A played titled Audience, written by former Czech Republic leader Vaclav Havel, opens to the public at Theatre in the Park today.
Report by Silence Charumbira
The play follows another Havel masterpiece Protest which was staged at the same venue recently.
Audience first premiered at Alliance Francaise on November 13 and comes to Theatre in the Park courtesy of the Embassy of the Czech Republic and Complete Arts.
Written in 1978, Audience deals with the travails of Ferdinand Vanek who has previously been jailed for anti-government activities.
Circumstances force Vanek to take a menial job at a brewery.
The play is an absurd drama depicting a long meeting between Vanek, an intellectual and playwright fallen from grace and living under state surveillance, and his manager.
The tedious bureaucracy and constant paranoia of life under the communists have driven the manager to alcoholism and to the brink of insanity.
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He is prone to bouts of rage and despair.
In a bleakly humorous half-hour, reminiscent of the work of Samuel Beckett, Havel uses endless repetition of dialogue and action in order to portray a situation in which Czech people were forced to live in. However, he does provide a small glimmer of hope. Vanek refuses to compromise his principles and sell-out his colleagues despite the promise of promotion. Audience is the first play of the famous trilogy by Havel. Havel became an icon of the fight of Czechs and Slovaks against the oppressive political regime of the then Czechoslovakia. In consequence, Havel spent years in prison to later remerge as a leader of a broad popular movement which brought the communist regime down in 1989 and finally became President of the freed country. The play features Charles Mucheriwa and Tafadzwa Hanandah and was directed by Susan Haines. It will run until December 8.
