Poe

Choreographed and directed by Lenka Vagnerová. 

Recomended age 14+

In Czech, surtitles in English

Morning performances from 10am do not include English surtitles.

Edgar Allan Poe and the characters of his fantastic universe are brought to life in the production prepared by Laterna magika, combining dance, singing, original music score, instrumental music, vivid stage design and striking costumes, objects, and marionettes.

“He who has never swooned, is not he who finds strange palaces and wildly familiar faces in coals that glow; is not he who beholds floating in mid-air the sad visions that the many may not view; is not he who ponders over the perfume of some novel flower—is not he whose brain grows bewildered with the meaning of some musical cadence which has never before arrested his attention.” 
(Edgar Allan Poe: The Pit and the Pendulum) 

The performance is inspired by selected short stories – The Pit and the Pendulum, Hop-Frog and The Masque of the Red Death, which form the basic dramaturgic structure and are interconnected with a series of atmospheres and messages as varied as Poe’s work. Edgar Allan Poe and the characters of his fantastic universe are brought to life in the performance prepared by Laterna magika, combining dance, singing, original music score, instrumental music, vivid stage design and striking costumes, objects, and marionettes. The performance is inspired by selected short stories, which form the basic dramaturgic structure and are interconnected with a series of atmospheres and messages as varied as Poe’s work. The creators open the dark corners of his soul while also revealing his brilliant sense of humour and exquisite poetry. Poe was a master of mocking as well as honouring the whole range of human characters, demonising evil and sense of power, poetising purity and beauty, and reflecting the intrinsic attributes in the character’s physiognomy. The eye-catching costumes, lyrical and hyperbolic, are funny and scary at the same time. Endless labyrinths of dark rooms and corners and omnipresent supernatural creatures – fairies, phantoms, demons, beasts – accentuate the murky atmosphere. The intangible figures materialise thanks to the Peppper’s Ghost effect, which was known in Poe’s times and was first presented to the public in 1860.

Edgar Allan Poe (1809 – 1849) is considered the founder of the detective story genre and the source of inspiration for other well-known authors, such as Arthur Conan Doyle and his Sherlock Holmes, Agatha Christie and her Hercules Poirot, or J. K. Rowling and Alfred Hitchcock. Poe also introduced the quintessential – and often ludicrous – duo of a detective and his assistant.  

Program and cast

Approximate running time: 1 hour 30 minutes, no intermission

Cast

Vladimír Javorský

Tereza Maxmilián Marečková

Zhilee – Julie Goetzová

Ondřej Vinklát

Zuzana Herényiová

Tamara Kšírová

Alexandr Sadirov

Patrik Čermák

Tereza Kučerová

Vojtěch Rak

Leo Terris

Adam Sojka

Leonard Vo Tan

Monika Částková

Matilde Giacomelli

Fanny Bašista

Lukas Lizama Garrido

Jana Hampl Maroušková

Paula Morejón García