The Conservative (On the centenary of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic)

Drama production with elements of text mash-up and art installation. Adaptation of a theatre text commissioned by Dogma Theatre from Trenčín and written by David Zábranský.

“It is apolitical, impractical, tame and strongly introverted writing. In 2018, in the Czech Republic and to a lesser extent in Slovakia, we celebrate the centenary of the founding of the independent Czechoslovakia. I named my text, written to commemorate this anniversary, The Conservative. The main character is a man looking into the passing waves behind the boat. It is a poetic text about the passage of time, a monument to those hundred years and a reflection on their meaning and significance. I am not dwelling on our shared history; the text is a monument without a rider, a monument to honour a hundred years, nothing else. It is a record of an atmosphere of emptiness, an atmosphere of post-celebration. It is the eloquent silence that came after the banquet. At the end of it all, there is – it seems – nothing.”

David Zábranský is a novelist and author of radio and theatre plays. He was born in 1977 in Prague. He graduated in law, which he originally worked in the non-governmental sector, including at the Citizenship/Civil and Human Rights Advice Bureau, the Refugee Aid Organisation and the Human Rights League. He made his literary debut in 2006 with the novel “Slabost pro každou jinou pláž”, for which he won the Magnesia Litera Award in the “Discovery of the Year” category. This was followed by the novels “Stern’s Attempt to Love”, “A Piece of the Artist” and “Edita Farkas”. Zábranský’s novels have been published in Hungarian and Spanish in addition to Czech.
For his extensive novel “Martin Juhás čili Československo” (Martin Juhás or Czechoslovakia), he was again nominated for the Magnesia Litera Award, this time in the “Book of the Year” category. In 2017, he stirred up the stagnant surface of literary life in the Czech Republic with his controversial novel Behind the Alps.