The University of Chichester Centre for Fairy Tales, Fantasy and Speculative Fiction hosts an international, interdisciplinary conference marking the centenary of the first staging in English of Karel Čapek’s seminal play R.U.R. The play saw the first appearance of the term robot which comes from the Czech word robota meaning ‘forced labour’ that has its roots in the... Read more »

A satirical reflection on the pandemic by the Slovak Theatre in London. ​One day you are enjoying your favourite ice cream on a family holiday, the next day you find yourself in a national lockdown. Life is unpredictable and it shapes us to be flexible but over the past two years, we lived through another... Read more »

From his truck, rising online star Štefan Pongo streams his political rants and creates social media movements that go viral, in support of Romani people across Europe.   When the president of the Czech Republic makes a remark that Romani people are ‘socially unadaptable’ and refuse job opportunities, truck driver Štefan Pongo initiates a social media... Read more »

A thrilling record of the legendary Czech rock climber’s career and his preparations for the debut of the climbing competition at the 2021 Olympic Games in Tokyo. Adam Ondra is one of the world’s best climbers. He has scaled some of the world’s most challenging heights. A shy introvert who has become an icon of... Read more »

Two Czech poets, Kateřina Rudčenková and Milan Děžinský, will be reading from his collection A Secret Life (recently published by Blue Diode Press) whilst Kateřina Rudčenková will be reading for the first time in the UK from her Dream of a Journey: Selected Poems (Parthian, 2021). Kateřina Rudčenková (1976) is a poet, prose writer and playwright. She... Read more »

The ‘sizzling tenor sax‘ (Jazzwise) of Julian Nicholas joins pillar of the Czech jazz scene pianist Emil Viklický and leading Czech bassist Petr Dvorský for a concert featuring a selection of jazz classics and individual favourites celebrating their 30 year long musical partnership. Revelling in the joy of making music together, Nicholas, Viklický and Dvorský who have just come together... Read more »

Music written in the shadow of death, Theresienstadt 1941-1945. We all know that where words fail music can speak yet it is still remarkable to think that during times of unimaginable horror the musicians held in Theresienstadt were able to garner any creativity at all, let alone enough to compose works as meaningful and moving... Read more »

British composer Julian Anderson  will discuss Czech cultural influences in his new Second  Symphony "Prague Panoramas" inspired by famous panoramic photos of Prague by legendary photographer Josef Sudek. The piece commissioned by the BBC  will have its first full performance at the BBC Proms on the same evening at 7.30pm (see separate listing). The BBC... Read more »

Distance and enchantment: whenever Julian Anderson creates a new work, we’re in for a musical experience that ruffles through memories as it ravishes the ears. His keenly awaited Second Symphony takes its cue from old photographs of Prague: a city dear to conductor Semyon Bychkov, and to the exiled Czech composer Bohuslav Martinů, whose exuberant... Read more »

A contemporary Czech circus company returns to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival with an extraordinary show looking at the hectic pace of today’s world. In a unique set design featuring a giant treadmill, four performers and two musicians mix dance, running, cyr-wheel acrobatics and original live music, while running almost a whole marathon. This UK debut... Read more »