The Vaněk plays are a set of plays in which the character Ferdinand Vaněk is central. Vaněk first appeared in the play ''Audience'' by

Václav Havel Václav Havel (; 5 October 193618 December 2011) was a Czech statesman, author, poet, playwright, and dissident. Havel served as the last List of presidents of Czechoslovakia, president of Czechoslovakia from 1989 until 1992, prior to the dissol ...

. He subsequently appeared in three other plays by Havel (''Protest'', ''Unveiling'', and ''Dozens of Cousins''), as well as plays by his friends and colleagues, including

Pavel Landovský Pavel Landovský (11 September 1936 – 10 October 2014), nicknamed Lanďák, was a Czech actor, playwright, and director. He was a prominent dissident under the communist regime of former Czechoslovakia. Biography Landovský was born in Hav ...

and

Tom Stoppard Sir Tom Stoppard (; born , 3 July 1937) is a Czech-born British playwright and screenwriter. He has written for film, radio, stage, and television, finding prominence with plays. His work covers the themes of human rights, censorship, and politi ...

. Today, the Vaněk plays are among Havel's best-known works. In English, they are principally known through the translations of Marketa Goetz-Stankiewicz.

Origins

Ferdinand Vaněk first appeared in the play ''Audience'' in 1975 as a stand-in for Havel. Vaněk, like Havel, was a dissident playwright, forced to work in a brewery because his writing has been banned by the

Czechoslovak Czechoslovak may refer to: *A demonym or adjective pertaining to Czechoslovakia (1918–93) **First Czechoslovak Republic (1918–38) **Second Czechoslovak Republic (1938–39) **Third Czechoslovak Republic (1948–60) ** Fourth Czechoslovak Repu ...

Communist regime. In the course of the play, it becomes clear that the brewmaster has been asked to spy on him. A long, rambling, comic dialogue proceeds, in the course of which the brewmaster eventually becomes a sympathetic figure, rather than a villain. Since Havel's work was banned, the play was not performed in any theater. Instead, it was performed in living rooms and distributed as

samizdat Samizdat (, , ) was a form of dissident activity across the Eastern Bloc in which individuals reproduced censored and underground makeshift publications, often by hand, and passed the documents from reader to reader. The practice of manual rep ...

. However, the work became quite well known in the Czech Republic, in part because of a widely circulated radio production of ''Audience.'' Subsequent to 'Audience', Havel used Vaněk in the plays ''Unveiling'', a comic one-act about a couple who desperately want Vaněk to absolve them for their collaborative relationship with the Communist regime, and ''Protest'', in which Vaněk tries to convince an old colleague to sign a protest letter.

Further Vaněk plays

Havel's Czech friends Pavel Landovský,

Pavel Kohout Pavel Kohout (born 20 July 1928) is a Czech and Austrian novelist, playwright, and poet. He was a member of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, a Prague Spring participant and dissident in the 1970s until he was not allowed to return from A ...

, and

Jiří Dienstbier Jiří Dienstbier (20 April 1937 – 8 January 2011) was a Czech politician and journalist. Biography Born in Kladno, he was one of Czechoslovakia's most respected foreign correspondents before being fired after the Prague Spring. Unable to hav ...

all wrote subsequent plays starring Vaněk, and the character became a national symbol.Goetz-Stankiewicz, Markéta. ''The Vaněk Plays'', University of British Columbia Press, 1987. Subsequent plays by other authors have also featured Vaněk, such as

's play ''

Rock 'n' Roll Rock and roll (often written as rock & roll, rock-n-roll, and rock 'n' roll) is a Genre (music), genre of popular music that evolved in the United States during the late 1940s and early 1950s. It Origins of rock and roll, originated from African ...

'', which addressed the importance of music in Czechoslovakia, and

Edward Einhorn Edward Einhorn (born September 6, 1970) is an American playwright, theater director, and novelist. Early life, education and career A native of Westfield, New Jersey, Einhorn graduated from Westfield High School, where he was an editor of the ...

's ''The Velvet Oratorio'', which imagined Vaněk during the Velvet Revolution. Havel himself wrote a short modern sequel to ''Unveiling'' entitled ''Dozens of Cousins'' in 2010.

References

External links

The Vaněk Plays
from Theater 61 Press {{DEFAULTSORT:Vanek plays Plays by Václav Havel