{"id":14738,"date":"2017-10-04T09:00:06","date_gmt":"2017-10-04T16:00:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/?p=14738"},"modified":"2017-10-02T13:21:09","modified_gmt":"2017-10-02T20:21:09","slug":"the-good-soldier-schweik-examines-czech-survivalist-mentality-through-brechtian-lens","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/2017\/10\/04\/the-good-soldier-schweik-examines-czech-survivalist-mentality-through-brechtian-lens\/","title":{"rendered":"The Good Soldier Schweik<\/em> examines Czech survivalist mentality through Brechtian lens"},"content":{"rendered":"

Developed and staged in Toronto in the late \u201960s and early \u201970s, Michael John Nimchuk\u2019s stage adaptation of Jaroslav Ha\u0161ek\u2019s legendary Czech novel The Good Soldier Schweik <\/i>hasn\u2019t been performed a lot since then, especially around these parts. But now, director Don Keith and his team have welcomed the challenge of bringing this lesser-known work of Canadian and international theatre to life.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a story about a man who becomes a soldier in a conflict he doesn\u2019t understand or necessarily support,\u201d explains Keith. \u201cBut he gets caught up in it, and he fights for whatever the cause is they\u2019re fighting for. Which is always unclear.\u201d<\/p>\n

Like the book it\u2019s based upon, Schweik <\/i>is a black-humour satire set throughout the course of the First World War, and it follows the exploits of Schweik, a Czech soldier serving in the Austro-Hungarian Army. In the decades since the book\u2019s publication in 1921, the character has become a cultural icon to the Czech people, one whose omnipresence is difficult to overstate. In the remains of the multi-ethnic Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Czechs were forced into the role of the underdog, which ties into the character and the play.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
The Good Soldier Schweik<\/em> uses black humour and satire to make a point (photo by Clayton Jevne).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cSchweik has been adopted as their national hero because of humanism and his adventures,\u201d says Keith. \u201cThere\u2019s just a strange irony in that, that this character who worked his way up through the ranks, whether because he was a genius or an idiot, could become their hero. That\u2019s very amusing to me, but it\u2019s also very meaningful because he manages to somehow surface as a survivor, which I guess the Czech people have as well.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Inconnu production of Schweik<\/i> is to be staged in a Brechtian style, in which the set is nonexistent and is provided only by projections, the costumes hang on stage, and a small handful of actors portray a wide variety of roles.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn a Brecht play, you\u2019re assigned to come out and say, \u2018You know, guys, this is only a play. Your life is really what this is about. Don\u2019t accept it as realism,\u2019\u201d says Keith. \u201cThe switching of characters fits quite well into that. I have six actors that play about 15, 16 roles each. There\u2019s a charm in that, and a wizardry in that, that\u2019s quite magical for audiences. My theory is whatever you set up for an audience, if you do it with enough confidence, they\u2019ll buy into it. When we perform it for audiences, we\u2019ll discover what it means to them. So it\u2019s just something that has to come out by sharing it with people.\u201d<\/p>\n

For Keith, the play is a source of endless parallels between the absurdity of war and politics of the past and those same institutions in the modern age, particularly in the wake of America\u2019s recent actions in the international community.<\/p>\n

\u201cNothing\u2019s changed, unfortunately,\u201d says Keith. \u201cI guess we fool ourselves into believing things have changed, but they really haven\u2019t. There\u2019s something else in why men fight each other, or countries fight each other, that is supposedly meaningful, but it\u2019s lost on Schweik, and it\u2019s lost on me as well.\u201d<\/p>\n

While the Inconnu team acknowledges the difficulties of bringing a story so famously steeped in Czechoslovakian culture to a modern Canadian audience, Keith maintains that the gap is bridged by the power and relatability of the good-humoured Schweik and his resilience against both the absurdities of bureaucracy and human conflict.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe look at Schweik as being us, or we\u2019re him,\u201d says Keith. \u201cAnd there\u2019s maybe some hope in that, or at least some comfort.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Good Soldier Schweik
\n<\/i>Various times,\u00a0until Sunday, October 14
\nVarious prices, Theatre Inconnu
\ntheatreinconnu.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Developed and staged in Toronto in the late \u201960s and early \u201970s, Michael John Nimchuk\u2019s stage adaptation of Jaroslav Ha\u0161ek\u2019s legendary Czech novel The Good Soldier Schweik hasn\u2019t been performed a lot since then, especially around these parts. But now, director Don Keith and his team have welcomed the challenge of bringing this lesser-known work […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":14739,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,199],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14738","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arts","category-october-4-2017"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14738","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14738"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14738\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14741,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14738\/revisions\/14741"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14739"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14738"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14738"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14738"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}