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THEATER FOR THE NEW CITY TO
PRESENT
CZECHOSLOVAK-AMERICAN MARIONETTE THEATRE IN
"A CHRISTMAS CAROL, OY! HANUKKAH, MERRY KWANZAA, HAPPY RAMADAN"
DECEMBER 24, 2026 TO JANUARY 10, 2027
WHERE AND WHEN
December 24, 2026 to January 10, 2027
Theater for the New City, 155 First Ave. (at E. 10th Street)
Presented by Theater for the New City
Schedule: Thu-Sat at 8:00 PM: Dec. 24, 26 + Jan 1,2 & 7,8,9
Sundays at 3:00 PM Dec. 27 + Jan 3 & 10
Tickets $20; or $15 seniors/students/kids
Come dressed as your favorite holiday character and use discount code SCROOGE
for $2 off
Critics are invited to all performances.
Tickets $20 gen. adm., $15 seniors/students/kids
Come dressed as character of Dickens' Christmas Carol or any seasonal holiday
and use discount code SCROOGE for $2 off all tickets (advance sale and box
office).
Box office 212-254-1109, www.theaterforthenewcity.net
Running time 75 minutes.
Current photos: https://photos.app.goo.gl/7s8F9qo7BNosxKK99
Historic Photos: https://photos.app.goo.gl/7eaYStdviUi2FL9S8
NEW YORK, August 25 -- Theater for the New City (TNC) will ring out the old
year with a joyful burst of multicultural mischief as Czechoslovak-American
Marionette Theatre (CAMT) returns December 24 to January 10 with its beloved
holiday mash up, "A Christmas Carol, Oy! Hanukkah, Merry Kwanzaa, Happy
Ramadan," a Dickens remix adapted, directed and reinvented by Vit Horejs.
It features over 30 exquisitely carved puppets by Milos Kasal including a
quartet of Rockettes in Slovak, Moravian and Ruthenian folk costumes and holiday
songs in Czech, English, Hebrew, Slovak, Spanish, Bengali and Swahili.
Families looking for an imaginative holiday outing will find it here. The
production made its live TNC debut in 2019. In 2021 when theaters were closed
due to the pandemic, it was offered as a virtual fantasy tour. Now playing
again for live audiences, the show will be updated to contemporary sensibilities
and re-staged for this new TNC production. Set and costume design are
re-envisioned by company member Michelle Beshaw, a two-time Innovative Theatre
Awards winner.
This toy-puppet theater extravaganza is a new take on Charles Dickens' classic
with a few twists and digressions. Into the familiar story is woven a surprising
and delightful blend of English, Jewish, African, American and Czech winter
rituals and customs, all performed by over three dozen marionettes ranging
in size from four to twenty-four inches, as well as found objects and toys.
Mr. Horejs operates the whole cast of puppets, backed up by a live chorus:
an "a capella monumentale" choir of Katarina Vizina (a transplant
from Slovakia) and Valois Mickens (West African/Celtic/Native American origin).
The piece is still set in Old London, but with Czech accents. Imagine
that the familiar tale was told to you not by an English serial novelist,
but by your Czech grandmother.
The set includes a century-old toy marionette theater donated by Madeleine
Albright. Vit Horejs uses a Bob Cratchit character from his mother’s
identical set that he played with in his childhood. There are ghost puppets
by unknown folk carvers, a skeleton puppet by Vaclav Krcal, and a Camel marionette
that has barged uninvited into several CAMT shows.
This production first appeared in 2001 at the Jan Hus Playhouse as the lead
show of a "Magic of Czech Puppetry" festival. Its popularity
led to revivals in 2002, 2004, 2005 and 2014. Laurel Graeber (New York
Times) called the show a "delightful holiday hodgepodge that still hews
closely to Dickens's tale and also has contemporary humor." Revisiting
the show in 2005, Graeber declared, "Mr. Horejs's 75-minute unorthodox
mix is always fun," adding, "This is indeed Dickens's story, though
Mr. Horejs's approach is hardly Victorian. Scrooge asks the ghosts whether
he will get frequent-flyer miles, and when Fezziwig, Scrooge's old mentor,
appears, he is singing ‘The Dreidel Song.’ (He explains that his
family name was originally Feinstein.) In Christmas yet to come, Scrooge's
tenants celebrate being free of him with Hebrew songs and menorah-lighting.
At one point, a huge camel marionette arrives." When the production
was presented by La MaMa in 2014, Kelly Aliano (NY Theatre Wire) wrote,
"'Christmas Carol' is exactly what an audience would want from a holiday
show. It tells a familiar tale with an added twist, it reminds us about the
spirit of the season, and it puts a smile on the face of even the scroogiest
of spectators. There is no mention of Tiny Tim's most famous line, but the
overall tone of the show makes everyone lucky enough to have seen it feel
truly blessed indeed." Joel Benjamin (TheaterScene.com) called it "a
refreshing theatrical oasis in the holiday desert of over-ripe TV films, large
Broadway musicals and the Radio City Christmas Show."
ABOUT CZECHOSLOVAK-AMERICAN MARIONETTE THEATER (http://czechmarionettes.org)
Vit Horejs, an emigre from Prague, founded Czechoslovak-American Marionette
Theatre (CAMT) in 1990, utilizing two centuries-old Czech puppets which he
found in the Jan Hus Church on East 74th Street. His trademark is using
puppets of many sizes and styles, from six-inch toy marionettes to twelve-foot
rod puppets which double as scenery. CAMT is dedicated to preserving
and presenting traditional and not-so-traditional puppetry, combining live
performers with puppets. Horejs is well-known for innovative re-interpretations
of classics. He received the Czechoslovak Society for Arts and Sciences
(SVU) 2018 Award in recognition of his lifetime achievement in fostering the
art form of Czech and Slovak Puppetry. In March 2019, he received the
NY Acker Award.
Theater for the New City has presented CAMT in over ten productions since
2008, when "The Very Sad Story of Ethel & Julius, Lovers and Spyes"
explored the Rosenberg trial with a manipulated set and objects and two toy
marionettes that met their end in electric chairs. Anita Gates wrote
in the New York Times, "Vit Horejs has written and directed a first-rate,
thoroughly original production and made it look effortless. The cast gives
charged, cohesive performances, and the staging is expert." "Revolution!?"
(2010) was a collaboration with three performers from Bohemia and Moravia,
examining revolutions throughout the history of mankind as a backdrop for
the extraordinary peaceful 1989 Velvet Revolution in former Czechoslovakia.
"Mr. M" (2011) was the first American stage adaptation of "Mr.
Theodore Mundstock" by Ladislav Fuks, a postwar Czech writer of psychological
fiction. The production, which continued at the Jewish Community Center
of Manhattan, starred the Grand Dame of Yiddish music scene Adrienne Cooper
(1946-2011) in her last major public appearance. Puppets and live performers
enacted an enigmatic tale of early World War II in "King Executioner"
(2013), written and directed by Vit Horejs, loosely based on "When you
are a King, You will be an Executioner" by the Polish magical realist
novelist Tadeusz Nowak. In 2015, the company performed "The Magic Garden,
or, The Princess Who Grew Antlers," an ensemble creation that was cheerfully
assembled from Czech fairy tales. "Three Golden Hairs of Grandfather
Wisdom" and "The Winter Tales" (2017) was an evening of two
plays based on only slightly fractured Czech fairy tales. An update of
the company's signature piece, "Johannes Dokchtor Faust" (premiere
1990), sold out at TNC in 2019. In 2024, "The Good Soldier Švejk”
(2024), a puppet theater adaptation of the hilarious 1921 antiwar novel by
Jaroslav Hašek played to oversold houses.
Vit Horejs writes, "The troupe is excited to return to Theater for the
New City, a venue which embraces new work and enables performances in innovative
styles, like this adaptation, to reach receptive audiences at affordable prices."
Other notable NYC productions include "Golem" (La MaMa, Henson International
Puppetry Festival) with music by Frank London, "Kacha and the Devil,"
"The White Doe - Or The Piteous Trybulations of the Sufferyng Countess
Jenovefa," "Don Juan, or Wages of Debauchery," "Twelve
Iron Sandals" and "The Historye of Queen Ester, King Ahasverus and
the Haughty Haman." CAMT performed "Hamlet" at the Vineyard
Theater, in Turkey and Korea, outdoors in all five boroughs, Prague Summer
Shakespeare Festival at Prague Castle’s Lord Chamberlain Palace Courtyard. Its
most noted production of "Hamlet" was with four-foot marionettes
on DUMBO's unforgettable landmark, Jane's Carousel, in 2007. "The
Bass Saxophone," a WWII fantasy with music based on a story by award
winning Czech-Canadian writer Josef Skvorecky, played 11 weeks at the Grand
Army Plaza Soldiers' and Sailors' Memorial Arch in Brooklyn in 2005 and 2006.
In 2024, La MaMa presented CAMT in "FOWL PLAY" an Object Theater
Rock Opera dramatizing "Conference of the Birds" the 12th century
Persian epic, using imagery by renowned illustrator Peter Sís and
music by Avi Fox-Rosen.
CAMT has also appeared at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Lincoln Center Out-of-Doors,
the Winter Garden of the Smithsonian Institution, The World Trade Center (between
the Twin Towers), and in tours to 35 states including the Antonin Dvorak Festival
in Spillville, Iowa, the Heart of the Beast in Minneapolis, the Lowell Folk
Arts Festival in Massachusetts, Disney and in international festivals in Poland,
Pakistan, Hong Kong and the Czech Republic.
This production is supported by GOH Productions and made possible, in part,
with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts and the New
York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.
Additional support is provided by Bohemian Benevolent and Literary Association,
Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Czech Republic, Czechoslovak Society of
Arts and Sciences, Materials for the Arts, Czech Center NY, and private donors.
# # #
REVIEWERS ARE INVITED to all performances.
PHOTOS are available for download:
Current photos: https://photos.app.goo.gl/7s8F9qo7BNosxKK99
Historic Photos: https://photos.app.goo.gl/7eaYStdviUi2FL9S8