Diary

Yesterday evening we ended our vacation in Prague with a visit to one of the many "Black Theatres".
Black Theatre is a special form of creating a theatre performance, which is very successful in the Czech republic. Language is an obstacle: The audience consists mainly of tourists and very few of them understand the Czech language. That is why mime is used a lot.
They also make use of a special lighting technique. Everything is black, it is pitch dark and with the aid of black light white and fluorescent objects are made visible.
In that way it is not possible for the audience to see how special effects are created. And this makes it possible to create magic on stage: People can fly, objects come to life...

We saw a nice story about a friendly guy having a good time in his simple life with simple pleasures. Unfortunately there is also a devil who is trying to convince him to sell his soul. Time and time again he resists this temptation, but eventually he does give in and signs a contract.
Now he has some big adventures. Together with the devil he travels all around the world (which is of course a good opportunity to bring many more attributes and clothing into the play on stage).
But his fate is to end up in hell of course (another great place to put on stage). And he is very sorry about his mistake. Who wouldn't be?

This is a radically different form of theatre compared to what we are used to see in Holland. No flashing dialogues, no profound backgrounds. These are nice performances for all the family; very nice for people who normally wouldn't go to a theatre.
Experienced theatre makers and technicians should also go and see this. Observe the special effects they create and try to guess how it is done!


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