[In the following essay, Day reports on the cultural battles being fought on the Czech stage by numerous “silenced” authors, including—through a stage production of I Served the King of England—Hrabal.]

‘Absurdistan’ is the name many Czechs give to their own country today. For years it has been commonplace to say that the Theatre of the Absurd we know in the West is in Eastern Europe a depiction of everyday life; in Prague nowadays, a fresh layer of dramatic irony is unfolded at every première.

In early spring, the Czech authorities sentenced to prison their most famous playwright, Václav Havel, for the crime of laying flowers on a memorial. Then, for the first time for 20 years, a small but stubborn nucleus of theatre performers was joined by two to three thousand colleagues—actors, directors, stage managers—who were prepared to risk their careers by signing a petition on Havel's behalf. Leading the appeal were actors from Havel's former company, the Theatre on the Balustrade; since then, it is said, they have not been allowed to appear on radio or television, and their work cannot be reviewed in the press.

If this rumour is true, then reviews of one of the most powerful productions to be seen in Prague will be delayed. Jan Grossman's production of Molière's Don Juan opened at the Theatre on the Balustrade on 29 May. (Grossman was head of the Balustrade drama company in the Sixties, when he popularised Havel's plays, as well as directing The Trial and Ubu roi, seen in London's World Theatre seasons; after that, he was sentenced to provincial exile.) Grossman first directed Don Juan in 1981, whilst still in exile in Hradec Králové; this production is fiercer and more pointed in the intensity of its thrusts. The setting, a vast and hollow monument, vandalised and insecure, is grossly large for the small stage. The characters balance dangerously on the edge of precipitous steps; no one, as Don Juan bleakly realises, believes in the Omnipotent in whose honour the monument was erected. Jiří Bartoška as Juan delivers his speech on hypocrisy on a breath as sharp as a dagger; it is interrupted by bursts of applause from the audience. At the first night, a leading Party official was heard to say that more such productions are needed in the country.

Another dramatic irony is encountered across town in the Vinohrady Theatre, where, on 22 June, The Voices of Birds by Josef Topol was given its première. Topol's plays have not been staged for nearly 20 years, although many people believe that Otomar Krejča's National Theatre production of The End of the Carnival was the most important theatre event of the Sixties. The young theatre reformers succeeded in bringing about a revival of The End of the Carnival last January in the provincial town of Cheb; and now Jiřina Švorcová herself, the President of the Union of Dramatic Artists, is playing a leading role in The Voices of Birds.

Despite the fervour of the first-night audience, the production is not entirely a success. The Vinohrady Theatre is a large and prestigious stage, and The Voices of Birds sits uneasily on it. It is a subtle and poetic play, not suited to the strong and positive delivery which is the house style of this theatre. The director, Jan Kačer, has invented some well-timed comic moments, and the scenery goes up and down admirably; but the play, an examination of the continuity of a man's life and of the legacy of his work, needs a production which would allow the images gradually to take shape through dialogue and soliloquy.

In the centre of Prague, close to Wenceslas Square, another irony is being enacted at the Činoherní Klub. In 1971, Czechoslovakia's most popular writer, Bohumil Hrabal, wrote a racy novel called I Served the King of England. The publishing houses turned it down for political reasons. In 1983, the semi-independent Jazz Section published the novel for its own members—for this, and other ‘misdemeanours’, the organisation was banned and its committee imprisoned. The novel has still not been re-published in Czechoslovakia; but last year, the Theatre on a String in Brno performed a dramatised version, and last May the dramatisation opened in Prague. I Served the King of England is the story of Jan Dítě, a waiter who lives through the First Republic, with its memories of Austro-Hungarian magnificence, and through the bleak years of the Protectorate; who becomes a millionaire with a hotel of his own, and then, after the Communist takeover, a road-mender and philosopher. Three Rudolph Hrušinkýs—father, son and grandson—play Jan Dítě, and ensure a popular success (the Činoherní Klub seats about 240; on the night I was there, the audience was over 300).

At the other end of the country, in Slovakia's capital Bratislava, Joan Baez confounded the authorities by inviting the dissident singer Hoffman to join her onstage, in front of an audience of over 2,000 (including several hundred secret police). The plugs were pulled on the sound system, whilst one official exclaimed: ‘This is not Hungary!’—a remark eagerly seized on by headline writers in Budapest.

In theatres and concert halls, the cultural war is being fought with energy and humour; but also with a knowledge of the brutality and provocation with which peaceful demonstrations, such as those last January, can be met. And whilst the atmosphere is fizzing in Prague (one of the most recent groups is the splendidly named Society for a Jollier Today), provincial audiences are being influenced by television programmes which depict Prague as a Babylon inhabited by punks, Chartists and foreigners. On a warm, sleepy afternoon in June, Václav Havel was surprised to find himself the centre of attention at a theatre seminar held in one of Prague's most ‘official’ bookshops; but there was only a handful of the public to question him, compared with the millions who see on television how the police are beaten up by the brutal dissidents.

Dramatic events are also taking place off-stage, where, in the theatre section of the Union of Dramatic Artists, a palace revolution has taken place. Following a secret ballot (for the first time), half a dozen of the most energetic theatre reformers have been elected to the committee. They include directors and dramaturgs who for the last two years have been trying to include in the repertoire plays not only by Topol, but also by Milan Uhde, František Pavlíček, Ivan Klíma, and Václav Havel. They believe that this year they have succeeded. Plays by these ‘silenced’ authors are scheduled for autumn premières. But no one yet knows whether the tragicomedy they are watching has a happy ending or a twist in the tale.