THE RED BALLOON A production about the friendship between a little boy and a magical balloon, inspired by the eponymous French film by Albert Lamorisse. The balloon can not only fly wherever it wishes, but above all it can return the boy’s friendship. Will the boy succeed in defending his inflatable friend from ignorant adults and a gang of street bullies? This poetic production for the youngest children contains almost no spoken word. It was prepared in co-operation with designer Berta Doubková by a creative team consisting of director Michaela Homolová, dramaturge Vít Peřina and music composer Filip Homola, who have already produced a number of award-winning titles for the youngest audience (such as The Ram That Fell from the Sky and Shhh. Shhh. Hooo. Woof!). The production received the Jan Borna Award at the 2024 Dítě v Dlouhé Festival.
The Naive Theatre Liberec presents The Red Balloon, a production based on the 1956 film by Albert Lamorisse. The production was created by the author-director tandem Vít Peřina and Michaela Homolová and set and costume designer Berta Doubková. All three have given the 40-minute show a specific poetics clearly inspired by the period of the turn of the 1950s and 1960s, but also a distinctive style and simple playfulness that entertains children and moves adults with its clarity.
– JANA MACHALICKÁ, Lidové noviny
MICHAELA HOMOLOVÁ (1972) is a director and actress. She studied directing and dramaturgy at the DAMU Department of Alternative and Puppet Theatre in Prague, graduating in 1995 with the production Around the World in Eighty Days in the Small Theatre in České Budějovice. Since 1996 she has worked with the Prešov theatre Babadlo, and in 1999 she started to work as an actress and director at the Naive Theatre in Liberec. The first productions that she directed there include The Tinder Box, Slapstick and …another Bedřich. Since 2005 she has regularly worked with the author (and dramaturge) Vít Peřina, and their productions for children and youth have won a number of festival awards (for example Alphabet Soup, The Magic Porridge Pot, Roast Doves, or Sayings, Budulínek, The Ram That Fell from the Sky, and others). In 2014 the production of The Ram That Fell from the Sky was nominated for Best Production of the Year in the prestigious Theatre Critics’ Survey. For the production Shhh. Shhh. Hooo. Woof! she received the Divadelní noviny Award, the Mateřinka Festival Award and an Erik Award. Her subsequent production, Red Riding Hood’s Grandma is Celebrating Her Birthday Today (2022), received the same award.
NAIVE THEATRE LIBEREC was founded in 1949 as one of the first professional puppet theatres in the former Czechoslovakia. Its history is connected with the names of director and actor Jan Schmid (who founded the Ypsilon Studio there in 1963, which then moved to Prague in the 1970s), director Markéta Schartová and playwright Iva Peřinová. From the early 1990s its managing director was Stanislav Doubrava; since 2021 Kateřina Pavlů and Michaela Homolová act as its managing director and artistic head, respectively. The theatre’s most critically acclaimed plays include The Handsome Fire Chief or Fire in the National Theatre (2005), directed by Tomáš Dvořák. Its author, Iva Peřinová, was nominated among other things for an anniversary Alfréd Radok Award. The play was filmed by Czech Television, and the company also performed it repeatedly on the stage of the National Theatre’s Historical Building. Five years later the same creative team produced a puppet interpretation of Tchaikovsky’s famous ballet – Little Swan Lake (2009). Another area of long-term success has been the theatre’s work for small children, created by director Michaela Homolová and author and dramaturge Vít Peřina. Their production of Budulínek (2012) won an award for the best Czech puppet theatre production of the year. A further production by the team, The Ram That Fell from the Sky (2014), met with similar acclaim. The company’s other successes include the “magical” productions Bohemia is by the Sea (2016), There are Places the Dark Likes, Where Never and Nothing Hide on Islands Remote (2017) and Shhh. Shhh. Hooo. Woof! (2019). All these productions – especially The Ram, universally understandable in language terms – were successful not just at the Divadlo festival, but were invited to a number of prestigious Czech and international theatre festivals. The Naive Theatre is a regular guest at these festivals, undertaking numerous tours not only to most European countries, but also to China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, the US, Canada, Mexico, India, Israel, Korea and Pakistan. In June 2023 the 27th year of the Mateřinka International Festival of Professional Puppet Theatres took place. It is held in Liberec every two years and is organised by the Naive Theatre.
