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a comedy about the journey from the highest heights to the very bottom, and then beyond

Bohumil Plánovský, head of the Biochemistry and Molecular Biology group at the Institute of Organic Chemistry and Biochemistry of the Czech Academy of Sciences has attained the highest goal – he has managed to discover the mechanism that enables the appearance of a new species, and thus the essence of evolution. This inspires his old friend Adam Šmíd to analyze the genome sequenced by Plánovský from his own standpoint, from the perspective of a mathematical linguist. If we understand a genome only as a sequence of twenty letters coding individual amino acids, couldn’t there be some kind of message from the being or beings who created us encrypted in the genome? That is, if we were actually created, of course.

This is the starting point for the new comedy by René Levínský which the National Theatre in Prague premiered in November 2016. At Brno City Theatre, under the direction of Hana Burešová, a modified version of the play will be presented: it takes place at scientific institutions and restaurants that are found in Brno, and features a grand finale in the park under Špilberk Castle.

The questions which Levínský’s new play asks are, in fact, quite old. Can we (and should we) modify a human genome to create a “new and better human being”? Who will be the chosen one that challenges mankind to set off on a new journey? This play about the world of science and pseudoscience, the Sisyphus community, about the journey from the highest heights down to the very bottom, and then beyond, was created with silent respect for the remarkable life of Ilja Rips.