About Alchemy

Every venue needs a secret list of ingredients to keep the pot bubbling. In our case, we need space, time, host, organizers, readers and featured performers, open mike participators and the audience. Good coffee and beer doesn't hurt.

Our Mission

• Provide a forum that supports and nurtures creative literary, art and performance work being produced in the Czech Republic.

• Introduce the community to exciting new voices from within the Czech Republic and abroad.

• Assist and promote individuals and groups within Prague which share our belief in a cooperative, supportive creative community.

• Encourage experiments, exploration, collaboration in any creative realm and assist people in bringing many different projects to life.

• Always welcome and appreciate comments and suggestions, keep evolving and stay open to new ideas.

The Places

The very first Alchemy night was on July 17, 2002 in the magical environment of “The Ruins”. The Ruins are in Havickovy sady (a.k.a. Grobovka) park in Vinohrady and for many years they provided occasional hide out to ex-pat parties.

We do not have any pictures from this night, so you have to imagine the darkened shapes of fake neo-romantic ruins with tens of candles carefully set in niches and between bricks. Our small group sitting around a fire, smelling fresh cut nettles and gazing into stars while someone reads their poetry by the torchlight or plays moody songs on a guitar.

A special thanks for that night goes to Ken Nash who cut all the nettles by himself that afternoon -- auch! -- that’s called “a dedicated organizer” ;-) From then on, Alchemy was pretty much steadily held in cafés, bookstores and other slightly less weather-dependent places:

• Shakespeare & Sons cafe and bookstore. The perfect kick start – cozy environment, well stocked bookstore, good coffee and drinks, efficient service.

• Vyletna - a restaurant in the beautiful Letna park. While it was peaceful enough for our readings in the winter, this place really rocks in the summer, with the opened beer garden and live performances.

• Arena Hostel (now A&O) - some of the best performances took places in the medieaval cellar of this friendly hostel, which has since been renovated.

• Tulip Café - our until 2005 when Alchemy took a break.

• The Globe Bookstore and Café
• Friends Café
• AAU Library

We'd like to thank all of the owners and management for their support!

People Behind Alchemy

The next important ingredient is – volunteer organizers. Namely, we need people who could find the featured readers, run the show, maintain our website and send out promo. Over the years this team fluctuated, but we'd like to thank everyone who helps out.

Laura Conway took the difficult job of Alchemy's first host in 2002 and gave it a perfect kick start. Since then, the host's role was ocassionally filled by other volunteers: Patrick Seguin, Kirsten Weights, Jim Freeman, Chris Crawford, Bonita Rhoads, Scott Nixon and others. However, there is one man who's co-created Alchemy and runs it ever since - Ken Nash.

In spring 2003 Ken Nash "stepped out of anonymity" and picked up the role of Alchemy's full time host. But well before that, he was the man who kept our e-mail list, distributed the flyers and did a lot of other foot work for Alchemy that was perhaps not so visible, but much appreciated.

Ken is the author of Alchemy's name, logo, the animation on this website and much of Alchemy's concept. He also regularly participates in the open mic as a writer of short stories. By profession, Ken is a web designer, illustrator, animator and cartoonist. Check out www.nashken.com for samples of his work.

The author and sponsor of this website is Michaela Freeman, Czech writer, digital artist and web designer - check out her many projects at www.michaela-freeman.com.

This is not the complete list of people behind Alchemy. We depend on our participants, friends and volunteers for support. For this reason, we invented Tycho - the common spirit of the venue. The original Tycho Brahe was the main alchemist at the court of Rudolph II. and today, he lives in cyberspace and maintains our mailing list :-)