Rehearsal for Truth 2021: Audience

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 brewmaster 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.