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Czech Plays: Modern Czech Drama
With the emergence of a dissident playwright as the President of Czechoslovakia in 1989, the Czech tradition by which theatre mirrors political life came full circle. Ranging back over the three decades preceding the Velvet Revolution, these four plays show modern Czech writers skilfully commenting on current realities through historical and domestic themes. Published here for the first time in English, Vaclav Havel's Tomorrow!, written anonymously in 1988, is a historical comedy about the founding of the Czechoslovak Republic. Games by novelist Ivan Klima shows a house party going badly wrong as old guilts break the surface. In Joseph Topol's Cat on the Rails two lovers wait for a train that never comes. And Dog and Wolf by the leading woman playwright Daniela Fischerova takes Francois Villon as exemplar of the clash between artist and society.
256 pages, Paperback
First published March 1, 2000
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May 25, 2025
Vaclav Havel's Tomorrow!: This is an extremely interesting history play from the man who, just a couple years after its premier would lead the Velvet Revolution to overthrow the Communist government in Czechoslovakia. The play is about Alois Rasin (primarily) and the 1918 revolution that saw Czechoslovakia declare independence from Austria-Hungary, so there's an obvious historical parallel between Rasin's role in 1918 and Havel's in 1989, though even in 88 Havel was likely thinking about the collapse of communist power.
But the other really interesting thing for me is that this play is a great example of historiographic metatheatre, which is a type of history play that interrogates itself as a historical narrative being embodied before the audience. I find this genre especially fascinating. In the case of Tomorrow!, this historiographic metatheatre is especially Brechtian, because there are several actors who overtly provide historical explanation, commentary, discussion of the historical record and debates, and distinctions between portions of the play based in historical records versus what Havel has imagined. This play with history and how we know/tell history is especially interesting when thinking about a revolution--and even more so when thinking about how a revolutionary views a revolution. Revolutions are, by their nature, messy and contentious, and this play highlights the difficulties of understanding such a situation with any degree of clarity. Though it's interesting that, whatever other questions or ambiguities the play addresses, Havel never raises the question of whether the revolution should have happened--that is universally accepted in Tomorrow!
https://youtu.be/kZrhZjzUqVw
Ivan Klima's Games: This play is somewhat disjointed, both in its overall structure and within the individual conversations--though as is often the case, I'm not sure whether this is a genuine result of Klima's style or a problem introduced through the translation. The play is about a group of people brought together for a games night, who end up trying to discern the difference between play and reality, which is especially murky as the games go from relatively banal (e.g., putting on blindfolds and trying to guess the ingredients in a dish by taste) to much more serious. There are games involving loaded guns (which the hosts keep on the walls), pretending to commit murders, pretending to hijack a plane for revolutionary violence, a faux murder trial, and a faux execution. The games increasingly dissolve the boundary between reality and fantasy through the mechanism of play--and this, of course, raises interesting questions about the nature of theatre, though Klima's script doesn't make overt reference to this link. But by virtue of seeing a "play" about playing games inherently challenges the nature of reality, because we're watching people pretend to be hijackers, witnesses, condemned criminals, etc. but we're also watching actors pretending to be the people pretending to be those things. We're watching actors playing at being guests playing games. And this draws our attention to the constructed nature of theatre itself.
https://youtu.be/r_CZpYNuvA0
Joseph Topol's Cat on the Rails: I'm not really sure what this play is about. It follows a young couple waiting at a whistlestop train station for a train to arrive, and they chat about various things, often disjointed, confused, or metaphysical type things. I'm not sure what the thematic focus is, apart from just depicting their somewhat rocky relationship--though I don't know why we're supposed to care about them or their relationship.
https://youtu.be/nQJZCToK_nQ
Daniela Fischerova's Dog and Wolf: Somewhat like Tomorrow!, this is a history play interested in how meaning is made in history and the difficulties of knowing the truth apart from the stories we want to tell about the past. The story is an extremely stylized exploration of the trials of Villon, a 15th century French poet and criminal, who is alternatively described as a heroic opponent of an oppressive and exploitative feudal system or as a thug and common criminal. Fischerova's play stages fragmented portions of Villon's trials, but often the debates are not about evidence but about whether or not we can really know the events of the past--a past simultaneously viewed from the 15th and 20th centuries. Some of the characters speak from the perspective of Villon's contemporaries, and some from the perspective of modern people looking back--but none of the characters find any contradiction in this or is ever confused by the disconnect.
https://youtu.be/YfbJ1bWeNBQ
But the other really interesting thing for me is that this play is a great example of historiographic metatheatre, which is a type of history play that interrogates itself as a historical narrative being embodied before the audience. I find this genre especially fascinating. In the case of Tomorrow!, this historiographic metatheatre is especially Brechtian, because there are several actors who overtly provide historical explanation, commentary, discussion of the historical record and debates, and distinctions between portions of the play based in historical records versus what Havel has imagined. This play with history and how we know/tell history is especially interesting when thinking about a revolution--and even more so when thinking about how a revolutionary views a revolution. Revolutions are, by their nature, messy and contentious, and this play highlights the difficulties of understanding such a situation with any degree of clarity. Though it's interesting that, whatever other questions or ambiguities the play addresses, Havel never raises the question of whether the revolution should have happened--that is universally accepted in Tomorrow!
https://youtu.be/kZrhZjzUqVw
Ivan Klima's Games: This play is somewhat disjointed, both in its overall structure and within the individual conversations--though as is often the case, I'm not sure whether this is a genuine result of Klima's style or a problem introduced through the translation. The play is about a group of people brought together for a games night, who end up trying to discern the difference between play and reality, which is especially murky as the games go from relatively banal (e.g., putting on blindfolds and trying to guess the ingredients in a dish by taste) to much more serious. There are games involving loaded guns (which the hosts keep on the walls), pretending to commit murders, pretending to hijack a plane for revolutionary violence, a faux murder trial, and a faux execution. The games increasingly dissolve the boundary between reality and fantasy through the mechanism of play--and this, of course, raises interesting questions about the nature of theatre, though Klima's script doesn't make overt reference to this link. But by virtue of seeing a "play" about playing games inherently challenges the nature of reality, because we're watching people pretend to be hijackers, witnesses, condemned criminals, etc. but we're also watching actors pretending to be the people pretending to be those things. We're watching actors playing at being guests playing games. And this draws our attention to the constructed nature of theatre itself.
https://youtu.be/r_CZpYNuvA0
Joseph Topol's Cat on the Rails: I'm not really sure what this play is about. It follows a young couple waiting at a whistlestop train station for a train to arrive, and they chat about various things, often disjointed, confused, or metaphysical type things. I'm not sure what the thematic focus is, apart from just depicting their somewhat rocky relationship--though I don't know why we're supposed to care about them or their relationship.
https://youtu.be/nQJZCToK_nQ
Daniela Fischerova's Dog and Wolf: Somewhat like Tomorrow!, this is a history play interested in how meaning is made in history and the difficulties of knowing the truth apart from the stories we want to tell about the past. The story is an extremely stylized exploration of the trials of Villon, a 15th century French poet and criminal, who is alternatively described as a heroic opponent of an oppressive and exploitative feudal system or as a thug and common criminal. Fischerova's play stages fragmented portions of Villon's trials, but often the debates are not about evidence but about whether or not we can really know the events of the past--a past simultaneously viewed from the 15th and 20th centuries. Some of the characters speak from the perspective of Villon's contemporaries, and some from the perspective of modern people looking back--but none of the characters find any contradiction in this or is ever confused by the disconnect.
https://youtu.be/YfbJ1bWeNBQ
Displaying 1 of 1 review