Season 47: Don't Grow

If this pandemic brought any opportunities, the most important of them was the opportunity to see the unconsciousness of the world in which we live. In the process of global conscientiousness, ideas about slowing down, rethinking consumption and productive frameworks, and the question of where our civilization is headed resonated. But the return motive, a lifeline in the sudden sensation of deep instability, proved only as a workable marketing slogan for further acceleration. The restart has brought about a renewed disregard for the limits imposed by the material world, and indeed by our vulnerable bodies, and the totem of eternal GDP growth has once again diverted attention from widening cracks in the ecosystem and increasingly alarming social inequalities. Art, as a potential source of social imagination and a hunting ground for future possibilities, has failed in many cases, and has rather passively merged with the movement of the ripped-dyke performance of the rest of society. Care, or sustainability, is once again only being debated at professional conferences. If in previous years the focus on quantity instead of quality and performance reporting instead of honestly asking for meaning has been dominant, in the rebooted reality this is doubly true. Art as if lost the ability to be the carrier of another and became an underfunded slave of the same. In response to this general acceleration, we decided to dedicate the new season to the topic of NON-GROWTH. We understand the imaginative concept of non-growth, based on several decades of interdisciplinary thinking and action, as the most stimulating option for finding a way out of the current crisis of a society that elevates economic laws above all others, when GDP growth is placed above all other values, ignoring the complexity of the issue of quality of life. We do not see growth as resignation, inaction, but as deepening our view of the reality that surrounds us and developing the ability to find goals other than productivity. Not growing offers the chance to take away, to slow down, and thus, paradoxically, to gain more. We understand its concept as redirecting our view from quantity to intensity and quality, from statuses to relationships and ties. And we want to think about such principles even within our work and in redefining the tasks of renewed theatrical activity. How to create sustainably? What capacity does our consciousness have for new works? What is the purpose of our activity? How not to drown in the quantity of Potemkin villages built for productivity reporting? How to create happily? How do you resist the dictates of economizing everything? So how to avert the decay of society and nature? How to be together? Therefore, this season, after almost a year's hiatus, we decided to change our title concept of “No Growth” from the dramaturgy of potentially emerging productions to the very running of our theatre and to abandon all premieres planned for the 2021/22 season. Instead of bringing the eternally new, we want to shift our attention to the repertoire we are returning to and devote ourselves to recontextualizing existing productions and deepening our view of them. It is as if you did not buy any new thing for one year, but sought new qualities of relationships with those who already surround you. Therefore, we appeal to the creators who have worked with us, as well as the members of our collective, to accept the invitation to the season, in which we will create instead of other titles a series of unique events — discussions, lectures, happenings, paradivadal events, mutant genres, author's interventions in existing works, opening a new perspective in the old. The task is simple: create from joy, communally, sustainably, take risks, seek, return, build relationships. In addition to the evenings prepared in a short time, spontaneously and without self-censorship, which forces the right to repeat, we will also be preparing two projects for the 2022/23 season in a long time, and their first chapters and foreshadowing will also be part of the non-growing season series. We understand this concept of the new season as HaDivadlo's journey from the framing of classical repertory theatre towards the form of a cultural institution as a laboratory for utopian thinking, which, in addition to artistic activity, is dedicated to its multiplication and erasure of the boundaries between art and society. Come and grow with us!