Two radically new stagings of Vaclav Havel’s works bring out both the laughter and the alienation of Havel’s original voice. Mirenka Cechova, a Czech actress, director and dancer, will perform the two most famous one-act plays by the former Czech president, dissident and playwright.
Antiwords received its premiere in Prague earlier this year, produced by the Spitfire Company, which “translated” the play into the language of physical and visual theatre with elements of an improvised clown show. The play, taking place in a brewery in a confrontation between a worker and his manager, features two young women, enormous bronze heads, and spewing beer in this ribald yet terrifying “contest” of masculinity. It was hailed as the most seminal production of Havel since the 1970’s.
Unveiling introduces three characters: a rich bourgeois couple and a dissident playwright, who is visiting his old friends’ reconstructed apartment only to discover they’ve grown worlds apart in a clash of opposite values. The play also receives a fresh take, transporting the work from its specific site and times of Czech society under a repressive totalitarian regime to convey the universal plight of the immigrant facing cultural contradictions.
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