Those Who Speak for Themselves

Museum of dreams and human folly

They belonged to the most influential powers of eastern Europe. They ruled swords, the seven kinds of salt and dreams. An elite among nomadic peoples, an island of diversity between Christian and Islamic superpowers. Khazars. They climbed to the top, and then suddenly they disappeared. They evaporated. Their language already sounds just in the singing of the most educated Mediterranean parrots. Only the dictionary remained. But even that hasn't been seen in years. Scanty evidence of the existence and nature of this remarkable nation had been to be brought by the reconstruction of the famous travelling museum exposition On the History and Demise of the Khazar Empire. Almost forty years ago, under unexplained circumstances, it burned down while being transported to Poland. But thanks to the care of a multi-member international scientific team, it has been restored almost completely and is opening up to the public again to teach about our future through a look into the past.

The production of the famous novel-lexicon directed by Jan Mikulášek will bring a detailed report on how many interpretations one truth has and how many paths lead to it. Does our civilization have anything to do with those that have already died out? Does memory build sufficient dyke to general decay? And who wants to deprive us of it?

Jan Mikulášek (1978) is the current director of the Prague theatre Divadlo Na zábradlí. His stage adaptation of Bernhard's Woodcutters became the 2018 production of the year at the Ceny divadelních novin awards. This creator of an impressive artistic gesture, working with cut, musical counterpoint and parallel unfolding events, returns to The Goose on a String Theatre after an extremely successful production of Don Quixote.