HOTEL PRAHA
HOTEL PRAHA
A " psychologue"
Hotel Praha is a compositional verbal piece inspired by my stay in Prague during the communist years and shortly after the fall of communism.
It was a heady time and I was there shooting several films and staying at the Hotel Praha which had been designed and built as a resort hotel for the Soviet politiburo.
I was staying in the adjuncts room next to the Breznev suite and had a panorama view of the blackened ancient cathedral that overlooks the city.
Every night after filming I stared at it.
It was dark and foreboding and glowered over everything like an evil witch.
The city itself appeared to me as a beautiful princess upon whom an ancient malevolent spell had been cast.
This became the drum beat of Hotel Praha.
The actual writing was triggered one mystic fog driven night when I awoke to a nightmare and saw floating above my head the form of a hooded monk.Later in the elevator I over heard 2 Russians in pinstripe suits whispering to each other.
One said the word " Spokenski"
And so began
Hotel Praha
(Spolemski Sawdust Dust Dreams in an Old Communist Hotel)
And so began this bizare psychologue about an imaginary love affair with Spolenskaya.
What Hotel Praha is about to my mind is the heart broken truth of the fall of the socialist dream and its ugly conclusion the transmogrified creation of our new corpofascist reality-The Age of Ahriman as predicted by the Anthroposophist Rudolf Steinet in 1904.
A new world order in which we have all become shuddering denizens "Spolenskis" of an imaginary Android Media World in which language no longer exists and freedom is tyranny.
Prague is the city of Kafka and the Golem.
For good Reason.
Only 8 performance of this piece ,this "psychologue" were ever given at Theatre Passe Muraille in Toronto Canada.
I managed to film parts of it and the conclusion is this operetta without music and what you are about about to see and hear.
My collaborator was film maker Lucas Lebreque.
It was directed by Hrant Alianak.
Music by composer Denis Patrick.
Mancuso in 2018 in Paris