French and Slovak artists brushing up the story of Little Red Riding Hood in the Košice barracks

French artists of the Lá Hors De group and the Slovak actors of Divadlo na peróne [The Theatre on Platform] set to brush up the traditional fairy-tale of Little Red Riding Hood. They had found the tale was known by almost all Europeans save that different countries had different versions of the same story. Their project Quelque chose est Rouge [Something is Red] running for a few months crowned its achievement on April 29, 2008 at 20:00 hours by giving a multimedia performance at the barracks in Kukučínova Street in Košice. The show was a closing event to the Days of French Culture and supported the Košice´s nomination as the European Capital of Culture 2013.

Right at the barracks, the artists led by Nathalie Veuillet, the French stage director, weaved a fresh story, arranged a stage set and wrote music to forge a brand new dramatic performance. The project was inspired by some conversations with the people addressed at random in the streets of France, Germany, Austria, Hungary and Slovakia, who would tell their own versions of the story of Little Red Riding Hood. The Košice barracks staging Lá Hors De will become another innovative place to stage culture in the city.

“The story is set in three rooms all furnished in different ways. The viewers will be passing through the rooms as the story goes. We start at 8 p.m. but the performance has no constant starting time for everybody. This is not a classical type of a theatre piece. Groups of 30 viewers will be let in the rooms at 15-minute intervals. Well, this is not the only innovation to share. Come and see with your own eyes that the commonly known fairy-tale of Little Red Riding Hood may, after all, be a nice surprise...,“ disclosed Peter Radkoff of IC Culture Train, the Slovak co-organiser of the Something is Red show.

Alike Košice, Lyon, where the group Lá Hors De comes from, also applies for title of European Capital of Culture 2013. “We have already prepared several joint projects to be launched when both cities win,” said Marek Kolárčik, the leader of the Košice project team.

The project Something is Red is jointly organised by the art group Lá Hors De, Divadlo na peróne [The Theatre on Platform], the unincorporated association IC Culture Train from Košice, the non-profit organisation French Alliance, and the ECOC Košice 2013 project team.

Lá Hors De

This art group was founded in 1992 by Nathalie Veuillet, stage director, and Wilfrid Haberey, composer. The group specializes in the revival and use of variant locations in the urban environment, whether enclosed or open, which do not fulfil their functions any more. For the past three years, the group held a festival in the abandoned boat shed, had an acoustic night show at the parking lot at the lower dockside in Vaise, and gave some performances in a French cloister and in the cellars of the Bondy palace ...

In 2005, La Hors De, following the suggestion of the public institutions, settled down in Duchere, the city district of Lyon and started up Sputnik – an art outreach project to take place at different places and to engage different participants. This highly important project to contribute to the flowering of the Lyon district Duchere was entitled GPV – Le Grand projet de ville (Great City Project).
The preparation process of the multimedia show can even now be seen at www.lahorsde.com

Divadlo na peróne [The Theatre on Platform]

This theatre was established in 2005 as an independent theatre housed at the centre of contemporary art IC Culture train in Košice. The idea to establish a theatre arose from a logical shift in the creative production made by the theatre founders and members, Peter Kočiš, Zuzana Psotková and Jana Wernerová. The theatre seeks to present works of composite authors and pursues to also approach the young generation through the forms and subjects employed. www.naperone.sk