The exhibition entitled "A Journey to the Light - Luminescent Puppets of the Blackwits Theatre" presents an art project by Ivan Kraus and Naděžda Munzarová.
The couple, journalist and screenwriter Ivan Kraus and his wife, artist, director and puppeteer Naděžda Munzarová, went abroad after the occupation of Czechoslovakia in 1968. In order to make a living, they changed different jobs, which they always managed to combine with a puppet theatre or, in the case of Ivan Kraus, with literary ambitions. The need for joint artistic work during the difficult first years in exile found its way in a very successful black theater project called Blackwits. The name was created by a simple combination of the English word "black" and the German "die witz" (joke).
The Blackwits made short funny sketches with which they performed in variety shows or television programs for children. During their rich artistic career, the Blackwits performed more than 14 and a half thousand performances and made TV appearances in more than 80 countries. Thanks to the combination of beautiful puppets made by Naděžda Munzarová and clever humor of Ivan Kraus, the Blackwits gained a huge number of fans. Between 1975 and 2017 they performed on the stages of many prestigious theatres and cabarets, such as Olympia or Crazy Horse (Paris), Folie Russe (Monaco), GOP Varieté-Theater (Hannover), Apollo (Düsseldorf) or Tigerpalast (Frankfurt am Main).