Rehearsal for Truth International Theater Festival Unveils 2025 Edition, PERSEVERANCE

The Rehearsal for Truth International Theater Festival has revealed programming for its 2025 edition, Perseverance. Running May 26 – June 15, 2025, the festival is an annual showcase of contemporary Central and Eastern European Theater. All performances are free and take place at the Bohemian National Hall.

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. The festival supports exchanges between American and European theater professionals and celebrates the power of the theater to transform lives.

The 2025 edition of the festival, Perseverance, including the May reading series, features work from Austria, Belarus, Estonia, Czechia, Germany, Hungary, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, South Africa, and Ukraine. 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.
The centerpiece of Rehearsal for Truth 2025: Perseverance is the U.S. premiere of Blood, Sweat, and Queers starring Hennessy Winkler, who made his Broadway debut in the 2023 revival of Sweeney Todd directed by Thomas Kail. Written by Tomas Dianiška and directed by Rehearsal for Truth’s Artistic Director Edward Einhorn, Blood, Sweat, and Queers centers on celebrated Czech athlete Zdeněk Koubek (1913-1986), played by Winkler, who held several world records in track until he transitioned to male. This premiere runs for the duration of the festival, May 26 - June 15, with seven performances. Blood, Sweat, and Queers was named best Czech play of the year at the 2019 Czech Theatre Critics’ Awards.
Additional highlights of the festival include King Stakh’s Wild Hunt, an opera on film from the Olivier Award-nominated Belarus Free Theatre, Furiozo: Man Looking for Trouble, which The Telegraph (UK) called “a reminder that laughter transcends language-barriers,” and Kafka’s Ape, which won the Outstanding Performance Award at Prague Fringe Festival 2019, Best Satire Award at New York’s United Solo Festival 2019, and the Graham F Smith Peace Foundation Award at the Adelaide Fringe Festival 2021.

Rehearsal for Truth’s Artistic Director Edward Einhorn states, “Rehearsal for Truth is a rare opportunity to hear artistic voices from Central and Eastern Europe. The theme of the 2025 edition is Perseverance. The worldwide turn towards autocracy and war is both current and historically familiar for the artists from this region, and their responses have a deep resonance now for Americans, as we experience our own crises. My hope is that the work presented in the festival can connect our experiences and help us guide us as we all try to persevere through difficult times.”

Tickets to all programs are free with a suggested donation of $10 per person. All performances, unless otherwise noted, take place at the Bohemian National Hall (321 E. 73rd Street, Manhattan). The festival runs May 26 – June 15, 2025, with performances at various times and days. 

Rehearsal for Truth 2025: Perseverance Schedule

May 26, 30, 31 at 7 PM; June 3, 9, 14 at 7 PM; June 15 at 5 PM

Blood, Sweat, and Queers (Czechia/USA) Theater
By Tomas Dianiška
Translated by Edward Einhorn and Katarina Vizina
Directed by Edward Einhorn
A new Czech drama inspired by the life of the successful athlete Zdeněk Koubek(1913-1986), celebrated in the sports world of the time as a “wonder woman” and holding several world records in track until he transitioned to male. Together with the main character’s life story, Dianiška’s play also describes the increasing fascism of the 1930s, permeated by homophobia, transphobia and gender stereotypes. One of the most successful plays in contemporary Czech drama, told in absurdist style, it uncovers a deliberately buried story from a century ago with obvious implications for the current day.
Blood, Sweat, and Queers was named best Czech play of the year at the 2019 Czech Theatre Critics’ Awards.

The cast includes Craig Anderson, Herschel Blatt, Jean Marie Keevins, Alyssa Simon, Katarina Vizina, and Hennessy Winkler.

May 27 at 7 PM

Marketa Foukalova (Czechia) Live Music & Poetry
Poems by Jan Zábrana
Music by Martin Brunner
The world premiere of Jan Zábrana's poems set to music by award-winning composer and pianist Martin Brunner. He will be accompanied by Markéta Foukalová, former singer of Hudba Praha and Jasná Páky (now Lanugo). Markéta and Martin will perform, in addition to Zábran's poetry, songs from the repertoire of Havel's beloved Hudba Praha arranged for piano and voice to mark the anniversary of Václav Havel's death. In the second half of the evening, the pair would present songs from their album Svou Moment. Performed in Czech and English.
 

May 29 at 7 PM

The Decision (Bulgaria/USA) Theater
Created By Alexander Manuiloff
Three actors receive a script they have never seen before, piece by piece. A situation and design for a theatre evening, that discusses the questions of democracy, the potential for solidarity and participation in increasingly isolated and disconnected societies. The audience moves back and forth from side to side of the room, depending on their opinions of the decisions the audience makes.  Discussion with the author after.
  

June 1 at 2 PM

King Stakh’s Wild Hunt (Belarus) Opera on Film
Belarus Free Theatre
From the book by Uladzimir Karatkievich
Director, Dramaturgy and Original Text Adaptation Nicolai Khalezin
Music by Olga Podgaiskaya
Director Natalia Kaliada
A thrilling gothic noir from one of the world’s bravest theatre companies based on the celebrated novel. Featuring acclaimed actors, opera singers and musicians from Belarus and Ukraine. Inspired by Eastern European folklore, it follows the ghostly hunt to free a young heiress from an evil curse.
 

June 1 at 5 PM

Connection (Belarus, Austria) Livestream Theater
Created and performed by Maryna Yakubovich
A solo performance performed live in Salzburg and broadcast to the theater. Based on the true stories and letters of Belarusian female political prisoners. This play is about freedom and imprisonment, decisions and consequences, guilt and responsibility, strength and weakness. It is a piece about the lack of connection with political prisoners. About the author's connection to her country and connection between European democracy and Belarusian dictatorship. A live discussion and reception will follow.

June 4 at 7 PM

The Pit (Romania) Theater
By Matei Visneic
Two men are trapped in a pit, facing guilt, fear, and the threat of snakes. A third man offers them a chance at freedom. Will they take it or stay where they are? An exploration of the dangers of fascism, groupthink, and the dehumanizing forces at play in today’s world

June 6 at 7pm

Show Trial (Slovakia/USA) Theater
By Laura Zlatos
Directed by Tom Costello
Charged with high treason, Czech resistance leader Milada Horáková stands trial against the communist regime in one of the largest sham trials in Eastern Europe. An absurdist interpretation of the era’s ruthless propaganda machine, Show Trial satirizes Stalinist sham trials using real court transcripts translated into English for the first time. Show Trial exposes the farcical nature of authoritarian justice, proving that whoever controls history, creates it.
 

June 7 at 7 PM

Furiozo: Man Looking for Trouble (Poland) Theater
Created by Piotr Sikora
Police chases, petty theft, drugs and longing for the greatest thrill of all: true love. A disturbing yet absurdly funny portrait of toxic masculinity.  You will love him. You will hate him. You will experience the presence of the beast. As Furiozo would say: Live fast; Die.
 

June 8 at 5 PM & 7 PM

Erben: Vlasy (Czech Republic) Puppet Theater
Hura Collective
Directing, set, puppets, music: Hza Bažant
Dramaturgy: Leona Bažant Telínová
Cast: Hza Bažant and Leona Bažant Telínová
A visual puppet theatre production from a series of dark adaptations of K. J. Erben’s fairy tales Hair - Eyes - Death. A king who really liked to chase game. After a series of evil deeds, he longed to chase the game forever. Shadows, live sounds on quills and chimes in the tradition of family puppet theaters. 
 

June 11 at 7 PM

The Amateurs (Slovakia) Theater
By Lenka Garajová
Directed by Šimon Ferstl
Presented by Divadlo DPM
After the strange era of climate crisis, social inequalities, and daily burnout, a time of constant bliss arrives. No more crises, no responsibilities, no inequality, and money is available on demand. Your only task is to survive this endless vacation. Everything else is taken care of by artificial intelligence. Welcome to 2164. Welcome to the Novacene, where people are pampered pets like precious plants in a botanical garden. Performed in Slovak with English subtitles.
 

June 12 at 7 PM & 9PM (Performed in English)
June 13 at 7 PM (Performed in Hungarian) 

Psyche (Hungary) Theater
From the poems by Sándor Weöres
Translated by David Cseh
Directed by Mark Tarnoki
**Performed at the Hungarian House (213 E. 82nd St, Manhattan)**
In Psyche, a Romani countess and poet, wanders across Europe during the Napoleonic era in a chauvinistic society that challenges her independence. The first English translation of a one-woman show performed by Stella Abel and adapted from the Hungarian book Psyche: Writings of an Erstwhile Poetess by Sándor Weöres. 
 

June 13 at 7pm