3 VANK PLAYS: Audience, Unveiling, and Protest by Vclav Havel May 1, 2008

Eastenders Repertory Company

3 VANK PLAYS: Audience, Unveiling, and Protest by Vclav Havel (tr. Jan Novak, Vera Blackwell)

DATES: Thursdays and Saturdays, May 1 & 3; May 15 & 17 @ 8pm (No performances on Fridays) Sundays, May 4 & 18 @ 2pm and 7pm

VENUE: Jewish Community Center of the East Bay (1414 Walnut Street, Berkeley)

BOX OFFICE: (800) 838-3006 and jcceastbay.org

Special Program in Conjunction with 3 VANK PLAYS: Audience, Unveiling, and Protest
Unveiling by Vclav Havel plus a staged reading of Morass, a Vank play by Pavel Kohout.
The performance will be followed by a moderated discussion about the art of dissent: the role, ethical responsibilities and freedoms of the artist in a political context.
DATES: Monday and Wednesday, May 5 & 7 @ 8pm
VENUE: Jewish Community Center of the East Bay (1414 Walnut Street, Berkeley)
TICKETS: $20 general admission; $15 tickets available for students/seniors and members of the JCC, KQED, KTEH, TBA; group rates available
BOX OFFICE: (800) 838-3006 and jcceastbay.org
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Eastenders Repertory Company premieres three absurdist comedies written by human rights champion and former president of the Czech Republic, Vclav Havel.

3 VANK PLAYS: Audience, Unveiling, and Protest are Kafkaesque morality plays written in absurdist comic style are about the fictional dissident playwright Ferdinand Vank. The plays deal with issues of identity and friendship, betrayal, moral choices and living in truth. Created as it was in the repressed political climate of post-Dubek and pre-Velvet Revolution Czechoslovakia, the trilogy (Audience, Unveiling and Protest) intently focuses on the dehumanization of the totalitarian system and the limitations of artistic freedom.

Vclav Havel originally wrote Audience in 1975 to entertain a small gathering of his writer-friends, all of whom had similarly had their work banned in their native countries. After Audiences unexpected success (and despite being suppressed in Czechoslovakia), Havel wrote another Vank play the same year, Unveiling, with the same fictional protagonist, a dissident playwright named Ferdinand Vank. Three years later, in 1978, the third Vank play, Protest followed. The Vank plays have since been produced more often and in more countries than any other of Havels plays.

3 VANK PLAYS: Audience, Unveiling, and Protest is directed by Artistic Director Susan E. Evans and Gina Baleria. The production features Craig Souza as Vank, with Craig Dickerson, Amanda Krampf, Wylie Herman and Jeff Thompson.

Event submitted by Eventful.com on behalf of NEQA.