The 2023 Edition Wrap Up, Edward Einhorn the New Director
Thank you for participating in the sixth year of the Rehearsal for Truth Theater Festival honoring Vaclav Havel. We were happy to present another set of exciting theatrical productions that brought together an international community of wonderful artists and audience.
The festival that started in 2017 as a showcase of the Central European theater has already come a long way and proved to be an important annual event that our audiences as well as our partners look forward to and refer to as the most important performing arts event in New York City presenting multiple European theatrical productions. In 2019 we added the Spring Stage Readings of plays by renowned as well as aspiring European authors and started including the American performing artists into our focus. With the pandemic that center was enlarged by European artists living in the US, and this combination of programming became our current model.
I would like to thank our main long-term partners – the Polish Cultural Institute, the Czech and Slovak Consulates General in New York, the Czech Center, the Hungarian Theatre Museum and Institute, the Arts and Theatre Institute Prague, the Theatre Institute in Bratislava as well as our special partner Romanian Cultural Institute in New York. All events are FREE for the public.
We could not realize this offer without long-term support from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs and the New York State Council on the Arts.
Edward Einhorn Appointed the New Festival Director
As I will be moving to my new position at the Jewish Museum in Prague, it will be my greatest pleasure to pass the festival to Edward Einhorn, a brilliant author and theater director who has been working with us for many years. Edward’s history with the Bohemian National Hall spans back to its reopening in 2006, at which time he was running the Havel Festival. That festival presented the full works of Vaclav Havel, and Havel himself was in attendance. His theater company, Untitled Theater Company No. 61, has been doing work in New York for over 25 years, with an emphasis on Theater of the Absurd and plays that deal with political, philosophical, and scientific themes.
“Rehearsal for Truth is an important cultural event for New York, one of the few remaining ways New Yorkers can experience international theater work at this point, as so many other festivals have closed down since Covid. It is particularly meaningful to me that the festival is associated with Havel’s legacy, as I think the moral issues he addressed in his theater and in his life are more important than ever.”
With much gratitude and best wishes,
Pavla Niklova
VHLF Executive Director