The exhibition – a look at the living past – is being prepared to mark the anniversary of the legendary theatre which has had a constant and fundamental impact on the development of contemporary theatre throughout the sixty years of its existence. The Studio Ypsilon Theatre (informally known as Ypsilonka) was founded in Liberec in 1963 as an independent experimental theatre group by Jan Schmid, the head of the group from the beginning until now, who is also the creator of the Studio Ypsilon Theatre’s style and poetics, director, playwright, designer, script editor and actor.

The distinctive style of the Studio Ypsilon Theatre is determined above all by the following features: synthesis, expression, communicativeness and authenticity. All this in combination with an ever-present humour that always liberates and leads to a detached view. Since its foundation, the creative method of the Studio Ypsilon Theatre has been collective improvisation, programmatic work with managed chance and incompleteness, and professing the poetics of open-ended theatre play.

The exhibition will provide an indication of Schmid’s initial vision of the theatre as a loosely cultivated garden, which can also be understood as a scaled-down model of the world in all its variety and diversity, governed not only by the laws of nature but also by the rules that are honoured by any community of decent people, functioning in kinship and reciprocity despite the otherness of individuals. Archival materials such as posters, photographs…, i.e. what constitutes the memory and history of the theatre, will also be presented.

Prague City Gallery — House of Photography