Social & External
The people behind it
Zdeněk Hradilák
Vladuna Polanská
Marcela Chlupová
Jarmila Doležalová
Pavel Leicman
Ondřej Mikulášek
Otakar Moučka
Stanislav Tříska
Roman Mecnarowski
Jiří Juřina
Unpolished and ultra-pragmatic industrialist Jean-Jacques Castella reluctantly attends Racine's tragedy "Berenice" in order to see his niece play a bit part. He is taken with the play's strangely familiar-looking leading lady Clara Devaux. During the course of the show, Castella soon remembers that he once hired and then promptly fired the actress as an English language tutor. He immediately goes out and signs up for language lessons. Thinking that he is nothing but an ill-tempered philistine with bad taste, Clara rejects him until Castella charms her off her feet.
In 1415, in the midst of the Hundred Years' War, the young King Henry V of England embarks on the conquest of France.
A boy who was once a perpetual outcast finds friends in a new boarding school. United with his new peers, he gets involved in a heated rivalry with a group of students from a neighboring school.
The story behind the translation and performance of Shakespeare's "Hamlet" in Klingon.
During a writing slump, playwright J.M. Barrie meets a widow and her four children, all young boys—who soon become an important part of Barrie’s life and the inspiration that lead him to create his masterpiece. Peter Pan.
The story of love struggles of 9 different couples, connected only by the complexity of human relationships.
Britain is in crisis. An ineffectual Queen Cymbeline rules over a divided dystopian Britain. Consumed with grief at the death of two of her children, Cymbeline's judgment is clouded. When Innogen, the only living heir, marries her sweetheart Posthumus in secret, an enraged Cymbeline banishes him. Behind the throne, a power-hungry figure plots to seize power by murdering them both. In exile Innogen's husband is tricked into believing she has been unfaithful to him and in an act of impulsive jealousy begins a scheme to have her murdered. Warned of the danger, Innogen runs away from court in disguise and begins a journey fraught with danger that will eventually reunite Cymbeline with a long-lost heir and reconcile the young lovers.
Weller Martin and Fonsia Dorsey, two elderly residents at a nursing home for senior citizens, strike up an acquaintance. Neither seems to have any other friends, and they start to enjoy each other's company. Weller offers to teach Fonsia how to play gin rummy, and they begin playing a series of games that Fonsia always wins. Weller's inability to win a single hand becomes increasingly frustrating to him, while Fonsia becomes increasingly confident. While playing their games of gin, they engage in lengthy conversations about their families and their lives in the outside world. Gradually, each conversation becomes a battle, much like the ongoing gin games, as each player tries to expose the other's weaknesses, to belittle the other's life, and to humiliate the other thoroughly.
The story of Oedipus' gradual discovery of his primal crime, killing his father and marrying his mother, filmed by the famed British theatrical director Sir Tyrone Guthrie. This elegant version of Sophocles' play adds a brilliant stroke: the actors wear masks just as the Greeks did in the playwright's day.
Gabriela Preissová wrote her two most famous dramas, Gazdina roba and Její pastorkyňa, when she was not yet thirty. Both were set to music and became famous. The first opera, entitled Eva, was written by J. B. Foerster, and the second by Leoš Janáček. The fame of Janáček's work greatly overshadowed the original. On the other hand, "Gazdina roba," the author's debut work, is still performed on Czech stages, regardless of the era. That is how powerful and impressive this drama is. The production by director Zdeněk Kaloč premiered at the Vinohrady Theater in May 1992. Dagmar Veškrnová endowed the title role of Eva the seamstress with warmth, temperament, pride, and tragic shadows.
When a beautiful first-grade teacher arrives at a prep school, she soon attracts the attention of an ambitious teenager named Max, who quickly falls in love with her. Max turns to the father of two of his schoolmates for advice on how to woo the teacher. However, the situation soon gets complicated when Max's new friend becomes involved with her, setting the two pals against one another in a war for her attention.
"Vanity of vanities, everything is vanity" says the bible. The word flows from the tongue naming the pleasure of earthly life and judging it as beautiful, but shallow and useless; vanity is a deadly sin. A female sin. The man painted the woman, put a mirror in his hands and called it vanity. The woman in representation admires herself, but the one who really admires her body is the artist. Whose vanity? In VANITAS, we re-divide the woman in our bodies, showing the depth of what is palpable. If the Father's temple hides after death, clean and perfect, we reject them. We welcome Mother Nature in us, life-death in a perpetual sacred cycle, also honoring her dark face. You may wish to reach heaven, but it is on earth that your knees fall.
In their songs, comedy and exuberant music, a travelling theatre company give a fiercely polemic account of Scottish history, from the aftermath of Culloden to the oil boom. Their production before a live audience is intercut with filmed reconstructions of the Highland Clearances and the Victorian obsession with hunting stags.
The life story of Marta Kubišová as a musical, broadcast live from the Summer Stage of the Kampa Museum in Prague, based on real events in the life of Marta Kubišová. On stage, we meet not only the two remaining Golden Kids, but also Jan Němec, Jan Moravec, Alexander Dubček, and Václav Havel.
The dramatic story of famous theater star Gertrude Matthews at Prague's Ungelt Theater.
David Ireland's award-winning dark comedy about sectarian hatred in Northern Ireland. Eric Miller, a Belfast loyalist, mistakes his five-week-old granddaughter for Gerry Adams.
After being dumped by her live-in boyfriend, an unemployed dancer and her 10-year-old daughter are reluctantly forced to live with a struggling off-Broadway actor.
The Empty King created a mythical figure and a whole world from grotesque, archetypal images. The drama was originally conceived as a student tirade against a teacher at Jarry's school, the Lyceum of Rennes. This teacher, Hébert, was the target of public ridicule. In 1888, at the age of 15, Jarry wrote a puppet play about the exploits of the Woolly Tartar and staged it to the amusement of his friends. The figure of Übü is a crude, cruel caricature of the foolish, selfish bourgeoisie as seen through the unrelenting gaze of a schoolboy; but this Rabelaisian figure, in all his falstaffian greed and cowardice, is more than a mere social satire. It is a terrifying picture of man's animal nature, his evil and cruelty. The Katona József Theatre in Budapest premiered Jarry's play in 1984, and it ran continuously for more than 10 years.
MMA legend Patton James, now a commercial fisherman, is pulled back into the cage when his brother is in danger. Reuniting with his old coach Sammy, he commits to one final fight in one championship against the brutal champion Xavier Grau.
The story of golf icon and legend, Bobby Jones, who retired from competition at the tender age of 28.
14-year-old basketball phenom Terron Forte has to navigate the under-the-table world of amateur athletics when he is recruited to an elite NCAA prep school.
The eldest son of a ruthlessly tough MMA champion must fight his way out of the abusive cycle his father has continued.
After the lewd and frenetic Dance of the Seven Veils, and with the solemn pledge from the very lips of Herod himself that she could have whatever her heart desires up to half his kingdom, wanton and proud young Salomé comes before her king with an unreasonable demand. Beguiled by John the Baptist, and then scorned for the sake of his god, lascivious Salomé—encouraged by her mother, the vindictive, Herodias—commands that John be executed and his head delivered on a silver platter.
A street smart runner develops an intense rivalry with an equally ambitious wealthy young athlete.
An urban love story set on the hard streets of the Bronx. A struggling female pimp, named Wednesday, grows up learning the game from her dad. Once he's gone she's left to look out for her prostitute mother and girlfriend Nikki.
Thomas Montgomery, a married father of two young daughters, gets seduced by the world of online gambling and chat rooms where a virtual romance and sexual obsession ultimately leads to the murder of an innocent man.
Up-and-coming sports reporter rescues a homeless man ("Champ") only to discover that he is, in fact, a boxing legend believed to have passed away. What begins as an opportunity to resurrect Champ's story and escape the shadow of his father's success becomes a personal journey as the ambitious reporter reexamines his own life and his relationship with his family.
The legendary Roberto Duran and his equally legendary trainer Ray Arcel change each other's lives.
A retired boxer intends to return to the ring for one last shot at the title, but first he must make the weight. Holed up in a room in Las Vegas with an unscrupulous trainer, he embarks on an intensive and illegal weight-cutting program.
Pete Bell, a college basketball coach is under a lot of pressure. His team isn't winning and he cannot attract new players. The stars of the future are secretly being paid by boosters. This practice is forbidden in the college game, but Pete is desperate and has pressures from all around.
A bronc rider in denial about his fading rodeo career battles against brain injury and a sudden blizzard while reflecting on how it became so difficult to achieve his dreams.
In New York City, a young girl is caught in the middle of her parents' bitter custody battle.
94-year-old Eleanor Morgenstein tries to rebuild her life after the death of her best friend. As a result, she moves back to New York City after living in Florida for decades.
A jazz musician seeks refuge from a lynch mob on a remote island, where he meets a hostile game warden and the young object of his attentions.
A poetic and powerful story of a father forced to choose between love and duty.
A nightmarish evening unfolds for neighbors David and Robert when they accidentally hit a woman on her bike and flee the scene. While David is increasingly plagued by feelings of guilt, Robert shows no remorse and becomes overbearing and possessive.
A boozy lowlife tries to bury the truth about his crazy stepson's suspicious death, but a nosy newspaper columnist and the young man's mother complicate matters.
The true story of 20-year-old Colleen Stan, a hitchhiking woman abducted by a young couple and held captive for seven years, during which time she's tortured and forced to live as a slave to her captors.