Vit Horejs as Vanek, Theresa Linnihan as The Brewmaster in “Audience,” 2019 Rehearsal for Truth Theater Festival, Bohemian National Hall, New York City. Production design by Alan Barnes Netherton. Photo: Jonathan Slaff.
The presented Audience is a Czechoslovak-American Marionette Theatre (CAMT) version of Vaclav Havel’s classic autobiographical play. Featuring live actors and traditional marionettes, the one-act play follows Ferdinand Vanek, a distinguished playwright forced to work in a brewery because his writings have been banned by the Communist regime. The play is staged with live projected close-ups of puppets from security cameras in order to suggest surveillance.
Vanek is stuck in the bleak office of his boss in a brewery where he has been forced into manual labor. The brew master always calls him to the office for endless repetition of dialogue, amidst excess consumption of beer. The tiresome bureaucracy and constant fear under the Communists have driven the boss to alcoholism as well as stints of rage and despair, sometimes turning against his inferiors. Vanek, however, refuses to compromise his principles and the mindset of his colleagues, in spite of the promise of promotion.
Playwright: Vaclav Havel. Director: Vit Horejs. Performed by: Vit Horejs (Vanek), Theresa Linnihan (Brewmaster). Running time: 60 min.
Production design: Alan Barnes Netherton. Marionettes: Milos Kasal, Jakub "Kuba" Krejci. Costumes and Vanek marionette: Theresa Linnihan. Producer: Bonnie Sue Stein/GOH Productions.
Vaclav Havel’s Audience (1975) is the first of his partly autobiographical one-act plays known as the “Vanek Trilogy” (followed by Unveiling (1975) and Protest (1978) based on his experience of being subjected to forced work while under constant harassment from government agents. Since the plays were banned in Communist Czechoslovakia, they were performed in people’s living rooms and even recorded on vinyl. Havel ultimately went from prison to the castle, becoming president of Czechoslovakia.
Tickets: $20 ($14 seniors and students). Each tickets includes $3 donation toward Ukrainian humanitarian relief through People in Need, a Czech non-governmental, non-profit organization with over 20 years of experience in helping people in emergencies all over the world.
The piece previewed in June 2021 at Bohemian National Hall as part of the 2019 Rehearsal for Truth Theater Festival. John R. Ziegler and Leah Richards, writing in Thinking Theater NYC, mused:
"Florida's recent (and likely unconstitutional) legislation demanding documentation of student and faculty political beliefs at public colleges and universities comes to mind when one thinks about how 'Audience' continues to resonate powerfully across national and temporal boundaries. CAMT revives this still vital play with humor, empathy, artistry, and invention."
Another unfortunate parallel gives the play added poignancy: Havel was banned by a government brought to power by the Soviet tanks rolling into his country in 1968 and unbelievably, we are witnessing the shock of the Russian Army attacking Ukraine.
About
VIT HOREJS was born in Prague and escaped from Communist Czechoslovakia in 1978. In 1990, with fellow émigrés, he founded Czechoslovak American Marionette Theater in New York. Vit has translated, written, adapted, and directed over two dozen marionette plays for the company. He is a resident artist at La MaMa Theater and has performed on stage, in films, and on TV. His published works include "Twelve Iron Sandals" (1985), "Pig and Bear" (1989), and "Faust" (1993). He co-produced "Faust on a String," an award-winning documentary about Czech puppetry, and wrote the lead essay for Czecho-Slovak-American Puppetry (GOH Productions, 1994). Horejs has received commission grants from The Henson Foundation, the Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust, Foundation for Jewish Culture, Columbia University, and New York Foundation for the Arts. In 2018, he received the Czechoslovak Society for Arts and Sciences (SVU) Award in recognition of his lifetime achievement in fostering the art form of Czech and Slovak puppetry. In 1989, Mr. Horejš and Bonnie Sue Stein interviewed Havel in Prague, days before he became president, for an article that appeared in the Village Voice January 16, 1990.
THERESA LINNIHAN joined the company in 1996 playing Polonius in Hamlet. For the next two decades she served as a performer, designer, and associate director as CAMT developed original, provocative productions, re-imagined classics and toured to puppet festivals in Turkey, Pakistan, Korea, and the Czech Republic. In 2016 she relocated to Minneapolis, MN. There, for the past five years she has worked with In the Heart of the Beast Puppet and Mask Theater and Barebones Puppets, building and performing for parades and pageants which reflect the sorrows and celebrations of a community that ignited a global call for justice and healing. She is a long standing member of The Puppeteer's Cooperative and recently collaborated with Sara Peattie on an online, animated version of "The Tempest" as well as "The Decameron of Now."
CZECHOSLOVAK-AMERICAN MARIONETTE THEATRE is dedicated to the preservation and presentation of traditional and not-so-traditional puppetry. CAMT’s first New York season in 1990 featured "Johannes Dokchtor Faust, a Petrifying Puppet Comedye" with a cast of antique Czech puppets discovered by Vít Hořejš at the Jan Hus Church, a historic cultural center in the heart of Manhattan’s original Czech neighborhood. CAMT’s 1994 "Faust" was presented as part of the Obie Award-winning Faust Festival in SoHo. At La MaMa E.T.C., the company has performed "Once There Was a Village;" "The Life and Times of Lee Harvey Oswald”; “Don Juan, or The Wages of Debauchery”; “The Prose of the Transsiberian and of the Little Joan of France;" "Rusalka, the Little Rivermaid;" and "Golem," which was co-produced with La MaMa and later featured in the 1998 Jim Henson International Festival. Other works include "The Very Sad Story of Ethel & Julius, Lovers and Spyes, and about Their Untymelie End while Sitting in a Small Room at the Correctional Facility in Ossining, N.Y.," "The Bass Saxophone," "Hamlet," "Twelfth Night," Kacha and the Devil," The White Doe, Or, The Piteous Trybulations of the Sufferyng Countess Jenovefa," A Christmas Carol, OY! Hanukkah, Merry Kwanzaa" and "Twelve Iron Sandals." The company has played in 37 states in the U.S.A. and at international festivals in Poland, Turkey, Pakistan, and the Czech Republic. (CAMT) is a program of GOH Productions, a nonprofit organization.
This event is presented by Czechoslovak-American Marionette Theatre in collaboration with Vaclav Havel Library Foundation. With support of the Bohemian Benevolent and Literary Association, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Czech Republic, Czechoslovak Society of Arts and Sciences, and Materials for the Arts.