Word: czech
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...produced his The Memorandum in 1968, Vaclav Havel sat in the audience. But by the time his The Increased Difficulty of Concentration was mounted the following year, the Soviets had marched into his native Czechoslovakia, and Havel was no longer able to travel. His works have been banned from Czech stages. For his human-rights activism, he has repeatedly been jailed. This week, when the Public opened his Temptation, Havel was serving an eight-month sentence for "incitement" and "a public order misdemeanor" during a peaceful demonstration in January protesting the legacy of the Soviet invasion...
...legend and evolves into a grimly believable portrait of life in a police state. This scientist who dabbles in black magic reaps only petty pleasures, while his demonic bargain leads him to mistrust friends, denounce colleagues, deny his beliefs and pledge to become a spy. Director Jiri Zizka, a Czech emigre, adds a mysterious high-tech gloss but stints on emotion. So do most of the cast, especially the bloodless David Strathairn in the lead. Still, beneath the expressionistic spectacle is an intimate, heartfelt and understandably angry play. W.A.H...
...their hospitality to the press. During one trip to Prague to attend a dissident conference, Banta and his translator were met at their hotel by a pair of dark sedans filled with secret police eager to dissuade the reporters from venturing out. Undaunted, Banta's translator gunned his small Czech-made Skoda down the city's cobblestone streets, one of the cars roaring behind. He finally shook off the pursuers with a neat "FBI turn" -- a screeching U across three lanes of traffic on an overpass...
Havel, 52, is not only a playwright and essayist but also a popular Czech hero who has firsthand knowledge of the Prague regime's harsh treatment of dissidents. In the past two decades he has spent a total of 4 1/2 years behind bars for his activities as a founding member of the Charter 77 human rights organization...
...Party daily Rude pravo: "The instigators of these actions are intent on destabilizing our society, on pressuring the socialist state." Instigators such as Mikhail Gorbachev, perhaps? Ironically, many of the demonstrators had been chanting "Gorbachev, Gorbachev" and "Gorbachev is watching you," invoking the Soviet leader whose political reforms the Czech leadership claims to support but has so far failed to emulate...