Back/Stage: Notes from Malá Inventura 2026, the International New Theatre Festival of Prague

We arrived late by train, on Tuesday, 24 February 2026, and went out once more in a small group, wandering through the still very crowded streets down to the Vltava. From a distance we saw the lights of the city and the silhouette of the Charles Bridge, which was very beautiful.

I attended the Malá Inventura Festival in Prague as part of the delegation Bridging the Scene of the Performing Arts Program Berlin. The program is a platform that supports and connects the independent performing arts scene in Berlin. Bridging the Scene is one of its international delegation programmes that connects independent performing arts scenes through exchange and festival visits. The festival in Prague took place from 19 to 28 February, and we arrived for the second part of the festival. There were nine artists from Berlin in total, some of whom were meeting each other for the first time in this constellation. Even though we live in the same city and move within a similar cultural landscape, these days were also an opportunity to get to know each other a little better. Perhaps sometimes one has to travel in order to really get to know the people from one’s own city.

Malá Inventura presents current works from the independent Czech theatre and performance scene. In addition to the performances, the programme also offers space for encounters, conversations and informal exchange.

The first morning we took a very old tram across the city for a guided tour of three venues. The sun suddenly came out and it almost felt like an early spring day. After the long winter weeks, everything seemed to become a little lighter.

Our tour Guide used to be the director of the festival herself. Today she gives the tours on her own initiative simply because she enjoys it. That was immediately noticeable, it was great.

From the very beginning my gaze kept drifting to what surrounded the performances. Dressing rooms, workshops, curtains, stage platforms, half finished stages, small things casually left somewhere. Corridors and transitions. Spaces in transition, spaces in use. Places that are still construction sites or repeatedly become one again. Perhaps this also has something to do with my own artistic practice. I am often interested precisely in these moments in the background. Materials, transitions and small infrastructures that make a work possible in the first place.

We first met at Alfred ve dvoře Theatre, a venue with a long history in Czech mime and performance. Today an open stage without a permanent ensemble. The place gives projects space that move between dance, object theatre and experimental formats. A wooden building hidden in a backyard in the district of Holešovice, very interesting.

From there we continued to Vila Štvanice, beautifully located on an island in the Vltava. For me a place with a very particular, almost timeless atmosphere that serves many independent groups as a production and performance space.

ARCHA+ forms a completely different here. A large, transformable space in the centre of the city, technically very well equipped and with plenty of room for larger productions and international guest performances.

In all the venues we spoke with the people working there, who showed us their working methods and spaces. Sometimes I am almost as interested in how a place functions as in what later happens on stage. Perhaps also because in these side spaces one learns a lot about a scene. Not least because with Bubble Gum we organise festivals ourselves.

While moving through the venues, different production realities became visible. Workshops, improvised storage spaces, stage constructions and spaces in transition. My impression was of a scene carried by many hands and a great commitment.

The tour ended at ARCHA+ with a networking meeting called “Meet the Guests II”. There we had the opportunity to introduce ourselves as artists from Berlin and present our work to the local scene. I was very nervous and, as so often, spoke far too quickly. I was also practically glued to the PowerPoint with my face and mostly sat with my back to the audience while speaking. Two and a half minutes per person, that was the speed.

In the evening I saw the work Lemonade (No Other Troy). The performance is part of a long term project in which the artist takes his own life as a starting point. Over several hours the work moves between performance, film and drag.

The room was immersed in blue light, and lemons were lying on the floor. There was a single chair and a large plastic sheet, partly weighed down with white material, perhaps earth or healing clay. The artist himself was also covered with this material.

The performance took place in the space Venuše ve Švehlovce, where the platform PiNKBUS is also based. The place impressed me immediately. A very special space with strong architecture and its own atmosphere. PiNKBUS mainly supports queer artists from the Czech scene.

The next day we also had the opportunity to visit Studio ALTA, one of many places that exist alongside the festival. The studio recently moved into a former brewery and is still in the middle of reconstruction. Walls are open and new structures are emerging. Nevertheless it is already noticeable that a lively place is growing.

I had the impression that a small microcosm is currently developing here, strongly oriented towards community and open to many different people and ways of working. An impressive place with many corners to discover. The official opening with an extensive programme is planned for September. Good luck to you. I would gladly come back.

Afterwards I visited “To All Mothers and Non-Mothers”, which interested me particularly. The project is currently still in development, with the premiere planned for September. It began with a performative lecture on abortion in the Czech Republic. Afterwards the space opened for a discussion round. We were given pens and pieces of paper and could anonymously write down thoughts, experiences or questions, which were then collected and pinned to a board. Whoever wanted could also participate with a microphone.

The room was predominantly filled with women. While sitting there I wondered to what extent this topic, although it concerns a very personal decision, is shaped by social conditions and debates that affect all of us.

Unfortunately we had to leave earlier because the schedule still included further programme points. The festival ended for us with the performance 8 Billion People on Fire in a large sauna landscape at Divadlo NoD. At the entrance we had to take off our shoes, were given slippers and sat on the wooden benches of the sauna.

In many of the places we visited it became clear that these spaces are not only venues but at the same time workshops, meeting places and organisational structures. Production and encounter often take place very close to each other here.

Behind each of these places are people who maintain these structures with a great commitment. Especially in the side spaces it becomes visible how much infrastructure a performance actually requires: stacks of heavy stage platforms, tangled cables, rolls of gaffer tape and the worn-out surfaces of the transport boxes. For me, these objects are not just tools; they are the traces of all the movements and stories that have happened in these venues. They represent the materials, time, hands and places that hold all of this together.

Besides the performances it was above all the paths to the venues, the waiting, the lingering and the short encounters between programme points that allowed a feeling for the local scene to emerge. And in my moments in-between I repeatedly lost myself in small shops full of hand puppets and marionettes. I would have loved to take them all with me. There is something for me about these wooden figures, their joints and strings, that reflects a deep connection to craftsmanship and the manual work of keeping things in motion.

It feels good to see with how much passion people here stand up for their spaces and their scene. Especially in times in which cultural structures in many places are under pressure, places like these seem all the more important.

Thank you Malá Inventura.

And thank you Performing Arts Program Berlin, special one to Tubi Malcharzik for the very nice accompaniment of this trip, which makes it possible to look beyond one’s own bubble