BATHROOMS PART II: BEAUTY / Ryba řvoucí o.s.

Bathrooms are places connected fundamentally with hygiene and with beautification of the body. For the creators of Bathrooms Part II, the starting point is fascination with this absurd world of illusion and stereotypes. The asthetics of the cosmetics industry are inspiration for a game in which items we use daily are given new meaning, function, or shape. A bathroom is a place for transformations of the body, and so the artistic team works deliberately with masks and costumes. They create a surreal world of unique visual images through the authenticity of real-life bathrooms, where beauty shows herself in many different guises and where the instructions on shampoo containers and packages of cosmetic wipes can be interpreted a thousand different ways.

Bathrooms part II: Beauty is a new performance that follows up on a series of visual-theatre performances in the bathrooms of private homes in the Czech Republic and France from 2009 to 2011. The creators of these experiments have continued to develop the project, performing it in spaces other than bathrooms. The first such attempt was the performance Bathrooms part I: Soap, with themes of private intimacy in the context of theatrical space. In the second part of the Bathrooms project, the Ryba řvoucí group sets off to explore new approaches. It leads audiences directly into some of the private Holešovice flats behind the balconies we see around the Alfred ve dvoře Theatre – Alfred in the Courtyard.

The Ryba řvoucí Group was founded in 2009. Its members are predominantly set designers who have decided to use collective devised creation in their work, with a focus on visual elements, work with material, performance and stylization of the resulting shape of their performances. The flagship performance of the Rybařvoucí group is the Bathrooms project in the Czech Republic and France. Currently the group also runs a festival of alternative music called Listopadové kozelce (Praha – Litomyšl), and a symposium on music and land art by the railroad tracks called Lokálka (Vysoké Mýto – Litomyšl).