The Tiger Lillies return to Prague

In recent years Archa has become a home stage for The Tiger Lillies. “After a series of annual concerts we approached the band with an offer to create an original musical show for the theatre,” said Ondřej Hrab, Archa´s artistic director. “The Tiger Lillies accepted the offer and created a number of new songs thematically linked to François Rabelais´s medieval novel Gargantua and Pantagruel. The lyrics are characterized by depravity, turning the world upside down, oscillation between “upper” and “lower” social classes and fascination with various manifestations of carnality.”

In Here I Am Human! The Tiger Lillies have joined forces with Irish playwright Jocelyn Clarke, Czech director Jiří Havelka and the Archa Theatre to create an edifying piece of “musical morality”. The work examines the dark sides of human life. Dirty and passionate songs replete with black humour and irony deal with bizarre characters and the stories of people on the fringes of society. Carnality in all its forms is explored within the bizarre setting of a modern “beauty laboratory” for the creation of physically perfect men and women. Actor Jiří Zeman portrays a kind of “East European beauty guru” who guides us through the stages of life, from conception to birth to death, and introduces us to various cleaning and beauty products and procedures along the way.

For the production of Here I Am Human! Irish dramatist Jocelyn Clarke set the band´s explicit lyrics against the concept of etiquette and the rules of social behaviour, which attempt to suppress all manifestations of carnality and the emotions. The director is Jiří Havelka, under whom the production developed as an open process, where the final form of the script, dramatic action and images was the result of a creative collaboration between performers, director, playwright, stage setter and musicians.

From Lidové Noviny: “It starts with an ironic statement: Homo sapiens is still a bit of a pig. Human “swinishness” is attested by the pink snouts and ears, the masks on the heads of the musicians and the first thing that we see on the stage – the naked, protruding posterior of the band leader, the evil-eyed singer Martyn Jacques. “Swinish” humanity is represented by a live, pink little piglet. The stage is dominated by an aseptic white exhibition panel with cosmetic products and devices, which forms the background. From this panel step out Adam and Eve (actress Zuzana Stavna and dancer Jiri Bartovanec) our contemporaries – shampooed, perfumed, smiling, attractive people. In the centre stands a chiropodist´s chair like a throne for a bizarre impresario (Jiri Zeman Sonmez), an advertising agent, pseudo-scientific lecturer and demiurge all in one.”