Thursday, January 23, 2014
Vaclav Havel’s Protest Tackles the Dangers of Conformity
HowlRound: Ambassador Theater, founded in Washington, DC five years ago to raise cultural awareness and open cultural dialogue on the international level, has brought to the stage an innovative production of Vaclav Havel’s Protest. The production is part of the Mutual Inspirations Festival, an annual Czech embassy sponsored exploration of the works of important Czech artists. Havel—a playwright and human rights advocate repeatedly jailed for dissent—was a pivotal force in Czechoslavakia’s Velvet Revolution and became the Czech Republic’s first president.
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This sounds like a really cool show. I wish it had given a slight recap of the other two shows in the trilogy so that people like me who are not familiar with the first two can still see the connection. It is really interesting to read this after the Japanese culture class I just had. The Japanese were raised to put the good of the group above the good of the individual, so many would not speak out even if they strongly disagreed with something. The Czech people that this play seems to be representing might have been raised the same way at the base of things. They are reluctant, but it seems to be a bit more than just that they don't want to get in trouble because they had been trying to get the kid out of jail. By not signing the petition as individuals and using their government positions instead, they were just going with the majority. This is a real thing that people are trained to think about.
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