The book, featuring symbolism bound with nature, everyday rural life and tradition, comprises passionate and erotic tales teeming with supernatural beings and macabre phantoms. The Wedding Shirts, The Water Goblin and The Noonday Witch, magical myths of love and spine-chilling fables, was adapted for the stage of the National Theatre historical building by the SKUTR creative tandem of stage directors Martin Kukučka and Lukáš Trpišovský. The two artists have a penchant for the subjects treated by Erben – ritualised archetypal themes, such as love and death, the relationships between the mother and the child, man and woman, humans and nature, have appeared in their productions in a myriad of forms and contexts.

A Bouquet

National Theatre Prague

Bílá Voda, or White Water, a remote village hidden in the mountains... Two young girls consecrated to God – Tobie and Evarista – arrive in the village the last September night of 1950, when the communist regime interned all Czechoslovak nuns in concentration convents. They are forced to labour in the local factory together with all other nuns. Tobie is crippled forever by the hard work, while Evarista has her vow of chastity forcibly broken and suffers humiliation in a communist prison. Yet the wardens cannot deprive her of her faith and loyalty to the order. Can a nun rebel against the secular and ecclesiastical authorities, stand against the regime and the collaborating church? The hardest battle must be fought within one’s own soul...

Bílá Voda (White Water)

The Estates Theatre

An impoverished circus director picks up a rose in an enchanted garden belonging to a terrible Beast. The Beast gets angry and threatens to kill the trespasser – unless one of his daughters pays for the father’s sins. When the youngest daughter, the Beauty, decides to sacrifice herself, she cannot imagine the consequences of her actions.

The Beauty and the Beast

The councillors of Honice are to elect a bellman, the person responsible for security in the village. The task is formidable, with two strong candidates running for office – the veteran soldier Valentin Bláha and the tailor František Fiala. What is more, the mayor, Filip Dubský, and the first councillor, Jakub Bušek, obstinately sit tight, neither of them willing to compromise. The fraught situation is further aggravated by the municipal council receiving an anonymous letter threatening arson. A plethora of human types is presented on the stage – the “important persons” and their wives, old-timers, young lovers, lowlifes, pig-headed dimwits, tenacious truth-seekers and enthusiastic dupes. All of them live their little lives and great dreams, all of them desire, fight and argue, while the Red Rooster hovers above their roofs … Some 135 years after it was written, Our Uppish and Defiant Fellows is still a fascinating Czech play, a play about ourselves across generations and eras, a play in which the contest for the post of bellman becomes a gigantic struggle for truth and honesty.

Our Uppish and Defiant Fellows

The young god Dionysus arrives in Thebes so as to initiate the city inhabitants into his cult. His passionate female followers, the Bacchae, revel in a strange ritual, during which they indulge in orgies and fall into a madness-like state. Their behaviour infuriates King Pentheus of Thebes, who confronts the stranger. Unfortunately, he has no inkling who his rival is, ignoring the advice of those around him to show humility. The arrival of a new god may not necessarily mean salvation, yet it certainly does herald the accession of a new order. Who is right? Is it Pentheus, who refuses to understand the impending change and instead strives to firmly grasp the world, or is it Dionysus the “rubble rouser”? Perhaps equilibrium can never hold sway without chaos …

Magdaléna Borová

Events

Upcoming events

Aug 31, 2026 - Feb 15, 2027

A Bouquet · Národní divadlo

Sep 14 - Dec 18, 2026

Bílá Voda (White Water) · Národní divadlo

Sep 17 - Nov 22, 2026

The Beauty and the Beast · Národní divadlo

Oct 10, 2026 - Feb 21, 2027

Our Uppish and Defiant Fellows · Národní divadlo

18 - 23 Nov, 2026

The Bacchae · Národní divadlo

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