Embracing the Inexplicable, the 2021 Rehearsal for Truth Theater Festival
Bohemian Benevolent and Literary Association and the Vaclav Havel Library Foundation are pleased to present the 2021 Rehearsal for Truth Theater Festival as it returns to in-person format. The festival’s fourth edition offers to audiences a program of two full plays and three stage readings originating from Central Europe, the US, and South Africa. An online panel discussion provides a much-needed space for experts in performing arts to address the pressing matters of the industry’s future, and an award-winning documentary centers on the world of artistic dissent during late Communism in Czechoslovakia. The festival takes place from June 21 to June 30 at the Bohemian National Hall in New York City.
The 2021 Rehearsal for Truth Theater Festival introduces two works by young, aspiring playwrights, winners of the 2020 Best Mini-Drama Student Contest. Additionally, three special events will extend the live arts experiences to the entire community, with a marionette show for children, a folk music concert, and a preview of a kinetic and audiovisual installation.
Entitled “Embracing the Inexplicable,” the 2021 edition is truly special, conceived as an occasion for our international community of artists and audiences to reconvene in order to heal collectively and embrace the uncertainties amplified by the COVID-19 pandemic.
“We’re thrilled that the Rehearsal for Truth Theater Festival is back in person, after almost two years. We can’t wait to present live theater again. With health measures in place to ensure safety for everyone, we want the festival to bring community back, as collaborators of a kind, to share new experiences in the true sense of Vaclav Havel’s theater—as ‘a space for authentic human existence.’”
The program invites participants to reimagine the ordinary while collectively witnessing rich Central European performance traditions such as theater craft and music. Using marionettes, Czech & Slovak Tales with Strings takes the youngest on a journey through classic fables, while Eletfa plays a folk concert to honor the Hungarian heritage of Manhattan’s Yorkville neighborhood.
Concurrently, the festival encourages spectators to reconsider the current reality. Vaclav Havel’s iconic one-act play Audience returns to the stage this time in a marionette performance by the award-winning Czechoslovak-American Marionette Theatre. Lux Phantasmatis, a mesmerizing installation by Pavel Zustiak and Keith Skretch of the Palissimo Company, embodies a presence within absence, matter within a void. Exposing a void stands at the core of Megan Furniss’s The Tent, whereby members of a South African community become polarized when their tolerance is tested.
Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz’s iconic play The Madman and the Nun allegorizes a hopeless, unpredictable, and almost comically cruel world. Can one maintain some sense of dignity and sanity in a universe full of uncertainties? The Art of Dissent, a documentary featuring artists working to create a civic society in Communist Czechoslovakia, may offer clues for navigating the inexplicable.
All Rehearsal for Truth Theater Festival productions are free to the public. Online registration through Eventbrite is required. Due to COVID-19 restrictions for indoor events, seating capacity is limited. Reservations must be made in advance. No tickets will be available at the door, and anyone who has not received pre-event confirmation will be turned away.
More information: www.rehearsalfortruth.org.
REHEARSAL FOR TRUTH THEATER FESTIVAL
Rehearsal for Truth Theater Festival is organized each year in New York City by BBLA and the Vaclav Havel Library Foundation, in partnership with Czech, Hungarian, Polish, and Slovak performing arts organizations and cultural institutes. The series of events highlight the legacy of Vaclav Havel as a playwright through live performances, panel discussions, and exhibitions. One key objective is to establish exchanges between American and Central European theater professionals. The festival reflects Havel’s contribution to 20th-century theater as well as his belief in the potential of Central European cultural traditions to enrich human existence in the modern age. The festival is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council and Council Member Ben Kallos.