Horice Na Sumave is famous for its passion play. The play is performed each summer outdoors in a theatre created in a natural arena just above the town. The audience is under cover, the actors not so. The 50 performers are local amateurs and when we first saw it a couple of years ago, Jesus was performed appropriately enough by our carpenter. The play is delightful, even if we hardly understand a word, in a way only amateur productions can be, and the play has the added piquancy of the devotion of the performers.
The play has been performed since the 19th century with a break during the Nazi and Communist regimes. It even used to have its own theatre, which was destroyed by the communists. Originally it was performed in German up until the Second World War, after which the German-speaking population were expelled to Germany and a new Czech population established. Thus when the passion play was revived in 1993 it was rewritten in Czech.
As a postscript when we first moved to the area, the town used to have a hotel innocently called Hotel Passion. There was a sign for the hotel on the main road just before you came to the turn off to Horice. I note that they have now renamed the Hotel Stare Skola, no doubt because of the unwanted attention the hotel used to receive.
For more about the history of the Horice Na Sumave Passion Play - check out the dedicated page on the Cesky Krumlov website from which we have borrowed the above photo.
