35. SKUPOVA PLZEŇ

The conference Traditions of Czech Puppetry, which will take place at the Museum of West Bohemia in Pilsen as part of the 2022 Skupa’s Pilsen Festival on Friday, 10^th June, is a significant milestone in the two-year research initiated in 2021 by the Institute for Research and Study of Alternative and Puppet Theatre and Theatre in Special Needs Groups at the Prague Academy of Performing Arts, the Chrudim Puppetry Museum, the Loutkář magazine, and, above all, the Association for the Support of Puppetry Traditions, with the participation of more than two dozen theoreticians and practitioners in the field. The research is inspired by the inscription of Czech puppetry in the UNESCO List of Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity (2016), as the precondition for a cultural phenomenon not to be removed from the list is that it remains alive and continues to develop. The research therefore seeks to name the forms and trends in the development - i.e. the demonstrable living existence - of the entire diversity of Czech puppetry, both professional and amateur, in relation to tradition. The outcomes of the conference will become the basis for a peer-reviewed publication to be published in autumn 2022.