Theater | 1959–1969

On the recommendation of actor Jan Werich, VH starts working as a stagehand at the ABC Theatre. It is due to this job that he determines to “get into the theatre“.

He starts working as a stagehand at the Theatre on the Balustrade (Divadlo Na zábradlí). He is later permitted to work as a dramaturge and assistant director. He co-authors a number of plays and meets, among others, director Jan Grossman who offers him creative guidance. At the same time, he works at the Prague Municipal Theatres as assistant to Alfréd Radok, one of the most distinguished Czech theatre directors.

His play The Garden Party (directed by Otomar Krejča) premieres at the Balustrade. Diligent Hugo Pludek grasps the rules of success and, thanks to a gift for adapting and dazzling people with empty phrases, comes to control the world of inaugurators and liquidators. However, his careerism causes him to lose his own personality, which he perhaps never had. Due to the positive reception of the play, regarded as an original Czech take on the Theatre of the Absurd, he suddenly becomes one of the most celebrated figures in Czech culture.

After an eight-year relationship, VH marries Olga, née Šplíchalová (born 11 July 1933). The marriage will last for more than 30 years.

VH achieves his first international success when the German premiere of The Garden Party takes place at West Berlin's Schiller Theatre. His rise to the world stage is made possible by Klaus Juncker of the Rowohlt publishing house. Juncker becomes Havel’s friend, lifelong literary and theatre agent, and, in tough times, connection with the free world.

Premiere of The Memorandum (Vyrozumění), a play based on the motif of an artificial, totalitarian language called Ptydepe.

KALOUS (Stands up.) Can you tell us what the longest Ptydepe word is? (Sits down)
J.V. BROWN It’s a word for the fruit fly, and it has 319 letters. But to continue: how does Ptydepe solve the problem of readability and pronounceability in such long words? Very simply: here and there, within the word, the letters are separated by spaces so that the word is then created by a certain number of so-called sub-words of varying length. But like everything in Ptydepe, the length is not left to chance. The vocabulary of Ptydepe is structured according to an entirely logical principle: the more general the meaning, the shorter the word. So, for example, the most general concept that we have, the one expressed by the word “whatever” is rendered in Ptydepe by saying “gh,” that is, by a word that has only two letters. Of course, there are even shorter words, for example “f,” but for the time being that word has no meaning. Can anyone tell me why? Well?
J.V. BROWN All right, Ms. Kalous.
KALOUS (Stands up) I think it’s kept in reserve for the possibility that science will one day discover a notion even more general than “whatever.”

VH joins the editorial board of the literary monthly Tvář (The Face). Its open and critical tone soon gets it into trouble with official structures. He speaks out in its defence and organises a petition against its dissolution, becoming publicly engaged as an activist for the first time. The authorities prove stronger, however, and Tvář is dissolved early in 1966.

VH publishes his first book, The Protocols, containing the plays The Garden Party and The Memorandum, a collection of calligrams entitled Anticodes and other texts.

VH completes a distance learning course in dramaturgy at the Theatre Faculty of the Academy of Performing Arts (DAMU). His thesis consists of original play Eduard (later performed as The Increased Difficulty of Concentration) and a theoretical analysis of it.

A speech about the need for creative independence at the fourth congress of the Union of Czechoslovak Writers marks the beginning of Havel's public engagement in the Prague Spring, a process of renewal of Czech society.

During the events of the so-called Prague Spring, VH is among those pushing for more than mere reform of communism. However, despite his sober distance from the stirred up, revolutionary mood in society, he devotes a lot of energy to the struggle for the survival of the suspended critical magazine Tvář, becomes involved in the reforms of the Union of Writers, sets up the Circle of Independent Writers and becomes chairman of the Coordination Centre of Independent Organisations, which brings together nascent opposition forces, in particular KAN, the union of former political prisoners K231 and the Social Democrats. In addition, he contributes to Literární listy an article titled On the Theme of Opposition, in which he calls for the de facto abolition of the Communist Party's monopoly on power.

Uncle Miloš Havel passes away in Munich.

Premiere of The Increased Difficulty of Concentration, a play based on the motif of artificial intelligence that satirizes the “robotization“ of human existence.

MRS. HUMMEL Maybe you do love her after all –
HUMMEL You know very well that I don’t! She arouses me sexually, that’s all, and not even as much as she did at the beginning.
MRS. HUMMEL Well, let’s hope! So what do you tell her when she asks if you love her?
HUMMEL Whenever possible, I try to change the subject. Honey?
MRS. HUMMEL Good strategy! Would you put some on –
HUMMEL (Smearing honey onto a roll.) But she did sort of push me against a wall a couple of times, so I had to give her a positive answer.
MRS. HUMMEL But you didn’t mean it, did you?
HUMMEL I didn’t. Here – (He gives her the roll with honey.)
MRS. HUMMEL Listen Eddie –
HUMMEL Hmm –
MRS. HUMMEL Promise me that you’ll finally end it somehow! We cannot go on like this! I suffer more than you think. The evenings are the worst. I sit at home, mend your socks or your underwear, while I know that you’re with her, frolicking, spending our money, taking her places in our car, kissing her – (Pause. They eat in silence.) I know that this might sound stupid, but do you know what haunts me the most in moments like that?
HUMMEL What?
MRS. HUMMEL The thought that you may be making love to her at that very moment.
HUMMEL You know very well that I sleep with her very infrequently – we don’t have a place to do it. Usually, we end up just kissing each other. At the most, I might touch her breasts here and there, but that’s just about it. Get me another roll, will you?

Spring sojourn in the USA, where he attends the premiere of The Memorandum in New York, contacts Czech émigré intellectuals, follows his father's pro-American sympathies and is inspired by 1960s US culture (music, the human rights movement, hippies). Soon after his return he takes a trip around Western Europe.

In the summer, before the August invasion, VH quits his post as dramaturge at the Theater on the Balustrade of his own accord. He becomes a freelance writer.

VH is in Liberec, northern Bohemia when the dramatic events of the August 1968 occupation of Czechoslovakia by Warsaw Pact troops begin. He becomes involved in the civil resistance and writes a series of radio announcements on the need to resist the occupation and on the forms such resistance might take. The texts are read on air by his actor friend Jan Tříska.

Think of new ways to fight! Organise, forge connections between one another, set up action cells, coordinate your activities, establish networks of communication, proceed in an organised manner. Combine your energies. Let’s preserve our strength. One call that wins the backing of the whole city and is heard by the whole world is more effective than 10 isolated calls that cut across one another. (…) There are situations in which ruses best serve the truth. Think up such ruses. Let intellect win out over brutality, humanity over brutishness, solidarity over mandate, the discipline of conscience over the discipline of the pistol. Our cause must triumph, even if in a manner nobody had foreseen it triumphing in. Hopefully in this way we will enter in the history of humanity a lesson that will be useful to all who, anytime and anywhere, seek to spit on the freedom of others in such a way that our occupiers are attempting to spit on it in our country. (Liberec, August 23, 1968)