Our upcoming Rehearsal For Truth International Theater Festival (theme: Perseverance) will be May 26 - June 14 2025, with a reading series in April 14 - May 4 2025.

Rehearsal for Truth International Theater Festival is an annual showcase of contemporary Central and Eastern European theater, established in 2017. The festival is a shared endeavor of the Václav Havel Center and the Bohemian Benevolent and Literary Association in partnership with numerous other cultural and performing arts organizations. The festival honors the artistic and political legacy of the Czech playwright/dissident/president Václav Havel. We support exchanges between American and European theater professionals and celebrate the power of the theater to transform our lives.

This year’s reading series will run April 14 - May 4, and tickets are currently available. The 2025 festival, entitled Perseverance, will run May 26 - June 14. Full information about the work in the festival will be available in April. This year’s festival, including the reading series, features work from Austria, Belarus, Estonia, Czechia, Germany, Hungary, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, South Africa, and Ukraine.  Much of the work featured this year deals with the subject of how to survive difficult times, sometimes with art, sometimes with humor, but always with a search for what it right and moral. It is inspired, as always, by Havel’s life and art.

The program will be primarily theater, including full productions coming from Europe, American productions of foreign works, puppetry, clown, music, opera on film, and more. For the first time will have one show with multiple performances: the play Blood, Sweat, and Queers, a new play by Tomáš Dianiška that was featured as a reading in last year’s festival.  The play tells the true story Zdenek Koubek, a Czech runner for the 1930’s who won the world’s record in women’s track and then was one of the first people to transition to male. Blood, Sweat, and Queers will be $20/ticket, and for all other programs we ask for a $20 donation if you can afford it ($15 for staged readings).  It makes continuing our work possible.

Most of our programs also include discussions with either the authors, experts on some of the subjects addressed, or both. We hope you can join.

WATCH ONLINE

A staged reading of four translations of Scene 8 in Vaclav Havel’s play, The Memo (also translated as The Memorandum). An examination of the nuances of translation. Directed by Edward Einhorn, Artistic Director, Rehearsal for Truth Theatre Festival. Performed by Stephanie Litchfield, Eric Oleson, Thomas Shuman.

The reading is followed by a discussion with the translators: - Jennifer Helinek, second-year student in the Master of Arts in Regional Studies - Russia, Eurasia and Eastern Europe (MARS-REERS) program at the Harriman Institute - Josef Nosal, a rising senior student of Radio, Television Dramaturgy and Screenwriting at JAMU and the winner of the Václav Havel Library Foundation’s mini-drama contest. - Lucas Schlesinger, third-year comparative literature major in Columbia College - Paul Wilson, one of Havel’s most prolific translators, having translated multiple plays, books, and essays. Music by William Niederkorn. Moderated by Chris Harwood, Columbia University.

This event is organized by the Vaclav Havel Library Foundation, along with The East Central European Center and the Harriman Institute (both of Columbia University), Untitled Theater Company No. 61, and the Czechoslovak Society of Arts and Sciences (SVU), New York Chapter. Supported by the Bohemian Benevolent and Literary Association.