A staged reading of four translations of Scene 8 in Vaclav Havel’s play, The Memo (also translated as the Memorandum). An examination of the nuances of translation. Followed by a discussion with the translators.
Stage reading of a play about the famous Steiner Antiquarian Bookshop in Bratislava, Slovakia. It takes place during the anti-Jewish repressions in the early 1940s in the Nazi Slovak state when the antiquarian bookshop was subject to Aryanization, meaning expropriation.
Songs and sketches from Terezin from the anthology of rediscovered scripts, Performing Captivity, Performing Escape: Cabarets and Plays from the Terezin/Theresienstadt Ghetto, authored by Dr. Lisa Peschel. Full of satire, bitter humor, and hope, these pieces demonstrate how art became a vital survival technique for the inmates.
Stage reading of a play by Anna Saavedra written in honor of Olga Havlova – a Czech dissident, activist, and the first wife of Vaclav Havel. Set in the famous weekend lodge of Vaclav Havel, the play looks back onto Olga’s life - with a sense of irony of history and related absurdities.
Acclaimed actor Josh Hamilton performs a dramatic reading of Franz Kafka’s Diaries, now published in a complete and newly translated edition by Ross Benjamin. A conversation between Benjamin and scholar Veronika Tuckerova will follow the reading.
On the first anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Andrey Kurkov, the 2022 Disturbing the Peace Award recipient, will discuss the humanitarian crisis that the conflict has created and the role of a writer in upholding international law with writer Salil Tripathi, PEN International.
A concert paying homage to the playwright, dissident, and president Vaclav Havel, the musician, songwriter, performer, and poet Lou Reed, and the music of the Velvet Underground and Plastic People of the Universe.
Panel discussion celebrating Lou Reed's famous trip to the Czech Republic to interview Vaclav Havel. Ivan Bierhanzl, Paul Wilson, and Sylvia Reed will shed light on the story of a self-confessed, non-musical Vaclav Havel becoming the rock’n’roll president of his country, befriending Lou Reed, Frank Zappa, Joan Baez, and the Rolling Stones.
Three Czech and American economists and bankers – Jan Svejnar, Jack Stack and Tomas Salomon – will look at the Czech Republic’s economy since 1989 and discuss its future prospects for growth, taking its rightful place in Central Europe and the EU.
The panel discussion, moderated by Jiri Pehe, is centered on a lecture by Elie Wiesel given in Prague in 1996. In his lecture, Wiesel strived to name the roots of fanaticism in society, and at the same time, to show that an individual can succeed in defying the brutal machinery of destructive ideology.
