Hundreds of people, including Minister of Culture Martin Baxa from ODS, attended the opening ceremony of the 93rd International Amateur Theater Festival in Jiráský Hronov this Saturday afternoon in the center of Hronov in Náchodsk. This was announced by its program director Jan Julínek. The event in the city of six thousand will last until August 5, offering dozens of performances of various genres.
“The Jiráský Hronov Festival will present itself in full glory after the dying years of covid. Everything indicates that we have returned to normal,” believes Julínek.
The organizers expect that, including the accompanying program including concerts, exhibitions and discussions, over 40 thousand people will visit this year’s Jiráskova Hronov.
The main program takes place in the Jiráská theater, the Josef Čapek Hall and the falconry, while the accompanying program takes place in the Aloise Jiráska park or in the Čs square. army and other places. In the Jirásk Theater on Friday evening, on the eve of the opening ceremony, the volunteers from Hronov presented the production Lucerna. Then they lit the Lantern of Friendship in the square and raised the festival flag.
The main program includes about 40 productions, which will be performed in about 90 performances. “Another 40 theaters are part of the accompanying program, and there will be 30 concerts, four exhibitions and another 30 accompanying events. There is really enough this year and it is from morning to evening,” calculates Julínek on the website of the festival.
In addition to amateur theaters, professional ensembles will perform, for example the Drak Theater in Králové Hradec Králové. Among the foreign ones, the Slovak theater group DISK from Trnava and Owen Corey from the American theater collective Giddy Round are on the program.
Most of the festival’s performers are non-professional ensembles, while those that advanced through the network of shows made it to the main program. “Every non-professional ensemble that wants to play in the main program of Jiráskova Hronov has to go through regional and regional shows, from where they can be sent by expert juries to national shows. Ensembles that impress at national shows will then get the opportunity to participate in Jiráskova Hronov,” explains Julínek .
According to the organizers, Jiráský Hronov is the oldest annual theater show in Europe and probably in the world. The festival was founded in 1931, and was not interrupted even by the Second World War and the covid-19 pandemic. Since 1991, foreign ensembles have also participated in it.
