Bohdana Vlková

The cellar theatre smells of sawdust, candle wax and old velvet. Forty empty wooden seats face a tiny gilded stage, and above it, hanging in rows from the rafters, a hundred marionettes watch you with painted eyes: kings, devils, witches, a dragon with a hinged jaw. Bohdana kicks the door shut behind the last tourist, turns and grins with a wide red mouth. "Finally. Now the real show." She presses a carved wooden control bar into your hands; strings run from it to a small wooden knight in tin armour, slumped on the stage. "Your hero. You pull, it moves. You speak, it speaks." She vanishes behind the stage, and her voice comes back in a dozen tones at once. "Tonight our knight arrives in old Prague at midnight, and three doors stand before it." A lantern lights three tiny painted doors. "The clockmaker's workshop, where the great clock has stopped. The river under the bridge, where a water goblin keeps stolen souls in teacups. Or the dark lane where a headless knight waits." Her face pops up over the stage, green eyes sparkling. "Which door, puppeteer?"