1. In London, for example, it has been estimated that overseas tourists account for 32 per cent of all West End theatre audiences and that in the absence of tourism many theatres would close. Although English, being a more widely understood language, can attract a potentially larger audience, the majority of London's off-season offerings are musicals, in which linguistic comprehension plays a less significant role.

2. Prague's two resident English-language theatre companies – Black Box Theatre Company (1991) and Misery Loves Company (1994) – also contribute greatly to both the year-round and summer fare. They came into being in the early 1990s after Prague's Velvet Revolution, when the city became a magnet for young artists and writers from abroad. Nicknamed ‘posties’ (a neologism given to the generation of Americans considered ‘post’ (as in post-sixties, post-sexual revolution, post-postmodernism) and YAPs (Young Americans in Prague) and estimated 30,000 young foreigners, mostly Americans, lived in Prague during the 1990s. Attracted by the cultural, political, and sexual attitudes and the generally inexpensive life style, they participated in the cultural life of the city. See Czech, Jan and Dvorak, Jan, Prague Culture Guide (Prague: Prague Stage, 1994), p. 131Google Scholar.

Black Box offers contemporary Irish, English and American plays during the regular season. Since 1993, it has produced a summer festival geared towards cultural tourists with plays related to Czech culture and politics, such as Capek's RUR, Havel's Memorandum, Berkoff's adaptation of Kafka's Metamorphosis, and Letter to Wollongong by Jarosalva David-Moserova, about a fictional nurse who treated Jan Palach, the young philosophy student who in 1968 set himself on fire to protest the Soviet-led invasion and occupation. Misery Loves Company began with the original play The Anger is Ernest and Ernestine, but took up residence at Divadlo v Celetne with Josef Topol's A Nightingale for Dinner, which featured several prominent Czech actors. Sponsoring Big Knees, a workshop for local playwrights to work with the actors, Misery has also supported several individual foreign performance artists. Both troupes work with Czech designers and performers. In 1995, the two theatres collaborated to give the Prague premiere of Angels in America.

3. ‘Until 1990, Czechs visited different productions of Laterna Magika and Black Theatre regularly, as the ticket prices under the communist regime in all theatres were in accord with people's income’ (interview with theatre professor Dana Kavaldova, Prague, 1997). Mozart Open administrators protest that its prices are not out of line, saying that young people pay as much for rock concerts. Thus, the marionette shows are perfect money-makers – they have low overheads, puppets are icons of Prague, there is an endless supply of fresh audiences during the summer months, and in winter the same show can tour.

4. Mozart, though spending more time in Salzberg and Vienna, seems to have expressed a particular fondness for Prague that contemporary Praguers have been quick to exploit by offering Mozart concerts every week in almost every church. This association has been reaffirmed in the minds of tourists more familiar with popular culture than ‘high art’ ever since the successful film Amadeus, depicting Mozart's life, was filmed in Prague by Milos Forman. More people will leave Prague knowing where Mozart's ‘house’ in the film is located (which is mentioned in the guided tours) than where one of his few temporary lodgings in the city are.

5. ‘The use of the word “attraction” as a thing or feature which ‘draws’ people, especially any interesting or amusing exhibition, dates only from about 1862. It is a new species: the most attenuated form of a nation's culture. All over the world now we find these “attractions” – of little significance for the inward life of the people, but wonderfully saleable as a tourist commodity’. See Boorstin, Daniel, The Image: a Guide to Pseudo-Events in America (New York: Harper and Row, 1964), p. 103Google Scholar.

6. Richards, Greg, ‘Introduction: Culture and Tourism in Europe’, Cultural Tourism in Europe, ed. Richards, Greg (CAB International, 1996), p. 3Google Scholar.

7. Ibid., p. 61.

8. Malikova, Nina and Dvorak, Jan, Czech Puppets (Prague: Prague Stage, 1995), p. 5Google Scholar.

9. Visual artist and puppet scholar Milan Knizak laments the trend of integrating live actors: ‘The recent influx of live actors on to the marionette stage has only relegated the marionette to the role of an “acting stage prop”. And that is a pity, to put it mildly.… What do I find so attractive about marionettes? They are mobile and never pretend to be “artistic”. In actual fact, this is a marginal art and I am fascinated by things that are on the margins of art. Especially their lasciviousness and naivety’. See Knizak, Milan, ‘The Marionette Proud and Dignified’, Czech and Slovak Theatre, No. 3 (1992), p. 72Google Scholar.

Karl Brozek, the creator of Don Giovanni and an innovator of classic Czech puppetry, produced the show during a time ‘when most of the Czech puppet theatres seemed to be oblivious of the classic traditions in their near intoxication with all the experiments of bringing live actors on the puppet theatre stage’ (programme notes).

10. Knizak, p. 69.

11. Tillis, Steve, Toward an Aesthetics of the Puppet (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1992), p. 46Google Scholar.

12. Puppets have a universal appeal that transcends cultural barriers – one only needs to witness the popularity of the Vietnamese water puppets and Indonesian shadow puppets. Thus they are the perfect vehicle to meet tourist expectations: they denote a specific place and they are easily accessible. Almost every writer on puppetry recognizes the importance of their signification: ‘A puppet must always be more than his life counterpart – simpler, sadder, more wicked, more supple. The puppet is an essence and an emphasis. Puppets must condense, synthesize, all that is essential and characteristic in the various features of human nature.’ See Tillis, p. 114

13. Malikova, Nina, ‘In Search of Lost Traditions’, Czech Theatre, No. 8 (1994), p. 78Google Scholar.

14. Czech puppeteering between the two world wars was dominated almost entirely by string marionettes; the period after the Second World War was characterized by a new type of puppet, operated from the bottom, called javajks – rod puppets. These became the dominant form after being introduced onto Prague's stages in 1948–49 by the Moscow Central Puppet Theatre of Sergei Obrazcov. See Malik, Jan, Puppetry in Czechoslovakia, trans. Goldreich, B. (Prague: Orbus, 1948), p. 5Google Scholar. Now many marionette troupes include some javajks in their productions.

15. Malik, p. 7.

16. The fairy-tale, today so characteristic of the puppet repertoire, was passed over by the puppet theatre 150 years ago and for long after, obviously on account of the fact that the puppeteer traditionally adapted only texts which had already been dramatized. The IIMA was alternating its Orfeo with Rusalka, a well-known Czech fairy-tale.

17. Malik, p. 10.

18. It was not until 1771 that the first live performance in Czech was given in Prague – with indifferent success, because the actors did not have sufficient command of the Czech language (see Malik, p. 8). Baroque puppet theatres used the Czech language, unlike the live theatre and the opera or puppet opera, that was primarily in Italian, German, French, or English. ‘The first stage of adaptation covered the Baroque theatre model and the Baroque repertory, including Bible stories, myths, Evangile [sic] parables, hagiographic plays, and two famous Renaissance subjects, Don Juan and Doktor Faust’ (Tillis, p. 71).

19. Baroque acting was stylized, formal, and rather static, and thus more easily imitated by puppets; however, most audiences today are not concerned with how closely the puppets imitate the actors of that time and would not know whether or not they were doing this. And in fact the presenters have added many visual features to break the monotony of the period style of presentation. See Tillis, p. 70.

20. Ibid.

21. Theorists of the puppet theatre have forwarded the idea that the puppet is the perfectly integrated medium because the puppet accords with the artificiality of the theatre environment. ‘The contradiction which is always present between the “naturalistic” living actor and the anti-naturalistic sets designed by artists ceases to exist in the puppet world, in which the anti-naturalistic puppet character and the anti-naturalistic surroundings merge in perfect harmony’ (Tillis, p. 50). The one aspect that would potentially disrupt this anti-natural harmony would be the puppeteer's voice. This problem is eliminated in the puppet opera since the entire opera is taped. The only live voices are those of the actors (not puppeteers, or not when they are working as puppeteers), who speak in Czech. Not only are such utterances rare, but they can serve to enhance the exoticism and magic of the experience.

22. Malikova, Nina, ‘Stars Appearing in the Puppeteers' Sky’, Czech Theatre, No. 12 (1996), p. 65Google Scholar.

23. Bishop, Nancy, ‘Puppets of a Totalitarian System: an Exploration of the DRAK Theatre’, Theatre InSight, VII, 15.1 (Spring 1996), p. 21Google Scholar.

24. Bishop, p. 17.

25. Ibid.

26. ‘As high and low culture become less distinct, however, the aesthetic basis for subsidizing certain cultural forms is eroded, and it becomes increasingly hard for high cultural forms to resist commercialization.… Perhaps what is essentially new about this wave of cultural tourism development, however, is the fact that culture is now primarily being promoted for economic, rather than cultural ends’ (Richards, p. 26–7).

27. The National Marionette Theatre, founded in 1991, now resides in the building of the Municipal Library in an art deco theatre built specifically for marionette performance in the 1920s. In 1995, Don Giovanni had performed over 1,000 times, making it the most attended Mozart performance in Prague's history. Its creators advertise this enormous number as a sign of its success, claiming that in the course of four years it became the most successful performance of Prague's theatrical life (over 200,000 spectators, including tours in Europe, etc).

‘Fired by this success, the same team created a spectacular puppet version of Gluck's opera Orpheus and Eurydice (1993), using the set design and magic of baroque puppet theatre. However, despite the best of intentions and the theatrical enchantment, the production does not deny that it is above all a tourist attraction’ (Malikova, 1994, p. 80).

28. The most popular type of vaudeville marionette was the ‘transformation puppet’. Most often, it was simply a flat figure that could be turned over or upside down, revealing another figure painted on the reverse side. See Knizak, p. 70.

29. Richards, p. 13.

30. In 1912, the first so-called ‘Ales puppets’ were made in the workshop of A. Munzberg. They were tasteful and technically well-devised marionettes, intended for bigger puppet theatres than are used in the family and school. The puppets were 72×45 cm tall. See Malik, p. 15.

31. Don Giovanni was advertised as an ‘adult’ puppet show. It also claims to be the only ongoing historically accurate puppet presentation that does not include live actors (never mind the clumsy stone guest). Another gratuitous and anachronistic addition was the unravelling of several scrolls of contemporary nude women during one of Don Giovanni's arias.

32. It seems that the Beatles was the group being adopted for 1997 summer consumption after Mozart and Kafka. Divadlo Animato, a black theatre company, was also showing Therapy Rock, or Small Story from the Great Time of the Beatles.

33. In many Eastern European countries, both the number of cultural attractions and the number of local people attending them grew rapidly during the 1970s and 1980s. The evidence currently available also suggests an absolute fall in local audiences after the democratization of Estern Europe in 1990. Some attribute this to the fall in status of the intelligentsia (see Richards, p. 36). Within the sphere of cultural tourism, performing arts are attended almost two-thirds less frequently than museums, while music and dance receive more attendance than theatre because of the language factor.

34. Given the allure of a flow of non-discriminating audiences, it is understandable why some will produce low-quality performances. ‘There is no doubt that puppetry is fatally easy. There is an irresistible attraction about these little moving figures.… Almost regardless of the production values involved, the puppet will stimulate a certain amount of pleasure, challenging its audience to consider the ontology of an “object” with “life”.… When the puppet in itself is so attractive, does it much matter what it does? Thus a vicious cycle is created. The percipient adult comes to realize that he can expect only a superficial entertainment.… [He then] expects to be able to bring children, and troupes who make their living from puppetry are forced to give the public what it wants. Inevitably, the entertainment offered cannot rise above a certain level’ (Tillis, p. 66).

35. A Master or Mistress of Ceremonies was a consistent convention in both the stage and puppet performances as a direct link with the audience. Another custom was that when the performers took their bow, they removed their wigs or disguises – including the puppeteers, who appeared as on-stage manipulators, masked actors, and the clowns in Laterna Magika.

36. Article provided by Laterna Magika, no author or date, p. 4.

37. Although during his lifetime Radok rarely received proper recognition for his contributions, he has since been honoured through the annual drama contest for Czech and Slovak dramatists held in his name.

38. Burian, Jarka, ‘Alfred Radok's Contribution to Post-War Czech Theatre’, Theatre Survey, XXII, No. 2 (1981), p. 222–3Google Scholar.

39. Burian, Jarka, ‘Laterna Magika as a Synthesis of Theatre and Film: Its Evolution and Problematics’, Theatre History Studies, No. 17 (06 1997), p. 60Google Scholar.

40. Burian, 1997, p. 43.

41. Article provided by Laterna Magika, no author or date, p. 6.

42. The Wonderful Circus, programme notes.

43. ‘In 1989 with Civic Forum's headquarters established at the Latema Magika theatre, the theatre overnight gained a world-wide audience. The history of Czechoslovakia was “performed” amidst the set for Dürrenmatt's Minotaur’. See Chtiguel, Olga, ‘Czechoslovak Theatre During the Velvet Revolution’, Slavic and East European Performanc, X, No. 2 (Spring 1990), p. 24Google Scholar.

44. Cesal, Miroslav and Malikova, Nina, ‘Czech Republic’, World Encyclopedia of Contemporary Theatre, ed. Rubin, Don (London: Routledge, 1994), Vol. 1, p. 212Google Scholar.

45. Macourek, Milos, ‘A Small Theatre of Great Wonders’, Ahasver, Legends of Magic Prague, programme, 1997Google Scholar.

46. Bishop, p. 15.