During the 1 hour “Puppets as Performers” workshop, the members of this highly acclaimed British theatre company will share their approach to working with puppets with the participants who will then have the opportunity to try it for themselves.

‘The Wordcatcher’ is a bizarre tale of something and nothing, of sound and of silence both in the heart and in the mind. The Wordcatcher sees its characters try to fix things in place that don’t fit together and through the expert use of miscommunication, the audience will witness how the holes and gaps in this story fill a void rather than leave one.

More information about timing and tickets is here or you can email PFTC for tickets.

The production will be IN ENGLISH, but all nationalities are welcome to audition. It is a great chance to work on a musical with experienced director, vocal coach and choreographer Steve Josephson, who will be coming to Prague to direct. Rehearsals should start March/April and the performances will be June/July 2012. At this point, all roles are open for audition. A list of roles and their vocal ranges (along with other information about the show) is here: http://www.mtishows.com/show_detail.asp?showid=000075 (select “casting” for the roles). The Beggar Woman, Beadle, Pirelli will also be included in the ensemble. We are especially looking for trained ensemble singers who can handle singing in harmony to sing in the chorus.

Auditions will be the week of February 15.
Callbacks will likely be the 18.2 or 19.2.

Please prepare: 2 songs: 1 ballad (slow), 1 uptempo (fast) for the audition. The songs should NOT be from SWEENEY TODD (but other Sondheim shows are welcome) and should show off your vocal range and interpretation. If you have any questions or to schedule an audition, please either email brian@pragueplayhouse.com or SMS/call 608 577 012.

Please pass this on to others who may be interested!

Full details about the production are available at http://christmascarol.pragueplayhouse.com!

Auditions will be on Sunday 18.9. between 14:00 and 16:30 hrs. (2 to 4:30 pm) at the Prague Playhouse Acting Studio, Frantiska Krizka 1, 3rd floor in Prague 7. Please prepare a one-minute-monologue and a christmas carol to show your ability to tell a story through the song! To schedule an audition, please text/call Laura on 776 605 227!

We are doing something a little different with this one: We are going to have a small cast of players which will function as something like a Greek chorus: They will sing 19th century christmas carols as mood/commentary on what is going on in the play. When the scenes require it, they will step out of the chorus and act all of the characters in the play (besides Scrooge). It should be fun and challenging ensemble work for actor/singers.

We are looking forward to seeing you at the auditions!

At long last a word from me, Boris Wilke, alumni of Brian Caspe’s Prague Playhouse Acting Studio.

I’d like to invite you all to go see plays at the Prague Fringe this year, which will start this coming Friday, May 27th. For nine days more than 40 plays will be performed in nine venues. The style will vary wildly. But all will be a fresh alternative to traditional theater. The price of 150 Crowns for each play should also be enticing.

I will be in a play, too. It’s called “Hotel Red Cello“. It’s a collage of monologues full of desire, clashes between these soliloquizing loners that really long to be with someone and video-projections that combine all the elements into a juicy whole.

If you want to know a little more, read on!

We will perform in the Trick-Bar on the second floor of the Malostranské beseda (Malostranské náměstí 21 
Malá Strana, Praha 1; Nearest Metro – Malostranská and Anděl; Trams – 12,20,22 to Malostranská naměstí).

Our days will be the 2nd, 3rd and 4th of June from 17.30 to 18.30 hours (, i.e. the last three days of the Fringe from Thursday onwards).

This is a link to “Hotel Red Cello” on the official website. Click here! And click here for our presence on facebook!

Genre: Music, comedy, video/Text based but visual/adult material

Welcome to “Hotel Red Cello” with its unique panache of eccentric hotel residents; their confessions, accompanied by some delicious live music. The hotel with the sonorous name conceals a collection of ‘PLEASE DON’T DISTURB!’-rooms overridden with self-spreading rumors and weird story-yarn spun by even more peculiar hotel-employees… Let yourselves be led into a cesspool of desire!

If you think that this might something for you, feel free to reserve tickets through the Fringe-website!

For more information, also on how to reserve tickets directly via “Ticket Stream” or through Markus Nieden, the play’s director, please study the poster further up in this blog-entry!

PS: Last, but not least, here you can go to a website that features Nicola Pavone’s video-art on “Hotel Red Cello”.

This year is a particularly exciting project as it brings top Houston talent together with Czech artists, including Czech superstar Pavel Kříž.

Guy Roberts, Artistic Director of the Prague Shakespeare Festival says, “I am delighted to be working with such tremendously talented artists on this inspiring project. United by the universality of Shakespeare’s plays our company of European and American theatre artists, led by Czech favorite Pavel Kříž, will be giving audiences in Prague something very special indeed-two of Shakespeare’s most beloved plays performed in English by an outstanding collection of professional theatre artists in the beautiful setting of the Vyšehrad summer stage.”

AS YOU LIKE IT and KING LEAR by William Shakespeare
DIRECTOR: Guy Roberts, Artistic Director Prague Shakespeare Festival

DATES:
Thursday, May 19 @ 19:00 (7:00pm) – As You Like It
Friday, May 20 @ 19:00 (7:00pm) – As You Like It
Saturday, May 21 @ 19:00 (7:00pm) – King Lear (with Pavel Kriz)
Sunday, May 22 @ 19:00 (7:00pm) – King Lear (with Pavel Kriz)
Tuesday, May 24 @ 19:00 (7:00pm) – King Lear (with Pavel Kriz)
Wednesday, May 25 @ 19:00 (7:00pm) – As You Like It (with Pavel Kriz)
Thursday, May 26 @ 19:00 (7:00pm) – King Lear (with Pavel Kriz)
Friday, May 27 @ 19:00 (7:00pm) – As You Like It
Saturday, May 28 @ 19:00 (7:00pm) – King Lear
Sunday, May 29 @ 14:00 (2:00pm) – As You Like It

TICKETS:
200kc General Admission, 150kc Student/Senior
Available online: pokladna@praha-vysehrad.cz or by phone: 222.513.842
Available also at the Vyšehrad box office in person

LOCATION:
Letní Scéna – Summer Stage, Open-Air Theatre Vyšehrad Prague, Czech Republic

MORE INFO:
Guy Roberts, Artistic Director Prague Shakespeare Festival
www.pragueshakespeare.cz guy@pragueshakespeare.cz

If you haven’t already booked your tickets to “You’re A Good Man, Charlie Brown”, you shouldn’t wait! Tickets are 250 Kc for general admission, 200 Kc for students and seniors and 150 Kc for children 10 and under.

We are so excited to bring this production to Prague for the first time! The musical is full of fun and energy and more fun! It is sure to sell out, so please don’t wait to book your tickets!

Visit the Charlie Brown website for full information!

May 10 & 11, 20:00 / Archa Theatre

Czech premiere (in English)

Fans of contemporary world drama have a reason for optimism. In May the Archa Theatre will present An Anthology of Optimism by Belgium’s CAMPO Theatre, a celebration of critical optimism directed by Jacob Wren and Pieter de Buysser that explores the dream of a better tomorrow.

Pieter De Buysser and Jacob Wren wrote a letter that began, “An Anthology of Optimism is a pre-emptive celebration of a critical optimism we tentatively hope will increase in the twenty-first century.” They sent the letter to writers, artists, thinkers, scientists, politicians and businesspeople all over the world, asking for a response, a contribution. This could be anything: a photograph, a piece of music, an object, a short text, a drawing or painting, a film or video, or something else entirely.

The setting for the lecture-performance is simple: Jacob and Pieter alone on stage, using the contributions they received as a framework for their own realizations and reflections, delightfully enacting a process of research into how critical optimism might function in our world. They take the spectator on a journey through the fragments of today’s dreams for tomorrow, gathered from different corners of the world.

Jacob Wren is a writer and maker of eccentric performances. His books include: Unrehearsed Beauty, Families are Formed through Copulation and Revenge Fantasies of the Politically Dispossessed. As co-artistic director of Montreal-based interdisciplinary group PME-ART he has co-created: En français comme en anglais, it’s easy to criticize, Unrehearsed Beauty / Le génie des autres, La famille se crée en copulant and the ongoing HOSPITALITÉ / HOSPITALITY series. He frequently writes about contemporary art. He first met Belgian writer, philosopher and theatre-maker Pieter De Buysser in 2000 in CAMPO nieuwpoort, Ghent (B). They felt a great affinity with each other and started an intensive correspondence resulting in An Anthology of Optimism.

The performance is in English with Czech subtitles.

Tickets CZK 290 (students CZK 190) on sale at the Archa Theatre box office and Ticketpro outlets.

“Don’t you know me? I’m the new Berlin Wall, baby. Try and tear me down!”

Ladies and gentlemen, whether you like it or not, theatre AKANDA proudly presents HEDWIG AND THE ANGRY INCH. This groundbreaking Off-Broadway cult musical tells the story of punk rock song stylist Hedwig Schmidt, a fourth-wall smashing East German rock ‘n’ roll goddess who also happens to be the victim of a sex-change operation gone wrong. This outrageous story is presented in the form of a rock concert and stand-up comedy routine of the blackest style. The action is moved along by Hedwig and her husband Yitzhak, a former Yugoslavian drag queen, and backed up by hard-rocking band The Angry Inch. Hedwig’s tale begins in East Berlin just before the downfall of Communism and then moves through the bleak landscapes of Midwestern America as she searches for wholeness and self-completion. Her saga finally culminates right here right now in a glam-spattered cellar in the center of Prague… easily one of the most perverse and unexpectedly beautiful stories ever told.

Under the guidance of Czech-Canadian director Mélanie Rada, an international cast of actors and musicians bring to life AKANDA’s interpretation of John Cameron Mitchell’s award-winning rock musical. Long-time Prague resident Jeff Fritz plays the title role of Hedwig opposite Uliana Elina, former frontwoman of Russian band SLOT and winner of the 2005 RAMP award for best female vocal, in the role of Yitzhak. Appearing as the Angry Inch are members of local Prague bands Broken Glass Extet and Tristram Trio lead by Ian Mikyska on guitar and Anar Yusufov on keys, with Tomáš Mika on bass and Pharoah Smeaton-Russell on drums. Production design and video projections created by Estonian artist Johanna-Mai Vihalem for the stage of Iron Curtain, a club, bar and restaurant containing numerous artifacts of the Cold War era and the memory of the dissidents who tore it all down.

For ticket reservations and info please visit our website www.akanda.cz

Blood, Love and Rhetoric are delighted to present an original adaptation of the famous 1920s horror author H.P Lovecraft for the stage in which they will bring you three of his short stories interwoven by an original play.

Agent Jablonski (Jim High) arrives at Arkham Asylum to interview three of their patients (Maithili Tideman, Jeff Fritz, Mel Rada) regarding an incident that happened in the mysterious town of Innsmouth. A story of accursed electrical machines, the possessed crew of a submarine and the awful legend surrounding Devils Reef, “Lovecraft” guarantees you a terrifying November holiday complete with the unspeakable and unutterable horror of the Cthulhu Mythos.  Written, adpated and directed by Logan Hillier.

Tickets 250kc/200kc
Available from the Globe Bookstore, and Shakespeare and Sons. 
Reservations by writing to info@bloodloverhetoric.com
Reserved tickets should be picked up 30 mins before the show