REHEARSAL FOR TRUTH INTERNATIONAL THEATER FESTIVAL to Return for 10th Edition

The Rehearsal for Truth International Theater Festival, honoring Vaclav Havel, has announced programming for its 2026 edition, Perseverance. Running June 16 – 27 2026, the festival is an annual showcase of contemporary Central and Eastern European Theater. This is the 10th edition of the festival, and it also marks what would have been Vaclav Havel's 90th birthday (in October 2026). All performances are free and take place at the Bohemian National Hall (321 E. 73rd Street, Manhattan), unless otherwise noted. 

Established in 2017, the Rehearsal for Truth International Theater Festival honors the artistic and political legacy of the Czech playwright, dissident, and President Václav Havel. It 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. This year, Untitled Theater Company No. 61 also joins as a co-producer. The festival supports exchanges between American and European theater professionals and celebrates the power of the theater to transform lives.

The 2026 edition of the festival, Hope, features work from Austria, Bulgaria, Czechia, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan. Much of the work deals with the subject of how to survive difficult times, sometimes with art, sometimes with humor, but always with a search for what is right and moral. It is inspired, as always, by Havel's life and art.

Some of the highlights of Rehearsal for Truth 2026: Hope include a production from Divadlo Na zábradlí, Havel's original home theater. They are bringing an adaptation of the Patrik Ouřednik book Europeana, a comic representation of Europe's 20th Century history. Also from Czechia is A Girl on a Trampoline, from Švandovo divadlo, a play about the publishing house that published Czech dissident writers during the Soviet years.

Additional highlights of the festival include If I had a Gun, I'd Take Them All Down, a Ukrainian play by Piotr Armianovski about the 1911 assassination of Russian Prime Minister Pyotr Stolypin, adapted by Polish creators Paul Bargetto and Michael Rubenfeld; and Portal, a new experimental play by Slovak writer/director Dodo Gombar performed by New York performers.

This year uses the Havel quote from Disturbing the Peace as an inspiration: “The kind of hope I often think about (especially in situations that are particularly hopeless, such as prison) I understand above all as a state of mind, not a state of the world. Either we have hope within us or we don't; it's a dimension of the soul; it's not essentially dependent on some particular observation of the world or estimate of the situation. Hope is not prognostication. It is an orientation of the spirit, an orientation of the heart; it transcends the world that is immediately experienced, and is anchored somewhere beyond its horizons. Hope, in this deep and powerful sense, is not the same as joy that things are going well, or willingness to invest in enterprises that are obviously headed for early success, but rather an ability to work for something because it is good, not just because it stands a chance to succeed.”