Václav Havel’s Vanek

Eastenders Repertory Company returns to the JCC with three Vanek Plays: Audience, Unveiling, and Protest by former president of the Czech Republic Václav Havel. This trilogy centers on the author’s fictional alter ego Ferdinand Vanek, who, like the playwright-turned-statesman Havel, worked in a brewery before being jailed as a political dissident. Imprisoned for four years in the mid-1970s, Havel wrote Audience and Unveiling after his release to entertain a small gathering of fellow writers, all of whom had their work banned in their native countries. In Audience, Vanek has a bleakly absurd and comical encounter with his boss; in Unveiling he visits a frighteningly conformist and avidly consumerist couple; and in Protest, Vanek confronts his friend, a successful TV writer, to convince him to sign an anti-government petition.Special ProgramOn Monday May 5 and Wednesday May 7, Audience will be presented together with readings of works by Pavel Kahout, Pavel Landovsky and Jirí Dienstbier, playwrights who all devised their own dramas about Vanevk. These readings will be followed by a moderated discussion about the role of the artist in a politically repressive regime.