Václav Havel led Czechoslovakia to democracy and remains perhaps the best known Czech political Havel's wife not to play in his new drama ...
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But before spearheading the Velvet Revolution, he was of course a world-renowned playwright. History interrupted Havelâs original career for two decades, but now the former president has returned to drama, with the long-awaited premiere of his new play Leaving taking place in Prague later this month. To discuss the work of Václav Havel, I recently went to New York University to meet academic Carol Rocamora, author of the 2005 book Acts of Courage: Václav Havelâs Life in the Theatre.
When Havel first emerged with The Garden Party in 1963, what theatrical tradition was he working in?
âHavel was very strongly influenced, and he is the first to say this, by Beckett and Ionesco. Of course, those works were banned in Prague at the time. But fortunately, Havel and his friends, the â36ersâ, who hung out at the Café Slavia, sat at a table and at the adjacent table were poets of an earlier generation.
âThey brought in smuggled, banned copies of Beckett and Ionesco translated from the French to the Czech. In addition they brought in Kafka translated from the German to the Czech, ironically, and gave it to these younger poets and playwrights, so that Havel had a taste of Beckett and Ionesco and loved their work.
âYou might say that the aesthetic, the sensibility of The Garden Party was Kafka meets Ionesco.â
What was the reaction to Havelâs first full-length play?
âThe audience absolutely loved it. And they said, this is not Theatre of the Absurd, this is realism, this is Czech life as it is.â
Memorandum in 1965 features a kind of artificial language. Iâm presuming that was a reflection on the communist system.
âThe name of the language is Ptydepe. It was actually a made-up language that Havel and his brother Ivan made up together â Ivan, like Václav, is a philosopher â as a joke.
âMemorandum is a wonderful play about a director of some mysterious institute. Of course, we never know what it is or where it is, Kafka-style.
âA director comes into his office one day and is given a memorandum by his secretary and finds itâs in a language that he doesnât understand. He asks his secretary, what is this? She says, itâs the new institutional language thatâs now required that we all speak, Ptydepe. And, by the way, you have to write all your memoranda henceforth in Ptydepe.
âSays Mr Gross, how can I do that, I donât know how to speak it? Says the secretary, have no worry, weâll send you to Ptydepe classes. But first you have to write a memorandum in Ptydepe, requesting that you can take a course to learn Ptydepe. Hence the absurdism.â
That does sound like Kafka.
âAbsolutely.â
Havel later wrote a series of one-act plays like Protest and Audience, in which the protagonist VanÄk is a dissident playwright, in trouble with the authorities. Obviously that character is based on Havel himself, but how closely is it based on Václav Havel?
âIt depends on who you ask. If you ask President Havel himself, he will say, oh no, heâs just a playwright, just a dissident. His friends, who of course know and admire him, would say itâs very closely based on Havel.
âThe first one Audience, written in 1975, is about the experience that VanÄk, a dissident who is working in a breweryâ¦an incident that occurred one day when he is called into the foreman of the breweryâs office.
âThe foreman makes him an amazing proposition. Sládek says, youâve kept out of trouble, I gave you a job, youâve been working in the basement, rolling kegs of beer with the Gypsies. Now Iâm going to promote you to manager of the floor, etc., you can have a good job, you wonât have to work with the Gypsies any more. And you can even have an hour off for lunch, and you can write one of those funny plays that you write. What do you think, VanÄk? VanÄk says, Mr Sládek, thank you so much.
âNow, says Sládek, you know how it is these days, you do something for me, Iâll do something for you. I want you to do me a favour.
âOf course, Iâll do what I can, Mr Sládek, what is the favour? Well, VanÄk, you know the StB, the secret police, theyâve been checking up on you and they come by every week. Now the office whoâs been assigned to check up on you happens to be an old buddy of mine. And you know, I want to help him out and give him some information about you. So would it be OK if you just write some information, informing about yourself every week. Give it to me and Iâll pass it on to my buddy in the StB and heâll get a promotion, just like youâre getting a promotion.
âSo VanÄk thinks about it for a minute and he says, Iâm sorry Mr Sládek, I cannot inform on anyone, not even myself.
âThat was read at a summer festival up in HrádeÄek [Havelâs country cottage] by the Divadlo na tahu, Andrej Krobâs amateur theatre company dedicated to the works of Václav Havel. Andrej Krob himself read the role of Sládek, Havel read the role of VanÄk, and it met with a wonderful response from the other writers at the festival that they urged him immediately to write another VanÄk play, which he called Vernisáž â which I think is translated as Private Viewing.
âThe third VanÄk play Havel wrote in 1978 under very stressed conditions, he had just been released from prison after the first arrest because of Charter 77. He was involved in, under very pressured circumstances, involved in a myriad of activities.
âThe most poignant moment, however, of the VanÄk trilogy occurred after Havel went to prison, when he was sentenced in 1979 to four and a half years. While Havel was in prison not only were his VanÄk plays performed at the Public Theatre in New York, read on the BBC, performed at the Burgteatre in Vienna, but also several authors came forward â Pavel Kohout, Pavel Landovský and later JiÅà Dienstbier â and they said, weâre going to borrow VanÄk, with your permission Václav Havel, and weâre going to write our own VanÄk and keep the character alive.
âThereâs a wonderful quote from Achim Benning, the artistic director of the Burgtheater in Vienna. While Havel was in prison he put on the VanÄk plays at his theatre and after one of the performances he came out on stage and said to the audience, you can put Václav Havel in prison, but you canât put VanÄk in prison!â
How big was Havel outside Czechoslovakia? And how long did it take him to become well known?
âThanks to his agent Klaus Juncker of the Rowohlt Verlag in Hamburg, who signed Havel on in the mid â60s, by the end of the â60s Havelâs first three plays â The Garden Party, The Memorandum and The Increased Difficulty of Communication â were being done frequently in West Germany.
âThen of course Havel was invited to New York by Joseph Papp at the Public Theatre during Pappâs inaugural season there. Papp directed The Memorandum and that play won an Obi award.
âSo when Havel was sent to prison at the end of the â70s, Klaus Junker, who thanks to smuggling efforts led by many Czech, including JiÅina Å iklováâ¦they were able to get Havelâs plays in the â70s out of Czechoslovakia and his plays were being frequently produced in Europe.
âAttention should be given to the three theatres which officially declared Václav Havel their playwright in residence during the dark years of his imprisonment, from â79 to â83: the Orange Tree Theatre in London, under the direction of Sam Walters, the Vienna Burgtheater under the direction of Achim Benning and Joseph Pappâs Public Theatre in New York.â
How well do you think Václav Havelâs plays have stood the test of time?
âI think the exciting chapter in Havelâs life in the theatre is about to begin, because I think that Havelâs very significant body of dramatic work â which consists of 10 full-length plays and eight one-acts â is about to be appreciated for the prominent place it should have in the Theatre of the Absurd, in the European tradition.
âWhile they may not be frequently performed, I think as time goes on they will be recognised for the mirror they hold up to that extraordinary period in history, as well as for their dramaturgical value and the beauty and the integrity of their ideas.â
Very soon, Prague will see the premiere of the latest Havel play OdcházenÃ, Leaving. Have you had a chance to read that yet?
âI have not, but I know my colleague Paul Wilson has done a translation into English, which Iâm very eager to read. Iâm very excited to hear about it.â
Finally Carol, what has drawn you personally to the work of Havel? And why did you call your book Acts of Courage?
âI as an American, and one who has worked in the American theatre for many years, think Václav Havel sets a precedent and a standard that is so admirable, for the courage it took for him to write those plays, and say what he wanted to say, and make the personal sacrifices he made, for his art and for his country.â
(radio-Prague)
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