Cowboys and cowgirls, sharpshooters, Indians and Cossacks…. The Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show brings to Brno a miscellany of dime stories and sheer clichés from the Far West and the rest of the world. On that special day of August 1906, Buffalo Bill receives a big round of applause, just as elsewhere in the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. It is no wonder that one of the onlookers, a twelve-year-old boy named Bořek, succumbs to the call of the faraway hills and adventure. Bořek flees his home and joins the singular fellowship led by the harum-scarum ringmaster. A few years later, in 1950, Bořek’s romantic dream is confronted with a stern historical context. Bořek has no choice but to flee. Besides the perhaps naive passion for Wild West stories – which inspired the phenomenon of Czech ‘tramping’ – the play also evokes the nostalgic affection of some Czechs for the New World and the illusion of freedom that it embodied. After all, the issue of emigration – whether a voluntary or involuntary – relates the on-stage stories to today’s reality.
A vivid swirl of plots is stirred up by the interaction between puppets and actors. The scenography too adopts that sovereignly nomadic nature of the story. Being conceived as multilingual the performance uses simple words; and when words run out it is images, gestures and sight that begin to speak.
The production receives its premiere at the TWB festival.