In 75 letters, the two main protagonists, the cruel Marquise de Merteuil and the cynical Vicomte de Valmont – tough players, rivals and partners – unfurl a dangerous game with the feelings of their victims, abounding in malicious emotional manipulation and brazen seduction within the web of a variable love polygon. The roles in the “dangerous game of the dangerous liaisons” are played by humiliation resulting from being spurned and desire for revenge, as well as longing for achieving satisfaction from having control over the fate of another person and steering the others’ feelings and passions. Yet not even masters of calculated strategy can be safe against the natural power of love that is capable of both saving and destroying everything …

Dangerous Liaisons

The Estates Theatre

An awkward and somewhat unhappy churchwarden quits his job at a big city church to find a new life in a remote mountain village. By a tragicomic coincidence, he is considered the new parish priest whom the forlorn community desperately searches for and needs. Having tried in vain to explain and escape the part in a ‘miracle’, the churchwarden eventually accepts the role of the accidental saviour. His unorthodox ways and understanding for all human sins and weaknesses capture the hearts of the peculiar villagers. However, he clashes with the local teacher, who used to be the local celebrity and authority and who promotes ‘non-spiritual’ education. The faith of a man who has humbly assumed the desired task thus stands in juxtaposition to the self-confident ‘common sense’. But what if not everything is as it seems?

End of a Priest

National Theatre Prague

On a normal weekday, a boy comes home from school, worn out by the humdrum world of lectures, homework, and ever frowning adults that hangs over him like a heavy cloud. He cannot wait to shut the front door behind him. Who does he find at home? The only partner in folly – his grandma! Only she can overcome the adversities, save him from the jaws of deadly boredom, and dive with him into the depth of fantastic stories. Join the two irredeemable dreamers on their adventurous quest. Never settling for dullness, they are determined to repaint the mundane world with a thick layer of imagination!

The Three Musketeers and Me

Philemon and Baucis, Ariadne and Theseus, Helios a Phaethon, Iphis, Amor or Marsyas... Roman poet Publius Ovidius Naso compiled his unprecedented opus in the year 2 AD, where he collected the essential mythological narratives of the Ancient Greek epoch – at that time nearing its end – in a single, chronologically arranged whole. The cycle of notorious stories, from the pagan version of the Creation of the World and the ensuing Titanomachy to the account of the lives of ancient heroes, gods or demigods, which now forms the cultural and historical fundaments inherent to the Western civilization, has one remarkable common denominator: the motif of metamorphosis, or transformation. This ubiquitous principle of existence has been ingrained in humankind since the dawn of time in terms of both an infinite philosophical problem and an eternal hope. Ovid’s immortal epic poems reveals figurative yet concrete and comprehensible parable about physical and metaphysical metamorphoses – subtle or devastating, intimate or global – and invite us to consider our perception of European traditions, but also the general ways of searching for truth, whether over time or deep inside our own soul.

Metamorphoses

State Opera

During a single week, a girl grows into a woman and her dreams turn into a dark nightmare. The world is no longer as Valerie has imagined it. This initiation rite reveals the secrets of the passage to adulthood and social hypocrisy through hyperbole and sarcasm borrowed from Vítězslav Nezval. The production is a poetic adaptation of the bizarre dark novel, which still evokes emotions, passion and fear.

Valerie and Her Week of Wonders

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.

Scamsterdam

Elizabeth Hunter, a woman who used to be the pivotal point of her little universe, lives a solitary life in a suburban house in Sydney. Once a stunning and spirited beauty controlling others with her iron will, she now faces the ills of old age and the ghosts of her own past. The former star and patron, celebrated for her sarcasm, is left with the entourage of nurses, a housekeeper and a lawyer, sitting as a silent queen in a beehive and desperately scheming to control and torment her relatives even at her deathbed.

Zdeněk Piškula

Events

Upcoming events

4 - 11 Sep, 2026

Dangerous Liaisons · Národní divadlo

Sep 8, 2026 - Feb 27, 2027

End of a Priest · Národní divadlo

Sep 12 - Dec 20, 2026

The Three Musketeers and Me · Národní divadlo

Sep 28 - Dec 9, 2026

Metamorphoses · Národní divadlo

Oct 8, 2026 - Mar 13, 2027

Valerie and Her Week of Wonders · Národní divadlo

About

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