A STAGED DOCUMENTARY: LIGHT FROM GALICIA M.Bambušek & E. McLaren / O.s. Mezery

Following staged documentaries and site-specific performances about coal, water, and uranium, the creators of the Energy Pathways performance project have turned their attentions to the phenomenon of oil.

This staged documentary looks at the roots of the oil industry above all in the region of what once was Austro-Hungarian Galicia, where Central Europeans first learned to acquire oil.

It also focuses on early techniques and technologies used to drill for oil and pump oil, the geological origins of oil, and the process of locating oil fields.

“Black oil seeps from the ground like pus and the ground sprouts black blossoms and hundreds of black blossoms in the fields and orchards blend with the water. In this faithful tandem the water carries the oil and they gather together in puddles. The oil makes a film as shiny as a mirror and in that mirror stand the oil gatherers with their horse tails“ - a quote from the staged documentary.

Playwright, screenwriter, theatre and film director Miroslav Bambušek is also co-creator of the Energy Pathways performance project. The last performance of this cycle of site-specific performance works, Oil, is to be performed in and around the Žižkov Train Station in June, 2014.

Artists collaborating with Bambušek’s O.s Mezery group use powerful theatrical gestures to step into questions of public life, often uncovering painful and heretofore unmapped themes of our past and not-so-distant past.

Ewan McLaren, artistic director of the Alfred ve dvoře Theatre is also co-creator of the Energy Pathways performance project.
Ewan McLaren and O.s. Mezery received the 2013 ...příští vlna/next wave... Festival Award for Producer Event of the Year, for accomplishing five years of work on the Energy Pathways project.
In 2010 Ewan McLaren and Miroslav Bambušek received the Czech Theatre News Award for co-directing Miners‘ Day ( Zdař Bůh!), a site specific performance about coal mining.

Other performances by these artists:
OIL, the last part of the Energy Pathways project five-year cycle of performances examining the phenomena of coal (MINERS’ DAY - ZDAŘ BŮH at the Michal Minehead in Ostrava, 2009), water (WATER in the Ecotechnical Museum in Prague-Bubeneč, 2010), uranium (URANIUM in the Drnov Bunker near Slaný, 2011) and oil (staged documentary LIGHT FROM GALICIA in the Paramo refinery in Pardubice, 2012 and the final full length performance OIL at the Automatic Mills, also in Pardubice).

For more about the project see:
http://www.cestyenergie.cz/
http://www.perzekuce.cz/

Premiere:
First performed October 7th, 2012, in the PARAMO refinery, Pardubice