The country’s biggest walking event, Pochod Praha – Prčice, is scheduled for Saturday. The 70-km walk from Prague to Prčice, a town in southern Bohemia, has been held annually since 1966. The event, which started as a joke with 469 participants, has grown to more than 35,000 (in the early 1980s). And what is it all about? You get up very early to access the Háje metro station at 5 and after registering (which costs CZK 30) you lace up your boots and get going. The organisers expect some 20,000 participants this year. Not everybody is in shape to walk the full distance. You can choose one of 16 starting points along the track to start your Saturday walk. The shortest one (26 km) begins in Olbramovice. Only 3 kilometres shorter is the Votice trail for children accompanied by one or two adults. There will also be special trails for wheelchair users and cyclists. It is allowed to take a rest in a pub along the trail but don’t forget you have to make it to Prčice before 8pm to be awarded the famous shoe prize.
Today the National Theatre will present a new staging of Antonín Dvořák’s fairy-tale opera Rusalka, with Czech soprano Dagmar Pecková in the double-role of the Witch and the Foreign Princess, young Slovak singer Štefan Kocán as Vodník, the Water Goblin, and the Czech Opera soloist Maria Haan as Rusalka. The performance, available with English subtitles, will also be staged on Sunday, 17 May.
The unusual space of Ekotechnické museum, located on the grounds of an old water treatment plant in Bubeneč, is hosting the latest project of Czech artist Petr Nikl and his colleagues. The Labyrinth of light exhibit features interactive objects and special light effects that are interesting on their own but their function is to draw attention to the unique art-nouveau underground space of the plant. Nikl’s previous projects, such as Nests of Plays, Orbis Pictus and Garden of Imagination and Music, gained attention of many people around the world. On Sunday, the Archa Theatre will stage a concert for the exhibition at 7:40pm, featuring electrified psycho performers and musicians. A late-night programme will continue at the exhibition site in Bubeneč.
Following their 2005 film, Havel Is Taking Holiday, directors Jan and Adam Novák are back with a new documentary featuring the playwright and former Czech president in the 1970s. As a banned author, Havel could not make living as a writer. But he was allowed to work as a brewery laborer, lifting beer barrels in the Trutnov brewery. That’s where he found inspiration for his play Audience, an absurd encounter between a brewmaster and his employee. Archive recordings and photographs of Audience have been used in the film called Občan Havel přikuluje. The film is entering Czech cinemas on Thursday.
