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<i> Arts and entertainment reports from The Times, national and international news services and the nation's press</i>

Playwright Arthur Miller has added his voice to the growing number of writers and artists around the world calling on Czechoslovakian authorities to free jailed playwright Vaclav Havel. “I can’t imagine a government in Europe in 1989 doing this to a writer. It is beyond belief, it is a horror,” said Miller. Havel, a founder of the Charter 77 human rights movement, was arrested Jan. 16 for calling for protests to mark the 20th anniversary of the suicide of student Jan Palach, who took his life to protest the 1968 Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia. Havel’s plays are acclaimed abroad but banned at home. Miller’s play, “The Archbishop Ceiling,” highly critical of Czechoslovakia’s Communist rulers, is currently playing in Budapest. Noted Miller: “It’s amazing. We live in curious times.”

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