Love, Defiance and Death

The renowned director, playwright, composer, musician and art theorist Emil František Burian (1904-1959), founder of the avant-garde theatre D 34 and a pioneer of choral recitation with musically stylized and distinctly rhythmic speech, called voiceband, often used non-dramatic subjects in his productions – he was close to folk poetry, for example. In his “poetic” theatre, he developed into distinctly sound and light-image productions e.g. Mácha’s Máj or a montage of folk poetry from Erben, known as Vojna. It was the response to it that gave František Halas and Vladimír Holan the impetus to compile the anthology of folk poetry Love and Death. The collection later became the basis for another stage montage by E. F. Burian entitled Love, Defiance and Death (1946). This folk play forms a thematic arc from the eternal longing of young people of all times for love, through defiance as an expression of man’s pride in the face of humiliation, to a courageous dialogue with death as a righteous mirror of human conscience; thus approaching the well-known medieval morality play Everyman (Whoever). A thrilling love story performed in the form of “synthetic theatre”, combining musical, acting and visual components, it will be staged as a stage montage of folk poetry by Emil František Burian in a region where tradition is a truly living legacy.