Letná Park near Havansky´ pavilón is becoming a small tent village again for the second annual Letní Letná festival of new circus, theater, music and visual arts. This year the festival has four tents, including one set up as a pub with live music. The largest tent is 24 meters (about 80 feet) in diameter and holds 600 people, according to festival organizer Jirí Turek.

This year's program has a few changes. "One difference from last year is that the festival will be expanded to include children during the daytime," Turek says. Some of the children's shows might be held outside, depending on the weather. "The festival as a whole will be more circuslike than last year," promises Turek.

Once again, the key act in the largest tent is a new circus troupe from France. New circus takes traditional elements of acrobatics, dance and mime and combines them to tell a loosely structured story. This year's new circus act, Cirque Baroque, began as a street theater group in the late 1970s before going under the big top.

Cirque Baroque is touring with an unusual nonverbal project called Ningen, inspired by the life of Yukio Mishima. It's an unusual tale for the circus, the company admits. The Japanese poet and novelist studied literature rather than serve in the army during World War II. After the war he became a bodybuilder, joined paramilitary groups and opposed the rampant Westernization of Japan. Ningen gets some mileage out of the clash of East and West, and makes use of some of the controversial elements of Mishima's life and writing.

Local acts fill out the bulk of the program. Divadlo Alfred ve dvore's theater director Ewan McLaren is happy that some shows from his theater have been invited to participate at Letná because it revives a bit of history. "[The festival] perpetuates the old Prague tradition started by Ctibor Turba, founder of our theater, of putting up shows in tents on Letná," McLaren says. "This was first done in the early '70s, and is remembered fondly by theatergoers of that otherwise murky era."

Krespo's The Mad Cup of Tea is one show that has played Alfred. It's a largely acrobatic work of "tea, tango and trapeze," very loosely inspired by Alice in Wonderland. Numerous complications keep a dancer from getting a simple cup of tea, in spite of a stage filled with all manner of cups and a willing but inept waiter. The idea is pretty simple, but the two talented acrobats on stage explore it with lots of humor and agility.

Fans of old horror movies might want to check out Dr. Schreck Klinik, billed as a dance theater massacre with undead actors and live orchestra. The title refers to actor Max Schreck, who was the gaunt vampire in the silent German version of Nosferatu. But Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff are also invoked in this mostly black-and-white show with, according to the makers, a naive script, wretched production, sad actors and a frigid ballet.

Physical theater troupe Teatr Novogo Fronta will be doing Primary Symptoms of Name Loss, a nonverbal piece adapted from a diary found in a factory in the Soviet Union in the 1980s. The group originated in St. Petersburg in 1993, and shortly after that relocated to Prague. Their work is influenced by street theater and butoh.

Divadlo Continuo is bringing one of its popular favorites, Letokruhy (The Flow of Time), which looks at two people in an old-age home. One is a French woman who is too sick to return home. The other is a retired mailman who burned his house down and set off on a bicycle. It's not the end of their journey, though. In some ways it is just the beginning. The group describes itself as an open collective, with performers also working on sets, props, costumes, texts and music.

Two morning programs for children have no language barrier. Circo de Madera, performed by Karromato, uses wooden puppets and theatrics to re-create 19th-century circus variety acts. Another show should be familiar to local parents: Klaun V. Strasser does amusing tricks in Rainbow Bubbles, a show for the very young set.