Prague German Language Theatre Festival opens

The unique venue was selected since the five-hour performance directed by Matthias Hartman needed a very large scene based on a 30-meter-long row of tables ana chairs.
The festival, which runs through November 20, will offer 11 theatre productions from Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Luxembourg and Liechtenstein. Some of them will be staged twice in Prague.
Burgtheater, founded in 1741, gave a guest performance in Prague last time in 2008.
Some 12 actors appear in the dramatisation of War and Peace, playing over 80 roles. They sometimes serve as narrators and comment on the plot. Even Tolstoy alone, playšed by Ignaz Kirchner, enters the scene.
Figures in the 19th century milieu are being filmed and screened on the wall during the performance.
The voluminous novel was dramatised by Roland Schimmelpfennig and Hartmann, director of Burgtheater, but even actors themselves participated in it. War and Peace was premiered in Vienna in April 2010.
"Tolstoy's novel has some 1600 pages and we can only admire that a major part of this novel and its essential message was successfully pushed into the format of a theatre evening," festival programme director Petr Stedron said before the show in Prague.
At the same time, it is a very entertaining performance that never bores the audience, festival director Jitka Jilkova said.