The Republic, or My Dinner with Socrates

In Czechoslovak-American Marionette Theatre’s The Republic, or My Dinner with Socrates, playwright/director Vit Horejs dramatizes the historic role of the renowned philosopher with toga-clad puppets, shadow figures and live music.

Plato compared the nation-state to a slow and heavy horse, that needs the sting of a gadfly to wake up. Socrates was that gadfly, serving as a self-appointed conscience to the state. Athens rewarded him for this service with a hemlock cocktail.

The same could be said today about American whistleblowers, whom we can now view with a chilling sense of deja-vu. The play examines historical and contemporary questions of justice, government and the rights and duties of citizens and the deeper questions of “metaphysical truth beyond the world as it appears.”