About the National Theatre Drama

The NT Drama is the leading and most important theatre in the Czech Republic. Given the tradition, historical milestones and social context of the National Theatre and the structure of its audience, coming from various backgrounds, major part of the Drama repertoire is composed of classical Czech and foreign plays. Yet, the National Theatre is not a mere museum or conservative scene. We take price in co-operating with outstanding Czech directors and foreign artists of contemporary theatre.

The NT Drama is also the largest Czech theatre and operates four completely different venues. The historical building, in the Neo-Renaissance style, represents one of the national emblems and symbols of the Czech culture and independent Czech nation, and, therefore, attracts regular visitors from all over the country. A large part of the repertoire is staged in the Estates Theatre, where Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart once conducted his opuses. The New Stage, built in the 1980s, offers the most progressive dramaturgy. The NT Drama newly also stages productions in the State Opera, which was built as a German theatre in the 1880’s. The State Opera was and still is the largest theatre venue in Prague in terms of its seating capacity.

The NT Drama premieres six to seven productions a year, and further offers a wide range of accompanying activities and educational programmes.

These include regular dramaturgic introductions before performances and discussions with the authors after the performances, as well as a rich accompanying programme under the NT+ brand (including NT Young, a platform intended for young audiences, where we organise workshops for individual productions; the NT Drama Partner School project, etc.). We work with students of theatre schools and actively engage them in our programmes. We also focus on non-Czech speakers and provide English surtitles for our productions. All the above activities express our intention to make the National Theatre a living and open institution.

We consistently approach the professional public and co-operate with artists on various levels, not only in the framework of creation of productions forming part of our repertoire. These projects include for example the Studio for New Drama, where we work with playwrights on writing new theatre plays, or the residence stays for Belarussian playwrights, who found in Prague a safe place for their creative work, away from the turbulent circumstances in their country. 

We believe that while the National Theatre nowadays should be the bearer of the Czech cultural heritage, as declared in the Preamble of the National Theatre Statute, it also must provide a space for live meetings and thus necessarily reflect the topical social issues.

We have already defined the dramaturgic and conceptual plan of the NT Drama, and now we strive to introduce it to the international scene: we reach out to European theatres through exchange of productions; each year, we present one production prepared in co-production with our foreign partners, and we further develop the international co-operation by sharing our experience and knowledge (in the form of joint workshops, meetings, colloquia, etc.) and, last but not least, in the framework of the Prague Crossroads international festival. The international co-operation is crucial for us to put the Czech theatre in the European and global context. Indeed, we all live in the same world and wish to enjoy this diversity, together with our audience, also in performative arts.