History of ALFA Theatre
The immediate predecessor of the Alfa Theatre, the Children's Theatre (Divadlo Dětí) started in 1966 in premises of the Alfa on Americká street. Its first manager was Ladislav Dvořák, and its first post-revolution manager Miroslav Pokorný. In 1992 it moved to a modern building at Rokycanská 7 and gained its current name. It is sponsored by the city of Pilsen.
In the 1970s and 80s, the Children's Theatre worked with renowned directors and dramaturgs ( Jiří Středa, Josef Krofta, Karel Brožek, Karel Makonj, Pavel Vašíček etc.) and set designers ( Petr Matásek, Alois Tománek, Pavel Kalfus, Ivan Nesveda, Irena Marečková etc.). Most of the music was written by Miroslav Pokorný. The auteur-style productions were created by actor and musician Vladimír Čada and his stage partners Blanka Josephová-Luňáková and Milada Čechová-Nuslová, and met with a highly favourable response.
Since 2006, with the departure of Jiří Koptík, the theatre's manager has been Tomáš Froyda. The current creative team (artistic head and director Tomáš Dvořák, dramaturg Pavel Vašíček, and set designer Ivan Nesveda), together with non-resident artists and the twelve-member company of actors, favours a comedic concept of theatre, seeing the puppet as a dominant and unusually attractive stage phenomenon. The theatre performs to a broad range of audiences, including nursery-school children, young people and adults. For all of them it provides an alternative to the dominant media culture – an alternative featuring literary and artistic quality, original staging methods (all kinds of puppet techniques combined with live actors) and a composite stage form, with music (often live) playing an important role. Above all, there is the irreplaceable contact, through emotion and laughter, with live art – and, moreover, in a truly cultural environment. The repertoire is broad in theme and genre, from classical and modern fairy tales to world drama.
The highlights of the decade from 1999-2009 were the productions of "Goodness Gracious, It's the Dogheads" (1999) and above all "The Three Musketeers" (2006). The latter won over twenty awards in the Czech Republic and abroad.
Since 1967 the theatre has been the joint organiser of Skupova Pilsen: the Festival of Puppet Shows, a biennial competition of professional Czech puppet theatre. The most recent festival took place in June 2014.
