Jiří Srnec did not inherit a finished form. He built one: the name used worldwide, the dark that swallows leftover light, the lamps that did not exist yet, and a way for an object to live when the person holding it disappears.

The stage is black. The performers dress in black so they disappear. What you are meant to see is lit — and later, made to glow.

That only works if leftover light dies on the walls. We tried surfaces until one material swallowed the spill from the spotlights: black velvet. The costume is velvet. The wings are velvet. The floor drinks the light. Use anything else, and the hidden body shows through.

Ultraviolet lamps for a theatre did not exist when we started. We built the first ones ourselves.

At the beginning there was no luminescent paint. Objects were carried into a beam of light on long arms — puppeteering from the dark, so the body stayed out of the glow and the object seemed to travel alone. Colour painted for ultraviolet came later. The principle was already a language.

The effect is not the evening. The evening is the story a suitcase, a lamp, a pair of trousers can tell — and the actor who answers them without a word.

In English the form needed a word that told the truth. Black Theatre was heard as something else. Light was added on the tour in New York, USA in 1971 so the poster was exact: this is a theatre of light. Black Light Theatre of Prague. Teatro Negro de Praga. Schwarzes Theater Prag. Černé divadlo. The words now used on every continent started on our posters.

Those titles opened the world. When Prague on the bill could no longer mark the source, the company took the name of the founder who made the form.

That is why the house is Black Light Theatre Srnec.

Srnec is the founder. Read it “Srnets.”

The first public night was in Prague in 1958. The group was called 7/7 — seven students of the puppetry department at DAMU trying a new way to put objects on a stage. The very first sketch they created, Launderette, is still in the show. That night was an attempt, not yet a theatre.

It took three years to make the dark hold and the technique exact. That is why this house dates itself to 1961: not because nothing happened before, but because that is when Black Light Theatre became theatre.

The night the world stood up was the Theatre Festival in Edinburgh in 1962 — a sold-out house, and the start of a touring life that has not stopped. Critics wrote that the company brought magic back to the world’s stages.

Since then: more than three hundred tours. Nearly seventy countries. Festivals on five continents. More than five million spectators.

In 2002 the company represented Czech culture at the NATO Summit in Prague. Our founder Jiří Srnec received the Medal of Merit (2011), the European Trebbia award (2014), and a special Thalia award for his contribution to Czech theatre (2018).

The work is still live. Props are handmade. Some performers you are not supposed to see. There is music, and no spoken text — you do not need Czech, or any other language.

The Prague evening is Antología: eight scenes from the repertoire since 1961, including Launderette, the oldest black-light scene we still play.

This is still a family house. It is now led by the founder’s son, Jiri Aster Srnec. Home stage: Národní 20, inside Reduta. 117 seats.

Front row: close enough for children to meet the actors. A few rows back: the dark does more of the work. Come as you are.