For over twenty years (since 1999), theatre photography workshops have been held on the occasion of the Divadlo international theatre festival in Pilsen. Video workshops were introduced in 2002. This has made the Pilsen festival one of the longest continuously documented theatre festivals in Europe. At the same time, a huge photo and video archive of festival activities was created. The archive impressively reflects not only the essential development trends in Central and Eastern European theatre, but also presents a wide variety of productions ranging from large, state-subsidised theatres to projects by independent companies. It includes drama and opera productions, as well as puppet, object, dance and street theatre productions. It also documents the evolution of well-known Central and Eastern European directors and theatre companies over the last couple of decades.
On the occasion of this year’s 30th edition of the festival, the organisers decided to publicly reflect on the experience at a joint colloquium of the two workshops for the first time to discuss the similarities and differences in documentation through video and photography. The aim of the meeting is to stimulate a discussion of theoretical and aesthetic issues, as well as technical and practical aspects of this form of documentation.
One of the things these media have in common, despite all their differences, is undoubtedly the fact that audio-visual media (photography, sound recordings, film and video) have revolutionised the documentation of the theatre history and present. Traditional documentation of theatre history, as can still be found in many collections, archives and theatre museums, mainly comprises For over twenty years (since 1999), theatre photography workshops have been held on the occasion of the Divadlo international theatre festival in Pilsen. Video workshops were introduced in 2002. This has made the Pilsen festival one of the longest continuously documented theatre festivals in Europe. At the same time, a huge photo and video archive of festival activities was created. The archive impressively reflects not only the essential development trends in Central and Eastern European theatre, but also presents a wide variety of productions ranging from large, state-subsidised theatres to projects by independent companies. It includes drama and opera productions, as well as puppet, object, dance and street theatre productions. It also documents the evolution of well-known Central and Eastern European directors and theatre companies over the last couple of decades.
On the occasion of this year’s 30th edition of the festival, the organisers decided to publicly reflect on the experience at a joint colloquium of the two workshops for the first time to discuss the similarities and differences in documentation through video and photography. The aim of the meeting is to stimulate a discussion of theoretical and aesthetic issues, as well as technical and practical aspects of this form of documentation.
One of the things these media have in common, despite all their differences, is undoubtedly the fact that audio-visual media (photography, sound recordings, film and video) have revolutionised the documentation of the theatre history and present. Traditional documentation of theatre history, as can still be found in many collections, archives and theatre museums, mainly comprises individual artefacts (set design models, costumes, props, scripts, director’s books, posters, programmes, etc.). They refer to individual theatres and productions in an indirect, referential manner. What they fail to capture is the play itself, the theatrical action and interaction, and thus the very essence of theatre. The aforementioned media formats have sparked an audio/visual revolution in theatre documentation.
However, certain dissimilarities with different audio-visual formats can also be perceived, and one may ask what technical and aesthetic means these media use to document a theatre play, how photography, film, sound recordings and video deal with the real action on stage.
Finally, there is the question of what changes in the collection, archiving and public presentation this entails and how to deal with new media recordings in terms of technology and law. All of this will be discussed at a joint debate – a colloquium – where the aforementioned media creators, as well as theatre professionals, directors, students and scholars, will meet.
Erhard Ertel, Jaroslav Prokop
