Václav Havel: Audience

Beer dictates the tempo and rhythm of Audience (1975). The more the play’s key character, a brew master, delves into beer, the more insistent is a question in his mind: Why couldn’t Ferdinand Vaněk write a denunciation of himself instead? Who else would know what they wish to know about him? It was enough to take inspiration from everyday “normalized” life and a successful Havel play was born.

The banned writer Ferdinand Vaněk has been roaming Czech and international stages for almost 50 years. What is the intellectual’s mission? Where is the limit of principles? And once one has got involved, when is it worth it and when not? Václav Havel doesn’t answer these questions. He does not even give hints. He provokes, inspires, appeals...

“If you make the brew master a drunk, then the play’s over. For me keeping the characters alive and not turning them into buffoons is the most important thing. There are loads of situations in Havel that are timeless and still topical today. It’s enough to stick to the text. It’s always a matter of the eternal problems of people who are unsure of what’s around them and of themselves,” said Andrej Krob in a 2011 interview for Respekt.

This production by Divadlo na tahu, which has been specializing in Václav Havel for 45 years, is directed by Andrej Krob and features Karel Beseda and Radek Bár.