Photo: Jonathan Slaff
Audience, performed by Czechoslovak-American Marionette Theatre, is a new production 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.
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 (Brew master). Running time: 60 min.
Production design: Alan Barnes Netherton. Production stage management: Hjordis Linn-Blanford. Marionettes: Milos Kasal, Jakub "Kuba" Krejci. Costumes and Vanek marionette: Theresa Linnihan. Pre-show video: Suzanna Halsey. Producer: Bonnie Sue Stein/GOH Productions. Presented by: GOH Productions, Czech Center New York.
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.
The Rehearsal for Truth Theater Festival has featured Vaclav Havel’s “Vanek Trilogy” at Bohemian National Hall: Protest/Debt in 2018 performed by Svanda Theatre, directed by Daniel Hrbek; stage readings of Vanek Variations in 2019, directed by Edward Einhorn; and Audience in 2019 performed by Kaspar Theatre Celetna, directed by Jakub Spalek.
Free and open to the public. Suggested donation $10. RSVP through Eventbrite is required.
Due to COVID-19 restrictions for indoor events, seating capacity is limited and on first-come first-served basis. Reservations must be made in advance. Wearing a face mask is required. No tickets will be available at the door, and anyone who has not received pre-event confirmation will be turned away. Read about Festival Safety Protocol.
VACLAV HAVEL (1936-2011) was a playwright, essayist, political dissident, and, after 1989, president of Czechoslovakia and the Czech Republic. His first full-length play performed in public, The Garden Party (1963), won him international acclaim. Soon after its premiere came his well-known The Memorandum (1965) along with The Increased Difficulty of Concentration (1968). In 1968, The Memorandum was brought to the Public Theater in New York, which helped to establish Havel's name in the US. During the repressive period that followed the 1968 Prague Spring, Communist authorities forbade the publication and performance of Havel’s works. Havel refused to be silenced and became an outspoken human rights advocate. He transformed his experience of working odd jobs into the so-called “Vanek Trilogy” (named after Ferdinand Vanek, a stand-in for Havel), and the three screenplays circulated in samizdat format throughout Czechoslovakia. Havel's reputation as a leading dissident crystalized in January 1977 with the publication of the Charter 77, a Czechoslovak manifesto that called on the government to honor its human rights commitments under the Helsinki Accords. Havel was arrested many times throughout the remainder of Communism for alleged anti-state activities and sentenced to over four years in prison. His seminal essay, The Power of the Powerless (1978), had profound impact on dissident and human rights movements worldwide.
VIT HOREJS was born in Prague and escaped from Communist Czechoslovakia in 1979. In 1990, with his fellow émigrés founded Czechoslovak American Marionette Theater (CAMT) in New York. He has translated, written, adapted, and directed over two dozen marionette plays for CAMT. 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.
THERESA LINNIHAN joined the company of Czechoslovak American Marionette Theater (CAMT) in 1996 playing Polonius in their production of Hamlet. For the next two decades she served as a performer, designer, and associate director as the company 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. In addition, Theresa is a long standing member of The Puppeteer's Cooperative currently producing an online, animated version of The Tempest as well as The Decameron of Now, an online invitation for stories in the era of Covid.
ALAN BARNES NETHERTON has performed many roles for the Czechoslovak-American Marionette Theatre, as well as many other theater and TV/film companies, on stage and screen. He is a master puppeteer and all things theater. A raconteur, mount maker, carpenter, poet, project manager, prototyper, artisan manufacturer, amateur astronomer, an artist and a bonafide, verified, certified real-deal walking renaissance man. (www.TheABN.nyc)
HJORDIS LINN-BLANFORD has stage and/or production managed for John Kelly, Meredith Monk, Lillias White, Theodora Skipitares, Robert O’Hara, Maria Irene Fornes, Brenda Bufalino, Tap City on Tour, Ed Woodham /Art in Odd Places, Jane Catherine Shaw, Robert Woodruff, Cristina Fontanelli, and Vit Horejs; at venues such as La MaMa, Gerald Lynch Theater, Aaron Davis Hall, The Performing Garage, The Kitchen, The Signature Theatre, New York Live Arts, Ohio Theater, Symphony Space, New York Stage & Film, and in Nantes, France.
Czechoslovak-American Marionette Theatre (CAMT) 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 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 by La MaMa and was later featured in the 1998 Jim Henson International Festival. Other works for New York seasons and tours 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. CAMT receives public funds from SBA; the New York State Council on the Arts, the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs and Council Member Carlina Rivera. Additional support: Bohemian Benevolent and Literary Association, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Czech Republic, Czechoslovak Society of Arts and Sciences, and Materials for the Arts. Thanks to Captain Lawrence Brewery.
ABOUT THE 2021 REHEARSAL FOR TRUTH THEATER FESTIVAL
The 2021 Rehearsal for Truth Theater Festival honoring Vaclav Havel is organized by the Vaclav Havel Library Foundation and Bohemian Benevolent and Literary Association. The program is co-produced by the Czechoslovak-American Marionette Theatre, GOH Productions, Czech Center New York, Polish Cultural Institute New York, One-Eighth/Daniel Irizarry Theater, Slovak Consulate General in New York, Palissimo Company, and Arts and Theatre Institute in Prague, Czech Republic.
The 2021 Rehearsal for Truth Theater Festival is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council and Council Member Ben Kallos. Additional support is by the Consulate General of the Czech Republic in New York, Ceskoslovenska obchodni banka – Member of the KBC Group, PACE.V4 – Performing Arts Central Europe, Visegrad Countries Focus, and International Visegrad Fund.