovice).

The festival is organised by Nová síť in collaboration with local scenes Alfred ve dvoře, (A)void Gallery, Cross Attic, Divadlo Archa, Theatre NoD, Divadlo X10, KD Mlejn, Klub Letka, La Fabrika, MeetFactory, National Gallery Prague, Palác Akropolis, PONEC - dance venue, Studio ALTA, Studio Hrdinů, Venuše ve Švehlovce and Vzlet.