Rehearsal for Truth 2025: Perseverance
Image: FURIOZO (Piotr Sikora)
Photo by Mattia Sedda
Our upcoming Rehearsal For Truth International Theater Festival (theme: Perseverance) will be May 26 - June 15 2025, with a reading series in April 14 - May 4 2025.
Rehearsal for Truth International Theater Festival is an annual showcase of contemporary Central and Eastern European theater, established in 2017. The festival 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.
This year’s reading series will run April 14 - May 4. The 2025 festival, entitled Perseverance, will run May 26 - June 14. Tickets and information for all the work is available on the website. This year’s festival, including the reading series, features work from Austria, Belarus, Estonia, Czechia, Germany, Hungary, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, South Africa, and Ukraine. Much of the work featured this year deals with the subject of how to survive difficult times, sometimes with art, sometimes with humor, but always with a search for what it right and moral. It is inspired, as always, by Havel’s life and art.
Most of our programs also include discussions with either the authors, experts on some of the subjects addressed, or both. We hope you can join.
WATCH ONLINE
A staged reading of four translations of Scene 8 in Vaclav Havel’s play, The Memo (also translated as The Memorandum). An examination of the nuances of translation. Directed by Edward Einhorn, Artistic Director, Rehearsal for Truth Theatre Festival. Performed by Stephanie Litchfield, Eric Oleson, Thomas Shuman.
The reading is followed by a discussion with the translators: - Jennifer Helinek, second-year student in the Master of Arts in Regional Studies - Russia, Eurasia and Eastern Europe (MARS-REERS) program at the Harriman Institute - Josef Nosal, a rising senior student of Radio, Television Dramaturgy and Screenwriting at JAMU and the winner of the Václav Havel Library Foundation’s mini-drama contest. - Lucas Schlesinger, third-year comparative literature major in Columbia College - Paul Wilson, one of Havel’s most prolific translators, having translated multiple plays, books, and essays. Music by William Niederkorn. Moderated by Chris Harwood, Columbia University.
This event is organized by the Vaclav Havel Library Foundation, along with The East Central European Center and the Harriman Institute (both of Columbia University), Untitled Theater Company No. 61, and the Czechoslovak Society of Arts and Sciences (SVU), New York Chapter. Supported by the Bohemian Benevolent and Literary Association.
REHEARSAL FOR TRUTH THEATER FESTIVAL honors Vaclav Havel, the playwright and human rights activist
