Amateur theatre festival held for 84th time

The 84th edition of the Jiráskův Hronov amateur theatre festival got underway in the North-eastern Bohemia town of Hronov on Saturday. Said to be one of the world’s oldest theatre festivals, it will feature 41 productions of various kinds, from experimental theatre to puppet shows, and over 100 performances between now and next Saturday. It is named after the locally born novelist Alois Jirásek, who was nominated four times for the Nobel Prize for Literature before his death in 1930.