Terén presents In the Glare of Lightning: a new theatre production for children and adults
The original work by Robert Smolík and Veronika Vlková, In the Glow of Lightning, offers its first viewers an experience of art as the magic of transformation. Saturday, 27 September 2025, at 3 p.m. at Studio CED. Similar to Smolík and Vlková's previous work, entitled Návštěva (Little Visitors), audience members will find themselves in a landscape of objects. The performance will be followed by an informal meeting with the authors.
Terén's new theatre production invites children, their parents and anyone who wants to speak the language of art and magic to follow in the footsteps of artist Pepa Beuys. Visual artist and illustrator Veronika Vlková will guide them on a journey full of surprises, inspiration, falls and healing. The audience will receive a sketchbook, which will serve as a medium for recording their experience and an invitation to create their own art beyond the theatre studio.
“Joseph Beuys drew lines and spent his entire life asking what art is. What kind of language is it that allows us to communicate beyond rational understanding? It rebels, yet attracts and entices, revealing the invisible. Just like magic,” say the creators in the annotation to the production.
Co-author and guide through the performance Veronika Vlková
Photo: Terén archive
The authors together examine the work and legacy of artist, performer, educator and art theorist Joseph Beuys. In the 1970s, his thinking brought about a significant shift in the perception of art as part of every person's life and a way to change the world. In the Glare of Lightning combines the situation of a theatre performance and exhibition with elements of a séance, a healing ritual or a celebration of art and creation. It invites anyone who is not afraid to get muddy into a landscape of objects that conceal the genesis of transformation. „The performance, like Beuys himself, brings art to everyone, inspires and points to the artist in each of us,“ emphasises dramaturge Anna Prstková.
Smolík and Vlková seek ways to restore our relationship with the Earth and its inhabitants. They work with natural materials and colours. With aesthetics and a format that straddles puppet and object theatre, they follow on continuously from their previous collaboration with Terén, where their first joint project, Návštěva (Little Visitors), was created. This successful production about a strange hostess living with animals, mushrooms and dreamlike creatures has been staged in South Korea, Mexico, Finland, Croatia, Slovakia and at a number of domestic festivals.
Co-author Robert Smolík during the creation of objects for the performance.
Photo: Terén archive
The premiere will take place on Saturday, September 27, 2025, at 3 p.m. at Studio CED, on the first floor of the Center for Experimental Theater building on Zelný trh. The premiere will be followed by an informal meeting with the authors.
The first reruns will take place on September 28, 2025, at 11 a.m. and 3 p.m. at the same location.
Creators: Robert Smolík, Veronika Vlková
Performed by: Veronika Vlková
Dramaturgy: Anna Prstková
Without language barriers
Performance length: 50 min
For adults and children aged 5 and up
The project is financially supported by the South Moravian Region and the State Fund for Culture of the Czech Republic.