Artists Rally for Jailed Czech Playwright

When an artist gets arrested for speaking his mind, other artists can be counted on to speak theirs. That explains the gathering reaction in the theater world to the news that Vaclav Havel is back in prison.

Havel is Czechoslovakia’s most distinguished playwright. Los Angeles has seen three of his plays--”A Private View” and “Largo Desolato” at the Mark Taper Forum and “The Memorandum” at Company of Angels. He is a pained humorist, treating the routine madness of life under a totalitarian regime.

He writes from authority. His arrest in Prague on Jan. 16 was the fourth time since the 1960s that he has been jailed for “disturbing the public order.”

This time Havel was arrested with 13 other activists for taking part in a ceremony in Wenceslaus Square in honor of Jan Palach, a student who had immolated himself there during the “Prague Spring” revolt in 1969.

Havel sounds like a lion in the streets. In fact, according to the Taper’s Gordon Davidson, who met him in Prague last summer, he’s as gentle and quizzical as his heroes.

“I am simply on the side of truth against lies, of good sense against nonsense and of justice against injustice,” Havel has written.

American theater people are mobilizing to protest the arrest. A rally was held Jan. 23 at the New York Public Theatre, spearheaded by Joseph Papp, who staged “The Memorandum” there in 1968.

“Havel was arrested for ‘hooliganism,’ which is a euphemism for someone who protests openly,” Papp said. “We must respond instantly.”

The Taper is planning a similar event. Davidson delivered Havel’s Los Angeles Drama Critics’ Circle Award for “Largo Desolato” to the playwright last summer in Prague.

“I was charmed by him,” Davidson said Friday. “He has clocked a lot of mileage and he’s got a lot of passion about what’s happening in his country. But what he wanted to talk to me about, as a theater person, was his plays . He hasn’t seen any of them in full productions since ‘The Memorandum.”’

KCRW-FM. 89.9 is also involved in the protest. The station aired a BBC production of “Largo Desolato” Monday and featured Havel on its monthly “Amnesty International Reports” program.

What can readers do to help Havel and his colleagues? Amnesty International suggests air-mail letters (45 cents) to this address: Judr. Gustav Husak, Prezident CSSR, Praha--Hrad, Czechoslovakia.

For more information call “Amnesty International Reports” at (213) 450-5183.

QUOTE OF THE WEEK: Vaclav Havel--”If I get involved in anything other than my literary work, it flows from my position as a man who is in the public eye and is thus duty bound to speak up on certain subjects in a louder voice than one who is not.”