Actor F. Murray Abraham to premiere lost Václav Havel play
Summary and headline written by AI from the source article. How we work
F. Murray Abraham, an Oscar-winning actor, will perform in the first public reading of a previously unknown play by Václav Havel, the former president of the Czech Republic and a noted playwright, in New York City on September 26.
The play, titled The Warning, was discovered among the papers of Zdeněk Urbánek, a friend of Havel and a signatory of Charter 77, a human rights declaration in Czechoslovakia.
It features Ferdinand Vaněk, a character often used by Havel to represent himself, and a communist secret police officer. David Dušek found the unfinished manuscript in his grandfather Urbánek’s estate. Director Jiří Havelka adapted the text for performance, and Paul Wilson translated it into English. Havelka explained that the play offers insight into the early ideas that would later develop into Havel’s more famous works, and he focused on preserving Havel’s original writing during the adaptation process.
A brief excerpt of The Warning was staged in France earlier this summer. Following the New York premiere, a Czech-language version with leading Czech actors Ivan Trojan and Martin Myšička will debut on October 23 at Prague Castle as part of the Havel Alive festival. The play is intended to be part of a cycle of works featuring the Vaněk character, reflecting Havel’s experiences under communist rule.
The discovery of the play is seen as a meaningful event leading up to what would have been Havel’s 90th birthday on October 5.
