The 2025 festival of contemporary Central and Eastern European theater, entitled Perseverance, features work from Austria, Belarus, Bulgaria, Estonia, Czechia, Germany, Hungary, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, and Ukraine. We live in a difficult time, a time when war has returned to Eastern Europe, and democracies across the world are more at threat than they have been in decades. Vaclav Havel's once said that the answer lies "in the human heart,” and his example shows us how we can persevere through even the most trying of circumstances. The theater we present tackles that subject, using love and humor as two of our greatest tools, as we work to persevere.
The 2025 festival program includes theater, puppetry, clown, music, opera on film, a livestream from Salzburg, and more. For the first time we will have one show with multiple performances: the play Blood, Sweat, and Queers, a new play by Tomas Dianiska that was featured as a reading in last year’s festival. The play tells the true story of Zdenek Koubek, a Czech runner from the 1930s who won the world’s record in women’s track and then was one of the first people to transition to male. Blood, Sweat, and Queers is $20/ticket, and for all other programs we ask for a $15 donation if you can afford it ($10 for our film and livestream). It makes continuing our work possible.
2025 PROGRAM
Blood, Sweat, and Qeers (Czechia, USA)
Marketa Foukalova (Czechia)
The Decision (Bulgaria/USA)
King Stakh’s Wild Hunt (Belarus)
Connection (Belarus, Austria)
The Pit (Romania)
Show Trial (Slovakia)
Furiozo: Man Looking for Trouble (Poland)
Erben: Vlasy (Czechia)
The Amateurs (Slovakia)
Psyche (Hungary)
Kafka’s Ape (South Africa, Czechia, Austria)
The 2025 Rehearsal for Truth Theater Festival: Perseverance is a shared endeavor of the Václav Havel Center and the Bohemian Benevolent and Literary Association in partnership with numerous other cultural and performing arts organizations. The festival honors the artistic and political legacy of the Czech playwright/dissident/president Václav Havel. We support exchanges between American and European theater professionals and celebrate the power of the theater to transform our lives.
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 the New York State Council on the Arts.