The Nobel Prize-winning poet Louise Glück once wrote: “We look at the world once, in childhood. The rest is memory.” While watching The Nest, directed by Viktor Prokop and performed by TMEL Theatre, I found myself returning to that thought, accompanied by that delicate thrill only truly good children’s theatre can evoke. What a magnificent vision of childhood this production offers — and what a beautiful memory it will become for those who encounter it as children.
The Nest is a nonverbal puppet performance, performed by Jakub Miller and Mari Mahova (alternating with Nikolas Ferenc), whose aesthetic and atmosphere evoke Dune and other post-apocalyptic worlds (set and costume design by Berta Doubková). The production transports us to a vast sandy landscape somewhere in the universe, deep beneath layers of earth, where we encounter creatures that live, build, outwit one another, fall in love, hunt, and communicate. Particularly intriguing are the “mysterious pilgrims” journeying toward an important mission, bringing a sense of sacredness and anticipation into the narrative.
From the very beginning, we are never entirely sure of the purpose of their expedition, which makes their quest resemble Hitchcock’s MacGuffin — an object or goal that propels the narrative while remaining essentially irrelevant. The ambiguity of their search leaves room for multiple interpretations and does not confine the viewer, especially a young one, to a single definitive meaning. In the end, the pilgrims reveal a light hidden within the sphere they carry — an unmistakable symbol of hope and creation. And on that distant world, in the beginning and at the end (or perhaps at a new beginning), there was light.
The charm, tenderness, and humor of this production feel almost unreal. One small creature — something between a soft-bodied mollusk and a stag beetle — searches for a new shell, a new home, a shelter from danger. The comedy of this shell-less being arises from the way it moves, from its curiosity and simultaneous timidity. It approaches unfamiliar creatures, sniffs around, surveys new spaces with its elongated eyes, yet remains fearful because of its exposed vulnerability. The creature becomes especially endearing when, at the crucial moment, it gathers the courage to protect the pilgrims from a predator. There are also tiny gray creatures, somewhat naïve because they so often fall into the traps of those higher up the food chain, yet remarkably industrious, resembling ants — their earthly counterparts. The puppetry is meticulous and restrained, focused on subtle impulses of movement that reveal each creature’s character: from frightened retreats into a shell to swift, ant-like searches for resources.
Alongside its science-fiction atmosphere, the visual identity of the production is rooted in tactility. Each time the performers remove a layer of earth to uncover another part of the world, the audience can almost feel the sand slipping through their fingers and the weight of the stones beneath which an entire interconnected ecosystem lies hidden. Jan Froněk’s soundscape colors both the tense and comic scenes, though above all it evokes the vastness of outer space.
The themes of searching for home, safety, and light are placed within a distant and unnameable world populated by creatures we could hardly describe, yet the story loses none of its universality or emotional force. The longing for home and belonging, the importance of finding one’s place beneath the sun — wherever in the cosmos that may be — and the realization that another being is there beside us, that only closeness and care for others can transform an unknown place into a refuge: these are the essential ideas at the heart of The Nest.
Viktor Prokop has directed a work that is spatially miniature yet immense in its ideas. What a wonderful vision of the world children’s theatre can offer.