The playwright and later Czechoslovak and Czech President Václav Havel was, during his years as a political dissident, forced to work in a brewery. Based on this experience, he wrote the play Audience, which has achieved cult status in the Czech Republic, and which features the writer's alter ego Ferdinand Vaněk and the brewmaster. Antiwords brilliantly plays on Havel’s original and translates it into the language of physical and visual theater with improvised mime.

Two young actresses wearing oversized bronze heads wordlessly launch into a beer contest eliciting both laughter and terror as the number of downed bottles rises, while metaphysical emptiness increases. Accompanied by a playback of Havel play’s original recording and the Israeli composer Sivan Eldar’s music, Antiwords is a contemporary and perceptive take on Havel’s drama of the absurd.

About the Spitfire Company:

Spitfire Company is an artistic company that includes works of physical, visual and dance theatre. It is currently one of the most progressive ensambles of author theatre in the Czech Republic. The most important and characteristic aspects of the ensemble´s work are: searching of an original physical language of each particular performance, emphasis on experiencing performer´s state of being that generates very present emotions, dealing with a human´s limitation and his/her existential situation.