One of the most successful plays in contemporary Czech drama. The true story of Zdenek Koubek, a runner from the 1930’s who won the women’s world record in track then transitioned to male. Told in an absurdist style.
The world premiere of Jan Zábrana's poems set to music by award-winning composer and pianist Martin Brunner. He will be accompanied by Markéta Foukalová, former singer of Hudba Praha and Jasná Páky (now Lanugo).
Three actors receive a script they have never seen before, piece by piece. An interactive situation and design for a theatre evening, that discusses the questions of democracy, the potential for solidarity and participation in increasingly isolated and disconnected societies.
A thrilling gothic noir from one of the world’s bravest theatre companies based on the celebrated novel. Featuring acclaimed actors, opera singers and musicians from Belarus and Ukraine.
A solo performance performed live in Salzburg and broadcast to the theater. Based on the true stories and letters of Belarusian female political prisoners. This play is about freedom and imprisonment, decisions and consequences, guilt and responsibility, strength and weakness.
Two men are imprisoned in a deep pit, attempting to make sense of their guilt, their fears, their chances, the looming threat of snakes. A third appears, offering to sell them his wares, as well as the potential for freedom. Will they capitalize on it?
Show Trial was written using audio transcripts of the 1950 trial of Milada Horákova from the 1950 trial that were intended to be used by the Communist Party for propaganda purposes.
Police chases, petty theft, drugs and longing for the greatest thrill of all: true love. A disturbing yet absurdly funny portrait of toxic masculinity. You will love him. You will hate him. You will experience the presence of the beast. As Furiozo would say: Live fast; Die.
A visual puppet theatre production from a series of dark adaptations of K. J. Erben's fairytales Hair - Eyes - Death. A king who really liked to chase game. After a series of evil deeds, he longed to chase the game forever. Shadows, live sounds on quills and chimes in the tradition of family puppet theaters.
After the strange era of climate crisis, social inequalities, and daily burnout, a time of constant bliss arrives. No more crises, no responsibilities, no inequality, and money is available on demand. Your only task is to survive this endless vacation.
Psyche, a Romani countess and poet, wanders across Europe during the Napoleonic era in a chauvinistic society that challenges her independence. The first English translation of a one-woman show performed by Stella Abel and adapted from the Hungarian book Psyche: Writings of an Erstwhile Poetess by Sándor Weöres.
A compelling adaptation of Kafka’s "Report to an Academy,” subtly transforming the original text into a universally relatable yet unsettling exploration of what it means to adapt as an “other” in society.
Lowlands is a haunting depiction of the moral decomposition of the terminal years of communism seen through the eyes of a child from the German minority of Romania. It is based on a text by the Nobel Prize winning writer Herta Müller.
A daughter’s relationship with her father is always spe- cial, but how does it change if the father is a famous dictator? How does it feel when Dad is a “monster”? Here Moscow Calling dynamites the idea of unique truth and proposes to the audience an intense theatrical-cinematic experience. The camera becomes the main character and the reconstruction of the truth a puzzle to be solved.
Join me, Marta Hermannová, for an engaging workshop based on the puppet theatre production "The Zlín Project," which we will be performing at the festival Rehearsal for Truth. This session will delve into the animation techniques we discovered during the creation of this production. Additionally, we will discuss the integration of puppet theatre with theatre based on real, including historical, events. This workshop is designed for performance attendees interested in deepening their understanding of puppetry and its application in such storytelling. The session will include an introductory talk about "The Zlín Project" and its creative process, followed by small group activities where participants will experiment with the discussed techniques, and a collaborative exploration of the potential of puppetry in theatre. The aim is to introduce participants to the possibilities of puppet theatre that they may not have encountered before, providing new insights and practical experience. The workshop will last one hour.
Tomas Bata’s advisor, Berty Ženatý, wanted to replace fairy-tale characters in children’s stories in the 1920s with clever and skilled industrial workers. A puppet production about the life of the city of Zlín in the era of Baťa. A production about everyday life that is functional, modern, universal, model, routine and effective. Every day, all the time. Until an error occurs.
From Slovakia, with English subtitles. Ingmar Villqist’s Helver’s Night is a thrilling and gut-wrenching play that charts the relationship between Carla and her young charge, Helver. Helver is fascinated by fascism – not by the ideology, which he is unable to grasp, but by the bravura of the movement. With Diana Semanová (Karla) and František Balog (Helver). Production: Terézia Mindošová
A new project by Yara Arts Group that captures the resilience of Ukrainians in a multi-media performance about Russia’s full- scale invasion of the city. It features four diariescollected by Daria Kolomiec, from: Yaroslav Semenenko, a member of the Ukrainian National Paralympic swim team; Yevhenia Ivanchenko, a captain in the Mariupol Police; Olena Nikulina, from an old Mariupol family, whose husband defended Azovstal and is currently a Russian captive; and Valeria Mykhailovska, who was working in the Czech Republic and decided to return home to Mariupol to rescue her mother.
A young woman born in independent, post-occupation Estonia sings of the Soviet residue that pollutes the minds of some of her fellow countrypersons and restrains feminist progress. The Kaisa Ling Thing (vocalist plus piano) paints a vaudevillian blues portrait of modern life on Russia's doorstep.
Inspired by the life of the successful athlete Zdena Koubková, celebrated in the sports world of the time as a “wonder woman” and holding several world records until she was identified as intersex - in 1936, changed her gender, and underwent surgery to become Zdeněk Koubek.
Mark Harman's new translations of Kafka shorts. One is about an ape who has learned to be human. Read and performed by Markus Hirnigel, directed by Henry Akona in a music hall vein. The other is a new music piece by Martin Bresnick with speaking percussionists (Makana Madeiros and Chad Beebe).
Timelessness, anti-dialogue and an atmosphere of suspense. Any Spot with Marks Left Behind is a play that has the intonation of contemporary absurdism. The heroine finds herself in someone else’s apartment and doesn’t remember how she got there. Strange sounds out of nowhere, overly friendly hosts and uncomfortable silence. The play has two acts that are radically different: by the end, the collective unconscious is transformed into a search for self-determination. The playwright explores the origins of violence, social and personal norms that do not always reflect reality.
In a kindergarten changing room, a rubber bat vanishes into thin air, setting off a chain of events igniting suspicion and resentment among the parents. What begins as mild distrust soon turns into full-blown hatred. The story unfolds, through a series of quotidian yet deeply resonant scenes, into a darkly humorous tale of absurdity from Central and Eastern Europe. Against a backdrop of comedic chaos, it poignantly portrays the stark realities of contemporary Hungary. “The Bat” offers a biting commentary on a Hungarian society marked by hatred, recrimination, and ultimately sorrow.
In a kindergarten changing room, a rubber bat vanishes into thin air, setting off a chain of events igniting suspicion and resentment among the parents. What begins as mild distrust soon turns into full-blown hatred. The story unfolds, through a series of quotidian yet deeply resonant scenes, into a darkly humorous tale of absurdity from Central and Eastern Europe. Against a backdrop of comedic chaos, it poignantly portrays the stark realities of contemporary Hungary. “The Bat” offers a biting commentary on a Hungarian society marked by hatred, recrimination, and ultimately sorrow.
Lowlands is a haunting depiction of the moral decomposition of the terminal years of communism seen through the eyes of a child from the German minority of Romania. It is based on a text by the Nobel Prize winning writer Herta Müller.
The story of the Roma girl who discovers at a very young age the differences of race and environment, but who manages to make her way through life and transform her complexes into determination and motivation, has the power of a therapeutic exercise.
A collaborative fusion of performance, visual art, and documentary that explores the male gaze, self-objectification, and the way power shifts as we move between looking, seeing, and being seen.
A dance performance as a form of somatic protest and viscous disobedience in the light of the current aggression of the Russian government.
A hallucination, a dream, a life, a performance: conjectures and reflections on temporal efforts and their significance. What holds? What resists the bite of time? An interdisciplinary performance examining human ambition, embodied presence, and existential meaning.
A tender exploration of a relationship between a father and his son. Through a series of monologues offering advice to his son, a Czechoslovakian refugee of the 1968 Prague Spring inadvertently traces the consequences of this historical event on his life, values, and personal relationships.
Imagine a collection of valuable artifacts that commemorate alternative versions of key historical events.
Machzor, a prayer book assumed long lost after its confiscation in the Theresienstadt ghetto, undergoes a miraculous rediscovery and returns to the Strachs, a Jewish family from the city of Brno.
The women of Warsaw tremble with the rumor of a strangler on the prowl. Behind their fear, unspoken secrets and traumas begin to surface. Set in the landscape of a true crime story from 1970s Poland, Bowie in Warsaw is an absurd comedy about the repression of self-expression and love in the Soviet era.
The women of Warsaw tremble with the rumor of a strangler on the prowl. Behind their fear, unspoken secrets and traumas begin to surface. Set in the landscape of a true crime story from 1970s Poland, Bowie in Warsaw is an absurd comedy about the repression of self-expression and love in the Soviet era.
Songs and sketches from Terezin from the anthology of rediscovered scripts, Performing Captivity, Performing Escape: Cabarets and Plays from the Terezin/Theresienstadt Ghetto, published in 2014 (Czech- and German-language edition 2008) authored by Dr. Lisa Peschel. Full of satire, bitter humor, and hope, these pieces demonstrate how art became a vital survival technique for the inmates.
We are in the famous weekend lodge of Vaclav Havel. The play is supposed to be about his first wife Olga (immortalized in Havel’s "Letters to Olga"). But again and again, Havel interferes with her, plays himself into the foreground with his needs and life plans.
A version of Vaclav Havel’s classic autobiographical play. Featuring live actors and traditional marionettes. A story of Ferdinand Vanek, a distinguished playwright forced to work in a brewery because his writings have been banned by the Communist regime.
A version of Vaclav Havel’s classic autobiographical play. Featuring live actors and traditional marionettes. A story of Ferdinand Vanek, a distinguished playwright forced to work in a brewery because his writings have been banned by the Communist regime.
A version of Vaclav Havel’s classic autobiographical play. Featuring live actors and traditional marionettes. A story of Ferdinand Vanek, a distinguished playwright forced to work in a brewery because his writings have been banned by the Communist regime.
A version of Vaclav Havel’s classic autobiographical play. Featuring live actors and traditional marionettes. A story of Ferdinand Vanek, a distinguished playwright forced to work in a brewery because his writings have been banned by the Communist regime.
A version of Vaclav Havel’s classic autobiographical play. Featuring live actors and traditional marionettes. A story of Ferdinand Vanek, a distinguished playwright forced to work in a brewery because his writings have been banned by the Communist regime.
A family’s home life turns upside down when a tiger suddenly appears in their bathroom. As more and more absurd characters invade their home, the family must decide whether or not to give in and join the circus.
