Duke Oldrich & Washerwoman Bozena, the True Story: A Historical Comedye in Three Acts
| Open: 10/06/18 Close: 10/07/18
As part of the Centennial Heritage Festival, this non-traditional staging of a 374 year-old marionette play is based on the story of love at first sight of the 11th century Duke Oldrich, who braved stout opposition for friend and foe alike to marry the exquisitely fair washerwoman Bozena, but forgot to mention some details of his own marital status to his beloved. The two legendary lovers are truthfully represented by fine hand-carved marionettes and life-like mechanicals fashioned expertly two centuries ago from the choicest linden wood; their manipulators in period costumes are artfully composed in flesh and blood. Recommended for audiences age 8-108.
Water Goblin, and other Czech and Slovak Tales
| Open: 10/06/18 Close: 10/07/18
For the Centenniel Heritage Festival, Vit Horejs performs a one-man show of Czech fairy tales (in English) replete with kings, clever village maidens, witches and spirits. His marionettes speak in dozen voices, dance, play violin, swim and fly. The program will be composed of favorite Czech and Slovak fairy tales: "Kacha and the Devil" and "The Water Goblin and Stingy Tailor." The evening is capped by an adaptation of an all time favorite by Josef Capek, "How the Little Dog Pejsek and the Little Cat Kochichka Made a Birthday Cake." The play is performed with century-old marionettes, hand puppets, and objects.
This is the show the Horejs performed to a distinguished audience in Prague on July 10, 2018 after receiving the Czechoslovak Society for Arts and Sciences (SVU) Award.
Rudolf II
| Open: 03/05/10 Close: 03/28/10
The story of a bisexual, bipolar emperor in 1600 Prague obsessed with alchemy, astronomy, his longtime mistress, and his newest lover and valet, a converted Jew. The production uses the vast expanse of the Bohemian National Hall to create an environmental production in the center of its ballroom space, with live choral singing from the balconies accompanying the action.Set completely in Rudolf's bedroom, the play is a portrait of an emperor who was both extraordinary visionary and self-destructive, as he confines himself and those closest to him to an increasingly suffocating atmosphere of paranoia and mounting madness. Rudolf's court is literally the stuff of legend--the golem supposedly originated there, and Goethe based his Faust upon the court as well. The play features Tycho Brahe, the famed astronomer; Elizabeth Jane Weston, the Latin poetess and daughter of the original Faust (Edward Kelley); and the spirit of Libuse, the prophetess who founded Prague.