tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6542596610865219081.post6165644409129727264..comments2020-04-24T06:55:50.195-07:00Comments on Theater of Ideas: Remembrances of Václav HavelTheater of Ideashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10124743041051665112noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6542596610865219081.post-61608295998877270722011-12-20T10:12:11.830-08:002011-12-20T10:12:11.830-08:00I too was lucky to have a small part in one of the...I too was lucky to have a small part in one of the shows in the festival, as an actor. Havel didn't come to see it, but I did sit across from him at another play, in which the audience were all seated on the stage around the playing area, in a circle. I watched him during the show and kept thinking, what would he have thought if 25 years ago, sitting in prison, he could have imagined this scene at the Brick Theater? Drinking a beer, watching some young Americans revive his entire body of work. He really looked like he was enjoying himself immensely.<br /><br />After the show I went up to him and he greeted me warmly. I said a few words to him in the little Czech I had picked up on a theater tour in 1999, which got his hopes up, but he was clearly disappointed when I turned out not to speak the language at all. <br /><br />He graciously signed my script, though. I still have it somewhere, along with my fond memories of Havel.Richard Harringtonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16606284566156335218noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6542596610865219081.post-61612167105064591802011-12-18T15:46:33.837-08:002011-12-18T15:46:33.837-08:00Thanks to Edward Einhorn and Untitled Theater Comp...Thanks to Edward Einhorn and Untitled Theater Company #61, many actors, directors and theater artists who worked on the Havel Festival shared in the good fortune of meeting Vaclav Havel. It was especially lucky for me that Edward asked me to be the festival's composer and music director. I had long admired Havel's work, having seen many productions over the years, Richard Foreman's brilliant "Largo Desolato" and Kevin O'Connor's definitive enactment of the role of the brewmaster in "Audience" being among the standouts. To participate in a festival of productions of all of Havel's work was an undreamed of dream come true. <br /><br />From the start we knew Havel would be in New York during the festival, for the Columbia residency, but it was not clear that he would have time to see any of the plays. Everything changed when he attended a performance of "The Memo" and saw what a serious effort and high artistic aims were being brought to his work. Then nothing could keep Havel away, and he came to one production after another, watching with obvious delight a majority of the 18 plays in the festival and staying around afterward to meet the artists, sign actors' scripts and festival programs with his heart signature, and appear in photos with casts and crews.<br /><br />There are moments that I will never forget, like seeing his obvious pleasure at hearing the rock album of "Songs for Vaclav Havel" I wrote for the festival, performed by the Mendoza Line, and getting to meet Madeleine Albright and give her a CD of the music after a performance of "Temptation," directed by Ian Hill at the Brick, after which Havel was heard saying to his wife, the actress Dagmar Veskrnova, words to the effect that this was a better production than the original in Prague. <br /><br />Other great moments were my introducing Havel to the underground playwright Jim Neu and the lighting designer Carol Mullins after a performance of True Comedy Theater Company's staging of "The Increased Difficulty of Concentration," directed by Yolanda Hawkins, and drinking beer and chatting with him at Joe's Pub, answering his question about the impeachment of President Bill Clinton by explaining how the Republicans had embarrassed the country with that hypocritical and sanctimonious travesty.<br /><br />A year later, when we took our production of "Increased Difficulty" to Baltimore's Theatre Project and it was named the best stage play of the year by Baltimore's City Paper, it was very gratifying to read in the Czech press Havel's characteristically modest reaction to that development. <br /><br />What a heady time the Havel Festival was for all of us, and how fortunate we all were to have had that time with Havel. It has been and continues to provide a tremendous inspiration and to instill a great sense of responsibility to try to live up to, in any small way, the standards that Havel set as a person, as a citizen, and as an artist.William S. Niederkornhttp://www.truecomedy.org/Songs.htmnoreply@blogger.com