Edward Einhorn Appointed New Artistic Director Of The Rehearsal For Truth Theater Festival

The Rehearsal for Truth Theater Festival honoring Václav Havel has announced that Edward Einhorn will be taking over the job of Artistic Director for its seventh season of work.

He will be replacing Pavla Niklova who founded the festival six years ago. She is now taking on the role of Executive Director of the Jewish Museum in Prague, the Czech Republic. 

This international festival is a joint venture of the Vaclav Havel Library Foundation and the Bohemian Benevolent and Literary Association, with the mission to connect Central European and American artists and to continue the artistic and political legacy of Havel. The sixth festival featured work from the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland, Romania, Germany, Russia, and the United States.

Edward Einhorn is a writer, director, and producer based in New York. He has been working with the festival since its foundation, and his history with the Bohemian National Hall spans back to its reopening in 2006, at which time he was running the Havel Festival. That festival presented the full works of Vaclav Havel, and Havel himself was in attendance. His theater company, Untitled Theater Company No. 61, has been doing work in New York for over 25 years, with an emphasis on Theater of the Absurd and plays that deal with political, philosophical, and scientific themes. He also published and edited a five-volume series of new translations of Havel's plays, through his theater company's Theater 61 Press. 

About the festival, Einhorn says: “Rehearsal for Truth is an important cultural event for New York, one of the few remaining ways New Yorkers can experience international theater work at this point, as so many other festivals have closed down since Covid. It is particularly meaningful to me that the festival is associated with Havel's legacy, as I think the moral issues he addressed in his theater and in his life are more important than ever. With the current conflict in Ukraine and the struggles of democracies worldwide, Eastern and Central Europe have once again become one of the focal points of the world. Havel has shown us how artists are an essential part of the struggle.”  

Next main festival will be in June 2024, and there will also be the Spring Stage Readings series in the months leading up to that festival.  
Photo: Pavla Niklova and Edward Einhorn, photo by Madeline Windland

Rehearsal for Truth Theater Festival is organized each year in New York City by the Vaclav Havel Library Foundation and the Bohemian Benevolent and Literary Association, in partnership with Czech, Hungarian, Polish, Romanian, and Slovak performing arts organizations and cultural institutes. The series of events highlight the legacy of Vaclav Havel as a playwright through live performances, panel discussions, exhibitions, and other events. One key objective is to establish exchanges between American and Central European theater professionals. The festival reflects Havel's contribution to 20th-Century Theater as well as his belief in the potential of Central European cultural traditions to enrich human existence in the modern age.  

 Vaclav Havel Library Foundation (VHLF) is a nonprofit organization established in the US in 2012 to honor, preserve and build upon the legacy of playwright, dissident and former President of Czechoslovakia and the Czech Republic, Vaclav Havel. VHLF promotes democratic freedoms, universal human rights, and the power of the arts to uplift and transform our lives in the spirit of Vaclav Havel. 

Bohemian Benevolent and Literary Association (BBLA) is a nonprofit organization established in 1891 in New York City as an umbrella entity for almost 80 Czech and Slovak immigrant organizations. The mission of BBLA is to preserve and support Czech and Slovak culture in New York City. BBLA's members include the American Fund for Czech and Slovak Leadership Studies, Association of Free Czechoslovak Sportsmen, Czech and Slovak Solidarity Council, Czechoslovak Society of Arts and Sciences, New York Chapter, Dvorak American Heritage Association, Sokol New York, Society for the History of Czechoslovak Jews, and Vaclav Havel Library Foundation. 

Václav Havel (1936-2011)   Vaclav Havel was a playwright, essayist, political dissident and, after 1989, president of Czechoslovakia and the Czech Republic. His first full-length play performed in public, The Garden Party (1963), won him international acclaim. Soon after its premiere came his well-known The Memorandum (1965) along with The Increased Difficulty of Concentration (1968). In 1968, The Memorandum was brought to The Public Theater in New York, which helped to establish Havel's name in the United States.

During the repressive period that followed the 1968 Prague Spring, Communist authorities forbade the publication and performance of Havel's works. Havel refused to be silenced and became an outspoken human rights advocate. He manifested his experience of working odd jobs into the so-called “Vaněk Trilogy” (named after Ferdinand Vaněk, a stand-in for Havel), and the three screenplays circulated in samizdat format throughout Czechoslovakia. Havel's reputation as a leading dissident crystalized in January 1977 with the publication of the Charter 77, a Czechoslovak manifesto that called on the government to honor its human rights commitments under the Helsinki Accords. Havel was arrested many times throughout the remainder of Communism for alleged anti-state activities and sentenced to more than four years in prison. His seminal essay, The Power of the Powerless (1978), had profound impact on dissident and human rights movements worldwide. 

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