Havel, Václav

Havel, Václav (1936– ), Czech dramatist, influenced by Kafka, who worked as a stagehand and lighting technician before turning to writing. His most famous play The Memorandum (1965; NY, 1968; London, 1977), a satire on bureaucracy and Big Brother, shares a common theme with Garden Party (1963) and The Increased Difficulty of Concentration (1968; London, 1978). Other works included three short plays, Audience (Interview in New York), A Private View, and Protest (1975; NY, 1983; London, 1989); they are known as The Vanek Plays after an almost silent playwright character who appears in them. In Largo Desolato (1984; NY, 1986; London, 1987), a distinguished academic author is reduced to impotent despair by political pressure; the translation used in London was by Stoppard. Temptation (1985; RSC, 1987) was another attack on political repression, in the form of a Faustian allegory. Havel was imprisoned several times because of the political content of his plays and other writings. Even when nominally free he was under constant surveillance and his plays were banned in Czechoslovakia from 1968. His long record of protest against the Communist regime led to his being elected President after its overthrow in 1989.