Press release
Prague, 8 February 2022
MALÁ INVENTURA TURNS 20 THIS YEAR
The 20th anniversary of the international festival of new theatre, Malá Inventura, is approaching. At the end of this month – from 18 to 26 February – the festival will offer thirty-three theatre performances at seventeen venues in Prague. Malá Inventura will feature 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 will also offer a special online presentation for both the foreign and Czech festival guests.

Malá Inventura will open this year with the Czech Theatre DNA Awards ceremony at La Fabrica. The awards are given every two years for outstanding contribution to and development and achievement in cultural area. Partners of the Czech Cultural Network Nová síť will select three laureates from tens of final nominations. One award is traditionally given for a long-term contribution. This year it will go to the group Buchty a loutky, which incidentally celebrates the this year thirty years. The other winners will be announced during the ceremonial evening.

Nominated are: international platform PiNKBUS, podcasts by the group Ufftenživot – Život on Air, platform Terén (Brno), Ridina Ahmedová – podcasts series and original solo performance Sádlo, student initiative Ne!musíš to vydržet, Miřenka Čechová representing contemporary dance and physical theatre, independent platform Temporary Collective, Czech-French art collective tYhle, producer and member of the Czech ITI Centre Jakub Vedral, and artist residency house Pod Javory REZI.DANCE.

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 contemporary independent scene. The main key they used for the selection was a question whether a particular performance truly required an independent spectator and whether it considered audience to be its organic part. They paid considerable attention to various formats of these encounters with audiences and the temporalities in which they take place.

The 2022 edition provides significant space to emerging and established contemporary female artists and audiences should look forward to enjoying projects by 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 features a series of performances that play with 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 Malá Inventura is 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 celebrates twenty years. But we won’t be looking back to the past too much,” explains Petr Pola, Artistic Director of Malá Inventura. “In this edition we wish 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 will come close to a ‘small inventory’ of the results as well as of individual practices, and bring to light issues that are harder to see.”

“There are great choices for both the ordinary spectators and the professionals this year. After the past, a more modest hybrid Covid edition, Malá Inventura is getting back in shape. We paid a 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’re delighted to see a great interest from abroad as well as from Czech regions. No doubt Malá Inventura has 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 / Motus, Divadlo Archa, Divadlo X10, MeetFactory, Divadlo NoD, Palác Akropolis, PONEC – divadlo pro tanec, Studio ALTA, Studio Hrdinů, Venuše ve Švehlovce, and Cross Attic.

Photographs in print quality available to download can be found here: http://malainventura.cz/cz/galerie/tady-je-vse-co-novinar-potrebuje

Other information and up-to-date programme are available on festival website: http://malainventura.cz

Press contact:
Johana Mravcová
+420 605 751 290
Malá Inventura – festival of new theatre
www.malainventura.cz
www.novasit.cz

Nová síť is a service organisation that supports performing arts and open culture. The organisation actively creates opportunities for collaboration between Czech regions, Prague, and with abroad; improves communication between stakeholders of cultural life and the public administration; and strives for decentralisation, development, and cultivation of civic society in the Czech Republic. Nová síť’s main projects in 2022 include the CZECH CULTURAL NETWORK NOVÁ SÍŤ, festival of new theatre MALÁ INVENTURA, ART-IN-RES project supporting artists residencies, and CULTURE GET-TOGETHER conference on collaboration in culture.