My name shall be Gantenbein

I try on a narrative like I’d try on a dress.

The performance directed by a collective of BA students draws inspiration from the novel Gantenbein by the Swiss playwright and writer Max Frisch. This novel revolves around the topic of identity and presents a patchwork of stories that are put together through the postmodernist technique of unreliable narration and then deconstructed once again. The characters inhabiting this world fall apart along with the form. They are trying to find who they are, who they’d like to become or who are they becoming in the eyes of the people around them. The constant self-doubt awakes the need for constant change, which happens when the characters aren’t deep within their thoughts or presenting themselves to the public.

How do we determine our own identity? With regards to social acceptance is it better to present oneself wearing a fictional identity or to be true to oneself? What would happen if we simply made our identity from scratch? The characters find themselves on the borderline of this identity conflict, stuck between fiction and experience, and they are searching for their true selves.

This performance presents a closely intertwined conversation between visual and performing arts. The gallery premises are constantly turning theatrical, it questions and blurs the line between the performative and the exhibited. The identity crisis in art and creation and the attempts for mutual connection and understanding is therefore always present.

*About the collective
The authors joined their forces at the Janáček Academy of Performing Arts, in Josef Kovalčuk’s Directing and Dramaturgy Department. This is the first project, where the three students, Jan Doležel, Justina Grecová and Jana Vaverková first combine their respective artistic methods.