Word: vaclav
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...Vaclav Havel insists that his first play in 20 years, which opened to enthusiastic reviews at a small experimental theater in downtown Prague on May 22, is not autobiographical. It's true that the play, entitled Leaving, and has echoes of Shakespeare's King Lear, tells the story of a top official leaving office -as former President Havel did in 2003. Some of its characters seem easily recognizable to those familiar with Czech politics. But Havel is not being disingenuous: The lead character, an aging politician named Vilem Rieger, is far too humorless to represent the former dissident who once...
...ambitious character named Vlastik Klein (whom some commentators speculate is modeled on Havel's political rival, current president Vaclav Klaus, although he differs from Klaus in important ways) embodies the materialistic, mobster-driven world of eastern Europe in the 1990s. Klein slyly ousts the Chancellor from his government villa, then buys it himself and converts it into a shopping mall complete with brothel. The language makes light of democratic institutions. "A good leader must be surrounded by a good network of think tanks," Rieger says at one point, using the English for 'network' and 'think tanks...
...particular reason Mark Halperin named folks who are all dead in listing McCain's peers [April 21]? No mention of Alan Alda, Robert Redford, Vaclav Havel or Silvio Berlusconi. Gee, I wonder why not. Jeffrey Barry, MARBLEHEAD, MASS...
...Exile and OpportunityWhat could be called a global movement on behalf of post?identity thinking seems one of the brightest hopes of our new world order and one often advanced by such close friends and admirers of the Dalai Lama as Vaclav Havel and Desmond Tutu. Yet what has made the Dalai Lama's example particularly striking-and what was perhaps partly responsible for his receiving the 1989 Nobel Prize for Peace-is that he has had to live these principles and put them to the test during almost every hour of his 72 years. He came to the throne...
...Soviet invasion and the "velvet revolution" of 1989. It's an exploration of political repression and commitment (with a typically Stoppardian digression into Sappho's poetry), but also a celebration of the rebel rock music that, in Stoppard's view, was as potent a force for revolution as Vaclav Havel's speeches. Scenes are punctuated with the sounds of groups like the Rolling Stones and the Plastic People of the Universe, a Czech band imprisoned during the Soviet crackdown--with a special nod to Syd Barrett, a founding member of Pink Floyd, who was ousted by his band over...