South Bohemian Theatre and the revolving auditorium

The South Bohemian Theatre is the main theatre of České Budějovice, with a building on the bank of the Malše a short way from the square — and in summer it also plays in Český Krumlov on the revolving auditorium, which was the first in the world and in its first seasons was turned by people with their own hands. How that was done and why since 1990 there has been a dispute over whether the auditorium may stand there at all is further in the text. But you can start in Budějovice.

On the site of today’s theatre, plays have been staged in Budějovice since 1764. Then part of the town brewery store was adapted for four hundred spectators, and until 1817 only German was spoken on stage. Today’s Empire building by the Golden Bridge has stood since 1819, and on its stage Josef Kajetán Tyl appeared for the last time in his life, in his play The Poor Juggler. His bust is still on the façade.

The theatre has four of its own companies that play side by side: drama, opera, ballet and since 2004 also puppetry. The revolving auditorium is its summer stage — forty minutes by car from Budějovice, in the castle garden below Krumlov Castle.

An idea that turned theatre inside out

Ordinary theatre changes the set. In 1958 Joan Brehms reversed it: he left the garden standing and turned the spectators. The castle garden in Český Krumlov itself became the backdrop — each turn reveals another slice of real Baroque, not painted cloth. It was invented by a Latvian scenographer who after 1945 became the leading visual figure of the theatre in České Budějovice (1907–1995), together with then director of the South Bohemian Theatre Otto Haas.

Did anyone get there earlier?

No one did — and that may sound like local patriotism, but even the others admit it. The auditorium first turned here on 9 June 1958 at the premiere of Günther Weisenborn’s play The Lost Face. Finland’s Pyynikin kesäteatteri in Tampere, often cited as the world’s first revolving auditorium, had its premiere on 16 June 1959 — a year and a week later. Ojanen’s Finnish auditorium was another league: 792 seats and electric drive, while Krumlov in its first year had a few dozen seats and turned by hand. That is why Tampere is spoken of as the first large revolving auditorium — and even English sources honestly add that “earlier there existed in Czechoslovakia a smaller hand-turned auditorium”. That smaller hand-turned auditorium is this one.

Forty people who pushed

The first improvised auditorium held barely sixty spectators and turned by human power: about forty people had to fit inside the structure and turn it back and forth. Forty people under sixty spectators — a ratio no operator would survive today. (Who exactly they were, sources do not say; they speak only of “human power”.) Within a year an auditorium for four hundred was built, a year later for five hundred and twenty-five, and from 1960 an electric motor took over. Hand operation lasted two seasons.

A dispute that has lasted longer than the totalitarian era in which it was born

The auditorium stands on the axis of the Baroque castle garden — exactly where a Baroque gardener wanted no building. As early as March 1990 a motion came to review the building permit on the ground that the precinct is a national cultural monument and the auditorium disturbs the garden axis. Since 1992 Krumlov has been on the UNESCO list, which also flags the issue. Since then the question has been where to move it. Ministerial commissions have repeatedly leaned toward leaving it in place; heritage officers extend contracts; UNESCO warns. A new auditorium would, by estimates, stand at earliest in ten years. There is a neat paradox: a 1950s structure now itself treated as cultural value blocks the protection of the monument for which people come to Krumlov.

Practically for a guest

It plays in summer; tickets vanish fast; it is less about what is performed than where. When it rains, the show goes on. If your guests do not mind what they see but want an experience they will not get elsewhere, this is it — while it still stands.

On site

Sources