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- Connor Quincy via design archives | designboom | architecture & design magazine
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Laterna Magika, the Prague theater that put film on stage, still shapes how screens and performers share a space
ReLaterna Magika, the Prague theater that put film on stage, still shapes how screens and performers share a space
Developed by Alfréd Radok and Josef Svoboda for Czechoslovakia's pavilion at Expo 58, Laterna Magika fused live performance with projected film and became an independent company of Prague's National Theatre in 1959. Its approach to spectatorship and scenography remains relevant as screens fill theaters, museums and public spaces.
Laterna Magika, the theatrical form that made the projected image a working part of the live stage, was developed by stage director Alfréd Radok and scenographer Josef Svoboda for Czechoslovakia's pavilion at Expo 58 in Brussels. The project combined live performance, film projection, music, dance and stage technology into a single theatrical language, placing the relationship between the physical stage and the projected image at the center of the performance rather than treating film as decoration.
In the original Expo program, filmed figures appeared to speak to an actress performing live, while projected sequences were timed precisely with acting, music and dance. The screen became part of the action, giving audiences something else to follow alongside the performers in front of them. An image could respond to a performer, extend a movement or introduce another version of the same space, while the physical stage remained visible at the same time. Watching the performance meant moving between layers, paying attention to what was happening on stage and to what was happening on screen.
The project continued beyond the exhibition. In May 1959, Laterna Magika became an independent company of Prague's National Theatre, initially continuing with revue-like programs before gradually developing longer productions and a broader theatrical repertoire. One of its most enduring works, Wonderful Circus, premiered in 1977 and remains in the repertoire. Its arrival marked a shift toward multi-theme productions, while the company kept developing the relationship between live performers and projected imagery as a defining part of its stage language.
Svoboda's role in shaping that language extended well beyond individual productions. He worked at Prague's National Theatre from the late 1940s and became head of its artistic-technical operations, pushing the theater workshops toward a more technologically ambitious model capable of responding to increasingly complex stage designs. His approach treated light, projection, movement and technical infrastructure as active components of the stage environment. He became Laterna Magika's artistic director in 1973, at a moment when the company was searching for a new direction, and remained closely connected to its development for the rest of his career.
His thinking also reached into the technical systems that made these relationships possible. His work on Polyekran, which combined multiple projection surfaces into a larger image composition, was developed around the same period. The National Theatre makes an important distinction between Polyekran as a technical system and Laterna Magika as a theatrical form, but both belonged to Svoboda's broader investigation into how projected images could alter the perception of space.
That investigation also shaped where the company would perform. During the development of Prague's New Stage in the early 1980s, Svoboda pushed for the building to accommodate Laterna Magika, helping reshape the project around the needs of the company. The New Stage opened in 1983 and became closely associated with Laterna Magika, giving the company a permanent architectural setting for a theatrical form originally conceived for a temporary exhibition.
Seen through contemporary scenography, Laterna Magika belongs to a longer history of treating the stage as a space that can direct and shape attention. The audience moves between what is physically present and what appears on screen, following performers, images, light and movement as they occupy and alter the same space. In this sense, the form changes the role of the spectator, who has to follow both the performer and the projected image and understand how the two relate to each other. The stage becomes something that has to be read as much as watched, with projection, movement, light and physical space working together to determine what the audience sees.
That way of working feels particularly relevant today because screens have become part of so many physical environments, from theaters and museums to public spaces and buildings. Svoboda and Radok were already exploring what happens when an image is given a physical role within a space, and when the audience has to consider the performer and their projected image as two parts of the same scene. Each Laterna Magika production, as the National Theatre has described it, explored a different way of connecting stage and image, leaving a model that still offers a useful way of thinking about spectatorship, scenography and the way projected images can alter our experience of physical space.
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