Naive Ema is dying to experience the exciting life and eternal love she only knowns from romance novels. But her dreams and rosy visions clash with the boring reality of her marriage to a prudent and caring country doctor. Ordinariness and banality suffocate her, random love encounters bring temporary excitement but cannot satisfy her fantasies. She is constantly haunted by the desire for all that’s new, better, and greater, but the glittering ideal world that lures her eventually brings her down in the crash with the ruthless reality. Permanent dissatisfaction and desire for a better life that seems at hand and purchasable on credit is a trap into which we are still falling after more than one hundred and fifty years.

Madame Bovary

The Estates Theatre

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)

Mary W. Shelley wrote her first and most famous novel in 1818. Though it has turned a literary classic, it is mostly known from pop culture references, film adaptations, and variations emphasizing the image of a horrific monster stitched together from various body parts by the insane professor Frankenstein. The (in)human creature secretly brought to life in the ambitious scientist’s laboratory has no name in Mary Shelley’s iconic horror novel. The creator dismisses his creation upon its ‘birth’ as a failed experiment, throwing it on a solitary desperate journey where the only thing it longs for is a compassion.

Frankenstein

The Tulip Fever is an adaptation of the classic comedy Spanish Brabander (Spaanschen Brabander, 1618) written by Shakespeare’s contemporary Gerbrand Breder (1585-1618), a master playwright of the Dutch Golden Age. The play describes the machinations with tulip bulbs – which in 1637 led to what is considered the first speculative bubble – set against the backdrop of the picaresque poetics of swindlers at the time. The text is skillfully interspersed with typical attributes of real capitalism: quick money, monetization of human relationships, profitable investments, madness of crowds, political scheming, and the notorious uppishness of public figures. In fact, Jerolimo orchestrates this major investment campaign, targeted on Amsterdam bourgeoisie, secretly amidst a never-ending party at Madame Beatrice’s brothel. Will the (mostly sober) people of Amsterdam see through his cynicism before it is too late? Will they come to their senses before realising that they served him not only as a joke, but also as a source of profit? And that it destroys people’s souls? Mhm?! Hardly.

Tereza Jarčevská

Events

Upcoming events

Sep 2 - Dec 29, 2026

Madame Bovary · Národní divadlo

Sep 14 - Dec 18, 2026

Bílá Voda (White Water) · Národní divadlo

Oct 13, 2026 - May 24, 2027

Frankenstein · Národní divadlo

Nov 11, 2026 - Mar 30, 2027

Scamsterdam · Národní divadlo

About

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