Professor David Peimer
Václav Havel: A Hero for Our Time: Playwright, Prisoner, and President

Professor David Peimer - Václav Havel: A Hero for Our Time: Playwright, Prisoner, and President

- And hi everybody, hope everyone is well, wherever everybody is on this little planet. And okay, today we are going to go into some of the life of, and writing in theatre, of Václav Havel, for me, quite a remarkable figure, and a remarkable person who went through so many changes in his own life, and captured so much of the history of the latter part of the 20th century into the 21st, as we know. What’s also extraordinary is that looking at his life, how one can see how prescient he was, how he had a sense of what was really important, what to focus on, what not, and always how to try and find a way through. Never to be knocked down by adversity, so that he could never get up basically, and to fight to suffer for his beliefs, his ideals. Yes, he’s been called an idealist, he’s been called romantic, all these things. But nevertheless, when one goes, as people know, I’m sure, goes to prison, not allowed to do so many things for his beliefs, but continues not only with his political belief, but also writing theatre and plays, for me straddles something quite remarkable. A writer, a playwright who becomes a prisoner for his political beliefs, a dissident. Doesn’t give in, and then finally triumphs over the adversity to become president, and then straddles the globe with his influence and the input. And I think the impact is quite extraordinary. And we all know the phrase that Havel has been called the Mandela of Europe or Central Europe and so on. Those are perhaps a bit easy and , but there is an element of truth in it. There’s an element of what he went through and suffered at the hands of the Russian totalitarian state and communism, what he really suffered, and I use that word advisedly, in order to nevertheless keep fighting for simple, basic beliefs. Freedom, democracy, human rights, and simple respect for humans.

And through that could inspire his own people and way, way beyond. And starting out as a simple playwright in a tiny theatre with 136 seats in the audience, that’s where he started. Similar to some of the plays we imagined at The Market Theatre in Johannesburg, first time “Woza Albert!” was shown ever in Johannesburg, the great anti-apartheid play, 36 people in the audience, tiny little lager theatre in Johannesburg. So from tiny beginnings, as Václav often said, “Look at impact rather than aiming for success.” The impact is extraordinary from tiny beginnings. And what’s also extraordinary, obviously for me as a theatre person, is that he spends so much of his life as a playwright. believing in loving writing plays for the theatre. And the plays, which have really stood the time, which I’m going to look at a little bit today as well, because they tie in with his overall attitude of the understanding of totalitarianism, not just autocracies, but fascism. I would really call it that. And he understood the stakes, he understood the political stakes, the stakes of social justice, and understood from a human nature point of view, from a writer and artistic, to inspire so many other writers, Beckett, Pinter, Miller, so many of the others. And of course, his own people basically. And I was fortunate enough to meet him a couple of times and to direct some of his players in English in his theatre, which was something of an extraordinary experience.

Okay, so Havel, you can see those are the years, and those years capture so many of the incredibly significant events, in particular post Second World War. I’m going to show just a couple of slides before we dive into a bit more of his life. Some pictures. The top left, this is Havel with a mugshot, political prisoner, in one of the classic and pretty gruesome prisons in Prague, run by the Russians or the Czech Communist Party in Russia. There’s a picture Havel with Bush. Then next to it, I’m going on the top line, is “The Power of the Powerless.” I’m going to talk a little bit about… this is a collection of his non-fiction essays, which really capture his philosophical thought, which is combined with culture and politics. And the main idea, which is really fascinating, that he chose to focus on in his book. His idea of the lie and how the telling of the lie and the reception of the lie by the majority of people in a society, how it really works, and how it really is part of the construct to create not only obviously propaganda, but beliefs in certain ways of being and living the lie on every level. And he wrote this decades ago, decades ago, and also, in a way how that word has become so huge in contemporary consciousness, that one three letter word, the lie. And one cannot underestimate that Havel was one of the very first to extract that from political theory and bring it to the forefront and say, “This is part of the way of life in the latter second half of the 20th century, going into our times now.” Then on the top right, a picture of him as a young man, then underneath the mugshot picture with the blue shirt, he’s there meeting Mick Jagger, the Stones and others. Then there’s Princess Diana, obviously there’s Obama and there’s Thatcher.

And then one of the great quotes which I love, from Havel, “Follow the man who seeks the truth, but run from the man who has found it.” I’m going to talk a little bit about his influence from Kafka, which I really believe. Kafka’s use of aphorism, of parable, which I would argue comes for Kafka from the ancient Jewish tradition of putting the aphorism, the parable in one sentence, in a sense. “Follow the man who seeks the truth, run from the man who’s found it.” And all these little phrases, and there’s so many in Kafka, which is extraordinary, and so many which are striking the original Kafka. And of course every writer from Europe, certainly from Prague as well, is going to be influenced hugely, and he acknowledges it, by Kafka. Okay, then here, next set of images. This is obviously Havel meeting Mandela. Looking at these pictures in preparation for the PowerPoint, preparation for today, one cannot help but go back, was it a naive time? Was it a falsely hopeful time? Compared to the last 5, 7, 8 years? What was it, that these colossus, these individuals really strode the global stage, suffered for their beliefs, but what did they give us? What did they leave us with? A sense of integrity, of value, respect for a little bit of human life. Without going into all the possibly exaggerated phrases. Then on the right hand side is Kafka, sorry, is Havel on a visit in his prison. This is the prison in Prague. Then on the bottom left, these two pictures of these cold looking buildings, these are from the inside and the outside of one of the most notorious Russian prisons in Prague, during the reign of the Russians and communism. Then I’m going to show a little bit from Beckett, who wrote a play for Havel called “Catastrophe,” which William Kentridge and some other friends, got the rights from Beckett, to do it in Johannesburg in the eighties.

An extraordinary play, short, as with Beckett. And he wrote this and dedicated it specifically to Havel. So these playwrights, these writers, but in particular the playwrights, we’re so in touch with each other globally. And I think this really helped, A, getting better conditions in prison, and B, to get the name out. So I think to lessen the amount of torture and other things one can imagine happening to a political prison in these times in prison. And then afterwards, of course, global status. On the bottom right is another mugshot of his, of an earlier time of being in prison, of Havel. This is one of the iconic pictures because it’s so obviously connected to, a couple of days ago, sadly, Madeleine Albright passing away. She’s Czech, she’s Jewish, rises to the top of the tree, the first woman Secretary of State of America, and she’s from Prague, and she’s come out just post the war, Jewish, all the rest of it. And extraordinary, what she saw, I’m sure we’ve all heard, what she wrote, many, many years ago on her first meeting with Putin. And it’s so utterly accurate to today. Saw the truth. And I don’t think ever held back from being direct, forthright with the truth. And Havel, similarly, many of his essays talk about the truth versus the lie. Easy words to bandy about, easy words when the times are not so dark, when the times are plentiful in a democracy. But not easy words, of course, when times are a little tougher, and harsher, and more threatening as the gathering storms of our times. These two individuals understood how the lie really works in a society, compared to the truth. This is a picture from a newspaper article about Charter 77. I’m sure we all know of so many of the intellectuals and leaders who wrote the Charter 77. And Havel was one of the main writers against the Russian rule and against communism, to try and get them kicked out of not only Czechoslovakia, but Eastern Europe and so on. And using the power of the pen to try and mobilise their own people, and of course, in a global wave.

This is a picture after he became President. After the Velvet Revolution in 1989, the fall of communism and the Berlin Wall. And this is Havel meeting the then rabbi, of what became the Czech Republic, after it split from Czechoslovakia. Rabbi Karol Sidon. And this is just as early on in his presidency. He had a lot to do with the Jews, and really helped to try and ensure that the memory and the legacy of what had happened in those terrible, terrible, dark times, that not only was it not lost, but it was brought out into the open, in the new Czechoslovakia, post Velvet Revolution. Okay, I want to… Just going to hold this picture for a little bit and talk about his life a bit. Interestingly, he came from what was called by the Czechoslovakian Socialist Party, who were the puppets of the Russian rule in the old Czechoslovakia. He was labelled bourgeois. Again, let’s go back to the lie or the phrase. Called bourgeois, and you can imagine in those days coming from the early times of Leninism, Stalinism and so on, to be called bourgeois because he came from a wealthy family. And as a result, certain decisions were made over which he had no control. In 1968, we come up with the Prague Spring and the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia in 68. The Prague Spring 68, the hope of freedom, the hope of liberalisation, possibly even democracy. Of course, after the Prague Spring, it’s smashed by the tanks from the Warsaw Pact, coming into Prague and Czechoslovakia. So in, in looking at him, there’s the Charter 77, there’s the political prisoner, there’s the playwright, there’s a guy who, as a boy, comes from a pretty wealthy, very well known Prague family. Ends up playing a major role, if not one of the main leadership roles, of the Velvet Revolution.

Called Velvet based on the Lou Reed band, the rock band, Velvet Underground. ‘Cause all these bands got through. John Lennon, huge. Dylan, huge. Lou Reed, all the sixties artists you can imagine getting through in a big way. He’s an artist, he’s a writer himself. What he said at the end of the Velvet Revolution in 1989-1990, and he established the free, democratic, Czechoslovakia of the time, before it split into the Czech Republic and Slovakia, which of course came later in his presidency. And he said the first aim, very interestingly, the first aim was to dismantle the Warsaw Pact. Which if we all recall, I’m sure everybody does, was the alliance of the states of the armies under Moscow’s control. The Warsaw Pact, of course set up against NATO. And he argued that the first aim was to dismantle the Warsaw Pact as quickly as possible, and to enlarge NATO membership eastward as quickly as possible. That he always said was his primary aim from the minute he took office as president. He saw something, as Madeleine Albright did, I think all those years ago, that it’s so obvious how important and powerful today. We can debate and discuss, I’m not going to get into obviously politics of today. Enlarge, don’t enlarge. I’m talking about a group of people who have been under the Nazi rule then during the war, then have been under the Russian rule for nearly 50 years, then have a bit of freedom, but what are they terrified of? The next dictator about to walk in? 'Cause we have to see Czechoslovakia is seen… People there I think see themselves, and forgive me for a huge generalisation, but having lived there for quite a few years, I think see that this is a small state. Self-perception. Huge Russia on the one side, huge Germany on the other, prior to that, Austro-Hungarian Empire, and always being smashed in between the two. And there’s a joke, and this is 400 years going back for the Habsburg Empire.

So, there was a joke that I… A “joke,” and I use the word in inverted commas, used to be told to me by a couple of very good Austrian friends in Johannesburg, and they used to say that in the Austria-Hungarian Empire, the Czechs were seen as the cooks, the cleaners, and the gardeners. See, it’s meant to be a joke, but you see immediately the position of inferior to superior, the position of class, and the position of where do these Slavic people really belong? Not really one of us, we are above, we are superior. So the cooks, the cleaners, the gardeners, and that perception existing for the centuries of the Hapsburg empire. Then the empire crumbles. 20 years of democracy between the two wars, world wars. Which is of course absolutely less than nothing. Then come the Germans who march in after the Munich appeasement, then there’s the Nazi period, then the Russians. Patton’s tank stop at the Czech border, and that’s the deal done, of course. And then finally in 1989, getting… So in terms of the last century, this is the history. And I think we do need to see that context when we look at the life of Havel, and of course Madeleine Albright, in a totally different way as well. This is the history which these people have grown up in. Plus there’s the cultural, the literary, the artistic, the intellectual, the scientific history. Einstein is lectured in Prague. The world of Kafka, the world of Hašek, of so many other writers, artists, Čapek, and so much intellectual activity. One of the oldest and most classical universities in the whole of Europe, Charles University is in Prague. So much incredible history and culture. And of course the other horrific side, the attitude towards Jews and many, many others. Every society has a dark side. That’s pretty extreme on that side as well.

Okay, I just wanted to give this… I’m not an historian, but I do think that context is so important for a writer who chooses to engage with the politics and the history of his times in such an immediate way, in such a leadership way. It’s one thing to be a writer and observe and comment. A playwright in this case. It’s another thing to go to prison for your political beliefs of freedom and justice, and to suffer and then become president and become a real leader. Okay, so the plays, some of the plays were “The Garden Party,” which I’m going to talk about. “The Memorandum,” the title I love. The increased difficulty of concentration we see with his plays, the satire, the absurdism, which is the tradition of Kafka for me. And the wit, which is a strong wit. It’s not a scared little character. Again, I’ve argued often against this image of Kafka as this scared little character who couldn’t say boo to anyone in authority. I don’t buy it for a second. I don’t buy it with Havel or any of these people. Because when you look at the writing, it is full of such satire and biting wit, and full of such comedy and farce. To ridicule authority, ridicule power. Satire for me ridicules power. Comedy is different. It’s about laughing at human foibles of human nature. Satire takes a big step forward. After 1968, his plays are banned in the Czechoslovakia and he’s not allowed to leave. He can’t get a passport. He wins awards everywhere for his plays and so on, but he can’t travel to get any of it. He’s in and out of prison many, many times. The worst time I think he was in for about four years.

His plays were performed at times in people’s apartments, in people’s small, little places they would get to, if you like, on the underground circuit. But there was one theatre where the plays were done and they were allowed to be done early on, and then a little bit intermittently, before being totally banned from public performance. And the plays that I’m going to show you where it was done, an extraordinary tiny theatre called Na Zabradli. This is the tiny little theatre, very close to the centre of Prague, which is a tiny theatre seating 136 people. And inside there, during 1988 and 89 into 90, when the Velvet Revolution was happening, Havel and the other leaders were sitting inside the tiny coffee shop in this little theatre with a couple of old phones. As we all know, the phone and the wire and so on. And they were phoning around at actors and writers, and directors and stage designers and stage hands were driving or motorcycling all around the country to get the message out, to ask the people to come onto the streets in a peaceful, protesting way against Russian rule. They’re stancing the moment, and seizing the moment for what became known as the Velvet Revolution. And literally hundreds and hundreds of theatre people, actors and writers, and all the others actually went out and did it. And I had the fortune of meeting with a brilliant actor who was seriously injured in the car crash. He was 18, 19, driving around and doing all this, getting messages out and so on. Terrible car crash, wheelchair for his life. From a wheelchair, one of the most brilliant actors in the Czech Republic for any kind of theatre, from Shakespeare to anything, an extraordinary actor in a wheelchair. Didn’t matter who else was on stage, he was so riveting.

Huge lessons to be learned. And many, many of the other people of the time, and I’m not being over romantic here, this was seriously when all the artists, the writers, the actors, I mean actors? They all came together to organise the protests in the streets, knowing what could happen. Okay, then he’s allowed to do some of his plays here, worked with an extraordinary director called Jan Grossman, and Grossman was almost his philosophical mentor, and he was the director and the leader of the theatre who brought Havel on. And Havel was first a stage hand, basically organising the props, the costumes, making sure the furniture was on stage, making sure the actors had their scripts, making copies, stage hand business. Bringing tea for rehearsals. That’s where he started. From such simple beginnings to rise so far, for me, is an extraordinary journey. To become a leading dissident in Charter 77 and so on. In the book that I mentioned earlier, “The Power of the Powerless,” sorry, that he wrote in 1978, this book here, “The Power of the Powerless,” which will come up in a moment here. No, this comes up in here. It’s in the top right, “The Power of the Powerless.” And what’s fascinating when you read it, and it’s not written, it’s not overdone with philosophical or political theory, there’s some, but as I said, it’s written in 1978, a long time ago. Taking out, and that main idea that he’s questioning, what happens when ordinary people are forced to live within a lie, to use his phrase.

Of course, he’s talking about under the Russian regime, under communism. He says, “We never decided to become dissidents. We were transformed into them.” Interesting thought. “How to live within a lie?” So you can’t change the lie, because the state power of coercion through the police and the army and the death squads and torture squads is far too powerful, and people are terrified, and collaborators are huge. So how do you live within a lie? How do you protest? How do you hold onto a belief of human rights? Do you become a collaborator? Not? What do you actually do when you’re forced to live in a society within a lie? I love that way of putting it. It’s not a naive, simplistic, “How am I going to fight the lie,” and so on. It’s, “I’ve got to find a way to live within it. I’ve got to live, and I’ve got to try and show my opposition, but I also got to survive. Got to be an opportunist.” Not, “I’ve got to be an idealist, perhaps a romantic. I’ve got to write, I cannot take to the streets to…” Yeah, all these questions coming in, if one chooses mainly nonviolence. Okay, then he’s fundamental in helping to ensure that NATO expands eastwards. Fundamental in getting the Czech Republic in ASAP. Fundamental in getting as much of the Warsaw Pact lifted from the old Eastern Europe. And once he becomes President, through Europe, through America, everywhere, to get that fundamental change happening. Well, if this is what he saw in 89, 90 and 91, you can imagine what he understood in a large cultural and historical context of Europe, Eastern Europe, going onto Russia. What he understood in terms of historical momentums. Based on the BBC programme of 2005, the hundred Greatest Britons who were voted for by the British, and Churchill comes out number one. He was voted the third greatest Czech on that TV show. Interestingly, in 2007, he’s already left being a president two years earlier. So he is an ex-president.

He goes on a hunger strike in support of one doctor, one Kurdish doctor, who is a human rights activist, who’s made a few little protests in his area. He was an ordinary person, asked for his help, who, in the geopolitical sense is utterly small, ordinary human being. Ex-president goes on hunger strike for his release. I mean, it’s a mind blow if you really think about it. And of course, first in, as far as I know, in human history, that an ex-president goes on a hunger strike for a doctor who is a Kurd, living thousands of miles away. In 2008 at the Archa Theatre, which is one of the lovely theatres in Prague. he writes the final play, which is based on a combination of “King Lear” and “The Cherry Orchard” called “Leaving,” where the central character is an ex political leader who loses his position, “Leaving,” loses power, loses status from being at the top of the tree, president of his country, and now is an ordinary citizen. Linked with “The Cherry Orchard” and linked with “King Lear.” And you get the jealousy and the envy of the daughters who want the villa, want the money and the fortune that is being left, take the money if they can’t get the power, and what is this ex-president, who is a kind of a Lear character going to do? And it’s a fun play. It’s written again with so much satire and so much wit, in the great Czech tradition, from Kafka, to Hašek, to Havel, Kundera, and so many others where, what I’ve argued before, the idea is to find the wit in times of great adversity.

Find humour as a way of coping with great adversity. And that’s very different. I’ve go way back to the World War I poets. Wilfred Owen, Siegfried Sassoon, the British poets and the French and the German. Where the German, where it’s full of the utter trauma and the emotional horror of being in that First World War slaughterhouse. But for the Czechs who had to fight on the side of the Austrian and the German army, their response was, “The Good Soldier Švejk” by Hašek, Čapek. Later, so many of the others, their response was satire, wit and humour, as a way of coping with the slaughterhouse and the horror of that adversity. It’s a fascinating cultural exploration for me to discover this. argued that he should have the Nobel Peace Prize, which he didn’t get. Interestingly, at the time, the Russian Embassy sent an official letter of condolence to Havel, that he should have got the prize. And who was Prime Minister at the time of Russia, who signed it? Mr. Putin. Madeleine Albright said he was one of the great figures of the 20th century. 1986, he wins an Erasmus prize. 1993, he’s elected fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. In 2011, and I’m going to see, I think I should still have it here, here, yes, here. 2011, this is on your bottom left. This is a strike in the middle of Moscow, which is an anti-Putin regime, 2011. 11 years ago is a Muscovite striking, protesting against authoritarianism of Putin in Moscow. And what are they doing? They hold portraits of Václav Havel. He’s the only person who they hold portraits of in their strike. In 2011, just be before this protest, he was awarded the Club of Madrid Prize, which is one of the big prizes of the EU human rights and so on. But then in 2011, the Club of Madrid also awarded Vladimir Putin the same prize.

Because he was awarded that prize, because Putin was, Havel refused to go and accept it. He made the stand 11 years ago. He saw what I think very few others saw, picture obviously above there with Clinton and so on. 2003, he wins the Gandhi Peace Prize in India and so on. In the middle of Kiev in the Ukraine, there is a major street called the Václav Havel Boulevard, and there’s a big memorial park. I dunno if it’s still there, but it was. It was opened in 2016 in honour of Havel. He’s the fourth European ever, only, to be honoured by having a bust of himself in the US Congress. Churchill’s one of the others and Havel’s one of the four. Okay, these are very modern pictures, and this is where he used to sit right at the back, at the end of the red carpet, where he and others would sit, and they would meet once or twice a week, and try and teach each other philosophy, politics, arts, literature, culture, education, all the rest of it. Because Havel was refused the right to study the humanities at university, because he came from a “wealthy bourgeois family,” quote unquote. So he was only allowed to study economics. So obviously studying economics under communism and Russian rules is fine. Studying the humanities is a threat. Anybody who came originally from a wealthy family in Prague. I mean, the extraordinary level of the madness that you can imagine of it all. And he went to study for two years of economics and then left. What they did was they would all get together in Cafe Slavia and Cafe Louvre, and would teach each other.

Young students at the time, would then become dissidents and are educating themselves. They know they’ve got to have education, they’ve got to understand their own history, history of Europe, of the world. They’ve got to read literature and other things when they’re denied so much. How do you live within a lie? Going back to his phrase. Well, maybe just something as utterly simple, get a few other friends together, teach yourself once or twice a week something of knowledge in a coffee shop in your city, to try and avoid being banned and imprisoned again. And he goes there, and then this of course is Cafe Louvre, which is also a very contemporary picture, which is the other great cafe where all the intellectuals… Going way back, this goes back to Kafka’s time early on in the 20th century and all the way through these two cafes in the middle of Prague, right near the National Theatre. I wanted to show this for a moment. This is the Estates Theatre. This is 230 years ago where Mozart’s “Don Giovanni” was first performed. Look at this elaborate, incredible theatre. Extraordinary. This is the National Theatre in Prague, set up really to bring back, this is after the 1860s, after Emperor Franz Ferdinand, sorry, after the 1860s when the Czechs were began to be allowed more freedom and more rights, The beginning of the idea, and they choose a theatre, fascinating. A theatre for Czech nationalism and to propagate the Czech language. It’s a theatre that is chosen, not just other forms of literature. And on the left is this extraordinary picture of the contemporary image of the National Theatre with that crown at the top, gold crown. And this is inside one of the main theatres on the right hand side of that theatre. But instead of working there, this is where Havel works. I think it says everything. This is inside that same little tiny theatre, 136 seats, little balcony at the back. It’s a tiny end on theatre. It’s probably six metres by six metres that stage floor. It’s tiny.

But some of the most extraordinary theatre in the world is done on this tiny stage. Not on this huge stage of the National Theatre, interestingly. Not only political theatre, but theatre from all over the world, from the Czechs themselves, everywhere, extraordinary explosion of creativity and culture, which they try to do, if you like, to try and bypass ways of communism and censorship. Actors are trained so that the visual and the physical body cues are picked up by the audience in satire to attack the censorship and the state, as opposed to language. They used to have four literary commissars sent by the by the Communist party, to sit in at every rehearsal, not just the opening, every rehearsal, and watch the rehearsal with their scripts and literally mark out lines of the script which they thought might be threatening. That’s the level of madness and the level of fear that they’re so threatened in a tiny little theatre of a few lines in a script of a play, which is… It’s play, it’s theatre, it’s fiction. Four literary commissars will go through every rehearsal. They will come. So the Czech training of actors becomes very physical and visual. And hence the visual theatre becomes so influential globally because you can speak through metaphor visually and the physicality of the actor. You can ridicule authority and power. And that is a huge contribution to theatre that these guys made, led by Havel. So it is the big political, and then there’s this… Okay, I want to move on to a little bit about his theatre. And here, “The Garden Party,” I’m going to talk mainly about that. “Leaving” is the one I mentioned. “The Garden Party” is probably his greatest play, and is most influential, and one of his earliest. 1963, basically the story is, the main character is a guy called Hugo and his parents are worried about his future.

So they arrange an appointment with an influential sort of fairly minor but important official. A bureaucrat, but an official who’s a political party member and an official, all of that. They arrange an appointment, he goes, but the official doesn’t make the appointment, doesn’t pitch. So the family discover that the official is at a garden party and they decide, “Okay, we’ll send our son Hugo to the garden party, and there he must meet him, try and impress, and try and schmooze, and get a good job.” And this official is in charge of the Department of Liquidation. The Liquidation Office, where the aim is to liquidate anything that needs liquidation. It’s all fictitious, it’s satire, of course. So Hugo goes, anything, and they speak a language which is full of ideology and full of jargon and they converse in a language. I mean, today’s terms would be… In the west it would be PC language. And you can imagine in totalitarian states. So the language is so important to Havel. The language people speaks, helps, if you like, shape identity. It gives identity a way to express itself through language. And if we only use the language of PC, or wokeness, or the language of the extreme right, or fascism, it does say something about our own identity and the lack of a free mind, and the police inside one’s own mind. How to live within the lie again. So Hugo goes to the party, and he learns very quickly at the party, in the play, the platitudes, the cliches, the language. And the bureaucrat, the official invites him and he says, “Sure, I’ll give you a job.” Hugo then gets the job and we see other scenes in the liquidation department office and so on. And what he does, he learns the language so well, of platitudes and cliche and how to go up the ladder, not down the snakes, how to go up to become an very important leader in the department of the liquidation office.

Very important job in the city. And he takes over the previous guy’s job, the other official, and Hugo becomes the director. What happens is that his identity becomes entirely defined by that position, and most importantly, the opportunism needed to go up the ladder and get the job. And whatever morals and authenticity or anything else that his parents have tried to bring him up with, goes out of the window and he becomes a completely new figure. Opportunism as opposed to idealism takes over, and he rises to the top of the tree as a functionary in the Department of Liquidation office, and becomes the director. He then, towards the end of the play, he goes back home to visit his parents. He hasn’t seen them for quite a while. And they prepare, they’re happy, “Our son, he’s the boss, he’s the director, wonderful.” And he walks in the door at the end of the play and his parents can’t recognise him. Nobody can. They can’t physically recognise him. And the dramatic metaphor is so brilliant and so powerful and so simple. And when you watch it and when you read the play, and you get it at the end, it’s like a sledgehammer into you. Because you’ve been laughing in the satire, and the wit, and the ridiculing, and the jokes, all the time of this ridiculous authority, et cetera, but then it hits you. The son, Hugo, isn’t recognised by his own parents. His identity has changed and transformed completely. It’s an extraordinary dramatic irony at the end of the play. And I’ve always said that irony at the end of a play makes it so powerful, turns everything on its head, and we have to reevaluate the entire play. We’ve reevaluate what you’ve been watching for 90 minutes on a stage, and we reevaluate something about ourselves obviously as well. The Faustian bargain, his chosen opportunism for his career path, and the price, of course, is to forsake something of a vaguely authentic identity and go for the opportunism and ride up the ladder.

What price, progress? What price, advancement? And I don’t ever want to say the play is not as naive, to simply say it’s a binary, either you are idealistic or you’re an opportunist. He shows the complexity, Havel. It’s the delicious, creative tensions in Hugo all the way through, as he goes through this transformation. But it’s the wit and the satire again, going back to what I said earlier. And this for me goes back to Kafka, because with Kafka, what happens in “Metamorphosis,” Gregor wakes up one morning, discovers he’s a giant insect, cockroach, whichever translation from the German we go with. What’s his obsession? He’s going to be late for work. Not to call a doctor because he’s become a cockroach or an insect. His family are not worried about him becoming a big insect, his family are worried. “Go back and report to the office, you’re late, we need your job, we need your money. Get to the office on time.” Not get me to the church on time, get me to the office on time. That’s what his family are worried and obsessed with. Gregor is freaked. He’s not going to get to the office, not freaked that he’s become a cockroach, an insect. And that metamorphosis idea of Kafka, we can see it as simple now, but it’s brilliant, and I think it burns into their imagination endlessly.

And for me, it’s what Havel does at the end of “The Garden Party.” Where the parents don’t recognise the son. Simple image and the metaphor screams loud. The power of what theatre really can do, I think, unforgettably. In “Memorandum,” it’s not as great an image at the end. It’s more about language again, and how language defines identity. And a memorandum arrives in one of these offices and it’s written in a special language which the office has to use. And we all know what it’s like. Whatever office we work in, there’s a certain language that rules, and if you don’t go according to that, you’re toast. So the memorandum arrives, but it’s in so much language and jargon of the office, nobody can understand it. The director can’t, the workers can’t, and they’re freaked, 'cause they’ve got to deliver on the memorandum by the end of the day, what are they going to do? But they can’t understand it because it’s new jargon. They don’t know the language. So they hire other language experts, they try to decode the language, get coding experts. There’s a secretary, Maria comes in, and she’s terrified to try and translate and type it, because in case she gets it wrong and she’ll lose her job. Everybody’s terrified of losing their job. Everybody’s freaked, they’re going to be fired. But they also know if they don’t translate the memorandum and find out what it means and do it, they’ll all lose their jobs by the end of the day. Terrified. So the whole thing is running around trying to find out, “What do we do with this one memorandum?” You get the wit, you get the satire completely. And then they discover they don’t have a permit to use…

You have to get a special permit to try and translate that memorandum and so on. Bureaucratic language, language of political correctness, language of in our terms today, or language of extreme right, run amok, gone mad. But I think he’s seeing this in 1965, he’s understanding this in Russian communism, ruling in the old Czechoslovakia. He’s understanding, and I really think it’s from Kafka again, he’s understanding how this not only is how people are forced to live, but how do you live within the lie? You’ve got to keep your job, but for that you’ve got to know what the memorandum means. But nobody will translate it, because they’re too scared. If they translate it wrong, they’ll lose their job. So anyway, you get the rest of the meaning. The link between language and bureaucracy, and the language and the corporate, and trying to understand how identity is forged. Identity is actually made, constructed in a way. “Audience” is a play which he wrote shortly after being… One of the times he came out of prison, he was only allowed a job first in a chemical laboratory as an apprentice, as a lab technician assistant. And another job he had to do was in a brewery, had a lot of manual jobs he was forced to do, in and out of prison, but would keep meeting in those cafes to discuss with the others. In “Audience,” it’s a simple play, 50 minute play, but it’s brilliant. It’s about the boss of a brewery, the foreman, if you like, of the brewery, and a new young recruit who is a kind of a semi sensitive writer, a Havel type figure. It’s just the two of them having a beer and a sandwich over lunch. But the foreman of the brewery wants to convince the new young rookie guy to become a collaborator and to confess about himself that he’s done something wrong against the state, and against the organisation, which is the brewery. So it’s about making yourself guilty and a collaborator, when you’ve done nothing. The foreman’s job depends on reaching, having a certain amount of, what in today’s jargon would be called deliver the meat. How many people can you fire in your first year of your work? Here it’s, how many people can you get to collaborate? How many can you get to confess something, a lie about themselves, so that they got a black mark against them? So they’re never going to threaten you and your job.

It’s all the little intricacies of the office gone mad, which Kafka foresaw completely, I believe, completely. A world where the life is bureaucratic. It’s run by endless laws of nonsense, and yet pernicious. Where a file mislead in a vast bureaucracy, a lie told about oneself, collaborate or not, or about somebody else, changes the life completely. A life which is a file, which is data. And finally, in Kafka’s great phrase, “Where the bird seeks its own cage, where the innocent seek their own punishment.” Extraordinary aphorism from Kafka. The punished will seek the offence to find out what they’ve done wrong, when they’ve done nothing wrong. “The bird seeks the cage,” in Kafka’s amazing image for me, an aphorism. You see it in Hašek’s, “The Good Soldier Švejk,” how the joke works. You see it in “Metamorphosis” of Kafka’s, how the joke turns. The punished, they feel punished. “What have I done wrong? I’ve done no wrong. Why do I wake up to be an insect, a cockroach? Why am I metamorphosized like that? Why do my family only care if I keep my job even though I’m a cockroach? Nothing else?” Okay, nothing has been done wrong and yet blame and shame. So it’s an extraordinary, for me, way of seeing all these writers together, which for me, Havel has taken up and can see the effect of, and also in one of Kafka’s great letters, which he wrote to his girlfriend at the time, Milena, where he said, “The office is not a stupid institution, the contrary. It is a fantastical institution, because in the office you find everything of contemporary life, love and hate and compassion and jealousy and envy and competition and care and kindness and forgiveness.

You don’t need necessarily just the battleground. It’ll happen in the little office, whether it be in a corporate, in an organisation, a bureaucracy, wherever.” And I think the way of seeing it with such humour and satire that Havel does, for me is an eternal delight in theatre. A couple of phrases from Kafka which influence, Havel and the others. “This person I believe is terribly afraid of dying. Why? Is it because he hasn’t yet lived?” Bob Dylan, I think took the line. “He not busy being born is busy dying.” Kafka, “I usually solve problems by letting them devour me.” You have to laugh, there’s irony, there’s wit, in the aphorism, there’s a turn of phrase, it’s an ancient Jewish tradition. This parable in the aphorism, turning the phrases, the meaning on itself. “I usually solve problems by letting them devour me.” “We live in an age which is so possessed by demons that soon we shall only be able to do good in the deepest secrecy of the lie, as if we were committing a crime.” That’s Kafka. So I guess what I’m trying to get at is Kafka, whether intellectually and imaginatively, intuitively, doesn’t matter, sees it. Havel, picks up in the great tradition, puts it into the theatre, puts it into his own writing, and tries to give us a body of work, which is a way of trying to live within the lie, live within a society where one can see there is so much that is not only unjust, but also pernicious to the very idea of what it may be, what human being means. Okay, I want to show… This is a short clip from from Beckett’s “Catastrophe,” which he dedicated to Havel. And you can see here, and I’m just going to show a couple of images in silence from the play. For me, this is influenced by Edvard Munch’s scream and many others. But all it is, it’s a 23 minute, 25 minute play. It’s about one character who’s arrested, doesn’t know why, what reason, anything. And then you have two very detached, almost if you like, medical observers who are the torturers, but they’re also detached and cold and have no emotion at all.

They’re merely ticking a tick box exercise to follow through how they progress in their torture. And how they arrange the body, and how they arrange the costume, and how the body is manipulated and moved by the two characters who’ve come onto the stage, come back, look and observe in a very detached way, as if almost a little scientific experiment in a way. And then how the body is raised and put in different positions, and yes, okay, they’re dressed like this, this is costume for theatre. And what they do with the body and arrange it. And you’ll see the one with a clipboard, okay? I think some of the illusions in the costume are obvious, and the body is arranged and positioned in various ways. Time is slowed down, space and the image are given time. So we can absorb in a classic Beckett way, absolute essentialist with image. And then slowly the clothes are removed. Go back here. You see the clothes being removed, and then a little bit more here, clothes being taken off. Now this of course is helped with makeup on the body and the lighting effect. So the whole thing has been created artistically. There we go on, until we start to see this image emerge. iI a classic Beckett way, the image slowly, slowly, as time in our time, in our era, where time is so speeded up and so brief, Beckett does the opposite, slow it down radically. We get an image for him of the human being of the 20th century. Beckett said, I see humanity everywhere on its knees. Many phrases like that. This is done with the trauma, it’s called “Catastrophe.” It’s not done with the satire and the ironic wit of Havel and that tradition. And we see more.

And so it progresses, and it’s simply what is done with a body and a costume, and light in a space. It’s Beckett’s way of trying to get the essentialist with the image. There’s something terrifyingly grotesque and yet strangely alluring in this image for me. Okay, what I would like to do is just go back here for a moment. Here. And W. H. Auden, sorry, this is going back onto Kafka here. It’s the world of obedience, it’s the world of trying to find the truth, it’s the world of trying to live within a lie and how to. And I think what is fascinating for me, finally what I can take away, not just to link it, obviously, to what’s going on in the world right now, but how easy it is. How easy it is in a way to forget this, where these guys have actually gone through and suffered for their belief. How easy it is to forget it, whether it’s a Mandela, a Havel, whether it’s a playwright of a Havel calibre. How easy it is to forget something about their lives and what they’ve gone through to reach a certain point, and in his case, doing it through, for me, the ridiculous, the remarkable, the magical, crazy mystery of theatre. Okay, I’ll hold it there. Thank you very much everybody.

• [Host] Thank you David, do you have a chance to do questions?

• Yeah, sure.

Q&A and Comments:

Hi, people always give me the report. Okay, that’s great. Big anti-war demo in Prague today. Great, thank you.

Then from Tanya. I know the name is not Václav, it’s Václav or Václav, and I apologise to you Tanya, and you’re absolutely right. I went with the more English use of the word today, instead of Václav.

Marcius, thank you for your comment and hope you are well in Toronto.

Valerie, “My late husband was the producer of the concert at St. John the Divine.” Ah, the freedom concert of the nineties. “It was a huge event, very meaningful, together, with Marion Wiesel, were his guests in Prague. It were so memorable.” Valerie, thank you. That’s amazing.

Q: Lawrence, what were his views regarding the split of the Czech Republic and Slovakia?

A: I think he was pretty saddened from what I understand, but he chose to go with it in as peaceful a way as possible. I don’t think he wanted it for a second.

David, what did Havel to say, again, split.

Michael, Madeleine Albright was all dark where Israel was concerned, entirely negative towards Israel. Yeah Michael, I mean we would absolutely love a whole discussion and conversation to be had there.

Rose, thank you. “We went to Prague with our little kids 32 years ago for the first time. It was a desolate, communist, sad country, not the Prague of beautiful today.” Yeah, thank you to Daraba.

Lorna, “We’d like more input on Havel’s role during the 68 failed rising.” Well he was still quite young. He was a leader of the dissident movement there, but young, and I don’t think as politically as sophisticated as he became much later, but I don’t think anybody else was. With the Prague Spring and the uprising to really foresee that the Russian tanks were going to come in. I’m hesitant to speculate about what he already thought more at the time.

Q: Lawrence, “How do you explain Hungary and to an extent Poland, turning their backs on liberal possibilities, and choosing instead the far-right leadership?”

A: That’s another whole fantastic discussion to come to. And of course the corruption. Let’s never forget, massive corruption in Eastern Europe. I mean, I’m just trying to paint a picture of this guy’s life, and I fully accept there’s an idealistic quality. I think you have to be idealistic to a degree, to go to prison for your beliefs, take on Russian communism, totalitarianism, through literature, writing, and then become the leader and so on. I think there has to be a certain idealism and a certain hunger and passion with that, but with the corruption today, of course.

Simon, “Wit in great adversity.” Yeah. Thank you. Haven’t heard that for so long.

Mira, “Václav.” Neville, “I met the great Havel in Prague and organised the British National Theatre Institute.” Fantastic.

“Do you think Havel must be asking for a heavenly thunder ball to strike down Twitter?” Okay.

Q: “Zelenskyy and Havel, do you think they were twins?”

A: I wouldn’t, I’m hesitant to draw these kind of parallel, I think because they were living in such different eras and are dealing with such different things. I mean the one is a physical war and there are people dying every moment. The other wasn’t, in the Velvet Revolution. So I think it’s a very… And historically and contextually very different times. And one is a playwright and the other, coming from the world of theatre but different.

Q: Margaret, “Did the commissars not pick up on the body language?”

A: Great question Margaret. No.

Q: “If the audience did, why didn’t the commissars?”

A: Dare I say too stupid? Dare I say not theatre people? They are just commissars, they’ve been told and they believe the propaganda in their head, “Go and check what’s being said in that theatre.” So they’re literally just checking what’s being said.

Roe. Wasn’t so different sometimes during apartheid. Certain plays you could get through in a certain way. Physicality. Roe, “Irony only at the end of a serious play, seems like a sellout.” No, I think irony at the end of a comedy, irony at the end, I mean, the producers I think of, some of the… Marx Brothers other things. You get irony, I think, at the end of either. Some of the great satires or tragedies.

Q: Karen, “Did Havel ever comment on Orwell?”

A: That’s a fascinating question. “I’m sure he would’ve appreciated Orwell’s picture of how language becomes distorted under totalitarianism.” I haven’t read, but I’ll look that up, Karen, thank you. It’s a great idea.

Ishma, “Hugo metamorphosed politically, where Kafka’s 'Metamorphosis’ to change punctuality?” That’s great. I mean, Kafka’s terrified of losing his job, whereas Hugo does it to get the job of being the director. Great point. I mean Hugo is a much more assertive, dynamic, dominating character on stage, compared to, if you imagine staging Gregor in Kafka’s metamorphosis, where he’s playing catch up, he’s literally running on empty all the time, Gregor, in Kafka. And is freaked he’s going to lose his job or not, and many other things that happened. Whereas Hugo is proud that he’s succeeded to become the director.

Margaret, thank you for your kind comment. Barbara. Thank you also Barbara.

Bonnie, “For a real life example of ‘Metamorphosis,’ watch ‘Servant of the People.’” Yeah, I’ve watched some of that on Netflix, with Zelenskyy in 2015. Yeah and the tirade of the history, he’s a high school, if I remember, high school history teacher in Zelensky’s TV series. And ‘cause of the corruption he becomes the president, yep. Absolutely inspiring. I think totally inspiring.

Q: Beverly, “Are you familiar with the current or past powerful satire directed at Putin?”

A: That’s a fantastic question. I don’t. I’m going to look at it. Thanks Beverly. Everyone, great. Caroline, thank you so much.

Q: Alan, “Are there any forthcoming American productions?”

A: Not that I know of. What’s interesting is that the plays are done more in darker times. That’s all I can say. Or more threatening times. So I’m sure there will be productions coming on fairly soon. Barbara, thank you.

Monty, “Madeleine Albright, when she became Secretary of State, was surprised she learned she was Jewish. Three of her grandparents died in the concentration camps.” Yes.

Q: What would Havel think of Zelenskyy?

A: I think Havel’s extraordinary ability, which is in a way not so dissimilar. Two things I can say at the moment with Zelenskyy is an understanding of the media and entertainment. Zelenskyy is brilliant with how he understands social media and how to speak to different audiences. I’m not talking about Israel, that’s separate. How to speak to the Congress, British Parliament, EU, elsewhere. And how to take pictures of him as an ordinary guy and using social media and technology today, get the images out A-S-A-P. I think he’s superb with that. And I think Havel was superb in his own way with an entertainer’s instinct, of get the word out through theatre and being a playwright. And knowing the extraordinarily huge influence that playwrights can actually have, if you like, in the soft power way, obviously not the hard power. I think that number one, and I think number two, an understanding of how language can be mobilised. A language can be mobilised to counter the lie and activate people and mostly activate their brain.

Q: Joanna, “I was introduced to Havel at the Prague castle. It was difficult to square the fact that he was a poet and playwright before being president. What skills did he have to lead a nation?”

A: I know that when he was elected, he changed all the costumes of the police and the guards of the palace, and the presidential and all the areas, and he brought in stage designer friends, and they created new costumes for the army, and the police, and the military, and the presidential guard, and all the rest of it. And apparently Zelenskyy has got his own production company buddies. One’s a speech writer who writes some of the TV series or used to, another one is a designer. Others… He’s got his TV people in there, I think, from what I’ve read anyway, of Zelenskyy. Havel did that. what skills did he have to lead a nation? I think he tried as much as possible, to tell things as they are. I think also the ability to understand mobilising, mass action, people collaborate, to theater’s fundamentally collaborative medium, although it’s tiny, with actors and others.

This would be another whole conversation which I’d need to think about. I don’t want to just give a good answer. I think it’s a profound question, but I think what he had done, was he built up an image of himself, which was helped by the writers, the playwrights from other parts of the world, to become the iconic figure that he did become. He understood how to use that connection through language and other writers.

Okay. Thank you so much everybody.