Vaclav Havel, dissident playwright and former Czech president, dies

From the Washington Post:

Václav Havel, a Czech writer who was imprisoned by his country's former communist rulers, only to become a symbol of freedom and his nation's first president in the post-communist era, died Sunday morning at his weekened home in the Czech Republic, the Associated Press reports. He was 75.

More here.

I first encountered Vaclav Havel back in 1989 when I saw a production of his play Temptation, a reworking of the Faustian myth aimed vaguely at communist totalitarianism, performed by the Vortex Repertory Company in Austin. This was a new theater company, so the show was a bit clunky, but Havel's weirdness and honesty shone through. I was definitely intrigued by this dissident writer from behind the Iron Curtain, which was falling apart the very year I first heard of him. Later, I learned that Havel had become president of the newly democratic Czechoslovakia, a post which he retained when the two nations split thereby creating the Czech Republic. During the 90s, as the Bohemian and artsy reputation of Havel's nation became legendary in the West, I heard fun stuff about the playwright: he rode a tricycle around his office from time to time; he appointed Frank Zappa, whom Havel loved, to be the minister of foreign culture.

During the late 90s, when I was teaching high school theater, I found a copy of his play Largo desolato, in our department's play library. It blew me away and I decided then and there that I would direct it some day. That opportunity came only a few years later, with the now defunct dos chicas theater commune in Houston, and it took on special significance for me in that the tale of the dissident writer who is driven to anxiety-induced isolation from his friends and family by his government's constant harassment matched my own sense of social isolation that had been waxing during my teaching tenure.

In short, Havel was a great playwright who personally affected me, and I mourn his passing, if only because I love his work. But he was also the real deal. He always said he didn't care for politics, but his role as an artist in an oppressive country gave him no option: he had to create, and this necessarily pitted him against the powers-that-be; increasingly, his plays became political simply because his art reflected his life. And, in the end, he became leader of the nation that had imprisoned him multiple times. Really, people who don't crave power are the best leaders. They lead because it is their civic duty, and for no other reason.

Farewell, Vaclav Havel.

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