Summer Shakespeare Festival 2008 Prague
Maybe while traveling in public transport or while strolling in beautiful Prague streets you have noticed red posters with a red photograph of young woman with white and black text on them saying “Letni Shakespearovske slavnosti 2008”. So if case you were wandering what that is, this article should make it clearer.
It is already a tradition, that in summer you can see many drama pieces by the world most famous dramatic ever – a British William Shakespeare in Prague. Well, he is that popular that sometimes is doubted that Romeo and Juillet was written by this guy from Stratford upon Avon, and there are many theories about another authors of this and other popular pieces. But whoever is the author, those plays came into history under label of William Shakespeare tragedies and comedies. So the biggest open air theatre festival in the Czech Republic bears his name. The festival, which is this year held under the patronage of the president of the Czech Republic, is pretty popular and every summer keeps in being one of the major cultural events of the season, especially as National theatre has summer holidays.
The festivals is very attractive not only because of high number of stars engaged – both of off stage (great directors, costumers and so on) and on stage – skillful and popular actors, but it is also very popular because of the location where it takes place – in the Prague Castle. This year some plays can also be seen in the court of Lichtenstein palace on Malostranske Square. But festival also traditionally takes places also outside of Prague – on ancient castles of Brno, the second biggest Czech city and Bratislava, the capital of Slovakia, and this year it expands to Ostrava and Kosice in Eastern Slovakia.
And what will be seen? The comedy of Errors, directed by famous Czech theatrical director Ivan Rejmont, then popular piece A midsummer night´s Dream, tragedy Othello, fairy tale The Tempest, comedy As you like it, famous Merchant of Venice or tragedy Mackbeth and, but only in Ostrava Richard III and, only in Slovakia, Antonius and Cleopatra.
The productions are performed in Czech (in some cases also in Slovak) language, unfortunately for those who can´t speak Czech. But even though there are visited by such people, mostly because of the joy of seeing famous drama pieces staged in beautiful environment of old castle, with good stage scenery and costumes and to see an excellent performances of some pretty good actors.
And for any visitors of Prague Castle, also for those who don’t intent to see any of the plays, there is prepared an exhibition by the organizers, this time for the 5th time already, called Maximum Photography. This year it is named Nocni chodec (Night walker) and presents poetic black and white photographs of Czech photographer Vaclav Chochola. You can see this big size photos in beautiful gardens of the castle. So if you plan to take a walk through castle, you may enjoy them here. They are to be exhibited here from 2nd of July until 28th of September. Festival itself lasts this year from 25th of June to 8th of September.
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