Václav Havel, The Vaněk Plays: Audience, Vernisáž (Unveiling), Protest

Mary Orsak (Yale University); Karen von Kunes (Yale University)

Ed. by Charles Sabatos, Yeditepe University
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.8.1: Czech and Slovak Writing and Culture.
Vol. editors: Charles Sabatos (Yeditepe University)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1976 - 1987

Places

Czech Republic (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Drama

Resources

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The trilogy of one-act plays by Václav Havel,

Audience

Vernisáž

[

Unveiling

] and

Protest

(the first two written in 1975 and the third in 1978), are often known as the Vaněk plays (“vaňkovky” in Czech) because they are connected through the character Ferdinand Vaněk, whose biography closely resembles the author’s: a former playwright prohibited from publicly staging his plays and resigned to working in a brewery. Havel initially wrote

Audience

and

Unveiling

to amuse his friends, but they were among his most successful both domestically and internationally. While the character of Vaněk links the trilogy into one series,

Protest

emerged from a radically different political reality in Czechoslovakia, with a dramatic increase of dissident activity in the later 1970s, in which…

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3723 words

Citation: Orsak, Mary, Karen von Kunes. "The Vaněk Plays: Audience, Vernisáž (Unveiling), Protest". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 30 August 2021 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=40572, accessed 26 April 2024.]

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