Japanese premiere: August 2, 2024 (Tokyo)

This Czech-Japanese production is inspired by the fate of one of the most famous Czech athletes of all time, the artistic gymnast Věra Čáslavská. Her fame first reached the stars at the 1964 Summer Olympics in Tokyo, where she won three individual gold medals and a silver medal in the team competition. She became one of the leading heroines of the Olympics, an event the Japanese still remember as a national triumph that helped reshape the world's perception of their country following the events of World War II.

The production takes the audience back to 1964, directly to the Olympic Games in Tokyo. It is not a historical reconstruction but a fictional story with fantastic and fairy-tale elements, drawing inspiration from certain real-life events of Věra Čáslavská. The audience will encounter real characters: not only Věra Čáslavská but also Yoko Ono, John Lennon's wife, the Japanese gymnast Endo, and the Soviet gymnast Larisa Latynina. They will also meet a hero from Japanese legends, the samurai Musashi, or a Buddhist monk with the fitting name "Sensei" (an honorary title used in Japanese, Korean, and Chinese, respectfully referring to someone who has reached a high level of mastery in their field).

In addition to the birth of a (not only) sports legend, Věra Čáslavská, the production tells another story: the story of Czech-Japanese encounters. This is shown both through the characters themselves and through the casting of the production. Half of the performers are Japanese puppeteers, and the other half are Czech puppeteers. Through this story, they can explore what we share, how we differ, and what we can learn from each other. Audiences of all ages, from children to adults, can share in this discovery. The entire 1964 Tokyo Olympics and thus the entire story are narrated by a pair of sports commentators—a Japanese and a Czech—just like a live television broadcast. They comment on, narrate, and translate everything. The story of human will, courage, and humility (with humour, a bit of love, and lots of sports enthusiasm) is therefore equally understandable and somewhat mysterious for both Japanese and Czech audiences. The production combines various forms of puppet, object, and shadow theater, working with different types of projection, including live mirror projection and live cinema.

This year marks exactly 60 years since the 1964 Tokyo Olympics. Through this production, we return to the golden '60s, a time of unique fashion and great music, a time when our country briefly breathed the air of freedom before losing it again a few years later, and a time when Japan hosted the first Olympics on the Asian continent, marking its permanent return to the global cultural and political map. Věra Čáslavská was well aware of the intermingling of sports and politics, and she made a lasting mark on the world's memory not only with her brilliant performances at the 1968 Mexico Olympics, where she won six medals (four of them gold), but also with her famous gesture of silent protest against the Soviet occupation of Czechoslovakia, which resonated around the world.

This production is a joint project of the ALFA Theater and PUK Theater Tokyo, supported by NPO and the Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic.

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