Pavel Kohout | |
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 Pavel Kohout in 2008 | |
| Born | 20 July 1928 Prague, Czechoslovakia |
| Occupation | Writer |
| Nationality | Czech |
| Notable awards | Austrian State Prize for European Literature |
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Pavel Kohout (born 20 July 1928) is a Czech and Austrian novelist, playwright, and poet. He was a member of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, a Prague Spring participant and dissident in the 1970s until he was not allowed to return from Austria. He was a founding member of the Charter 77 movement.
He was still a devoted communist upon graduating from secondary school in 1947, and graduated from Charles University in 1952, with a degree in theater and aesthetics. He then became a member of the Central Committee of the Czechoslovak Youth Union , serving until 1960. It was during this period that he began writing plays and poetry. He was also a member of the Union of Writers .
In 1956, he was briefly employed by Czechoslovak Television as a reporter and commentator. From 1963 to 1966, he was the dramaturge at Vinohrady Theatre. While there, he became attracted to the reform movement and resigned from the Union of Writers due to questions concerning his "cultural-political orientation". In 1967, following a public reading of Solzhenitsyn's protest letter to the Union of Soviet Writers, he and several other prominent writers were subjected to disciplinary action.
Because he and other dissident theater workers had been banned from working in the official theater, he formed an acting company called "Living-Room Theater" with the actors Pavel Landovský, Vlasta Chramostová, Vlastimil Třešňák, and his daughter, Tereza Boučková to covertly perform an adaptation of William Shakespeare's Macbeth in living rooms in Prague. Czech-born UK playwright Tom Stoppard's Dogg's Hamlet, Cahoot's Macbeth is inspired by these events. [1]
In 1968, he became one of the most prominent figures in the Prague Spring. The following year, he was expelled from the Communist Party and his works were subjected to strict censorship. He and his third wife Jelena Mašínová were allowed to travel to Austria in 1978, where he had a contract with the Burgtheater. While there, their citizenship was revoked and they could not return. In 1980, they received Austrian citizenship and settled in Vienna. In Austria he continued his work and was awarded Austrian Waldviertel Academy prize. [2] After the fall of the Communist government, they often returned to Prague and now divide their time between there and Sázava. [3]
His most notable play is the drama Poor Murderer , which opened on Broadway in Ethel Barrymore Theatre in 1976. It is based on the short story "Thought" by Leonid Andreyev. [4]
His novels include White Book (an absurdist picture of life under Communism), I Am Snowing (a post-Communism story about the opening of the Communist-era secret police informer files, the effect of that opening on the informers and their victims, and thus about the corrosive effect of the Communist regime), The Widow Killer (a detective story set in World War II Nazi-occupied Prague), and The Hangwoman (a black-humor story about executioners), Seven Days in a Week (1965) and Morgen tanzt die ganze Welt (1952). [5]
The Prague Spring was a period of political liberalization and mass protest in the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic. It began on 5 January 1968, when reformist Alexander Dubček was elected First Secretary of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (KSČ), and continued until 21 August 1968, when the Soviet Union and most of Warsaw Pact members invaded the country to suppress the reforms.
Sir Tom Stoppard is a Czech-born British playwright and screenwriter. He has written for film, radio, stage, and television, finding prominence with plays. His work covers the themes of human rights, censorship, and political freedom, often delving into the deeper philosophical thematics of society. Stoppard has been a playwright of the National Theatre and is one of the most internationally performed dramatists of his generation. Stoppard was knighted for his contribution to theatre by Queen Elizabeth II in 1997.
Milan Kundera is a Czech writer who went into exile in France in 1975, becoming a naturalised French citizen in 1981. Kundera's Czechoslovak citizenship was revoked in 1979, his Czech citizenship conferred in 2019. He "sees himself as a French writer and insists his work should be studied as French literature and classified as such in book stores".
Charter 77 was an informal civic initiative in the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic from 1976 to 1992, named after the document Charter 77 from January 1977. Founding members and architects were Jiří Němec, Václav Benda, Ladislav Hejdánek, Václav Havel, Jan Patočka, Zdeněk Mlynář, Jiří Hájek, Martin Palouš, Pavel Kohout, and Ladislav Lis. Spreading the text of the document was considered a political crime by the Czechoslovak government. After the 1989 Velvet Revolution, many of the members of the initiative played important roles in Czech and Slovak politics.
Socialism with a human face is a slogan referring to the reformist and democratic socialist programme of Alexander Dubček and his colleagues, agreed at the Presidium of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia in April 1968, after he became chairman of the KSČ in January 1968.
Jiří Hájek was a Czech politician and diplomat. Together with Václav Havel, Zdeněk Mlynář, and Pavel Kohout, Hájek was one of the founding members and architects of Charter 77.
Ludvík Vaculík[ˈludviːk ˈvatsuˌliːk] was a Czech writer and journalist. He was born in Brumov, Moravian Wallachia. A prominent samizdat writer, he was best known as the author of the "Two Thousand Words" manifesto of June 1968.
Dogg's Hamlet, Cahoot's Macbeth are two plays by Tom Stoppard, written to be performed together. This was not the first time that Stoppard had made use of Shakespearean texts in his own plays or even the first time he had used Hamlet although the context is far different from that of his earlier Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead. Stoppard would return to the theme of artistic dissent against the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia in Rock 'n' Roll.
Rock 'n' Roll is a play by British playwright Tom Stoppard that premiered at the Royal Court Theatre, London, in 2006.
Professional Foul is a television play written by Czech-born, British playwright Tom Stoppard. It was broadcast on 21 September 1977 in BBC 2's Play of the Week series.
On 20–21 August 1968, the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic was jointly invaded by four Warsaw Pact countries: the Soviet Union, the Polish People's Republic, the People's Republic of Bulgaria and the Hungarian People's Republic. The invasion stopped Alexander Dubček's Prague Spring liberalisation reforms and strengthened the authoritarian wing of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (KSČ).
Neighborly relations exist between Austria and the Czech Republic, two member states of the European Union. Austria has given full support to Czech Republic's membership of the European Union. the Czech Republic is a member state of NATO, Austria is not a member state of NATO.
Pavel Landovský, nicknamed Lanďák, was a Czech actor, playwright, and director. He was a prominent dissident under the communist regime of former Czechoslovakia.
Kohout is a Czech surname, meaning rooster. Notable people with the surname include:
Jiřina Švorcová was a Czech actress and pro-Communist activist. Her acting career lasted more than forty years, but she largely retired after the 1989 Velvet Revolution and devoted herself to advocacy of the Communist Party.
The Vaněk plays are a set of plays in which the character Ferdinand Vaněk is central. Vaněk first appeared in the play Audience by Václav Havel. He subsequently appeared in three other plays by Havel, as well as plays by his friends and colleagues, including Pavel Landovský and Tom Stoppard.
The Joke is a 1969 Czechoslovak film by director Jaromil Jireš. It is considered one of the last films of the Czech New Wave movement.
Jaroslav Kořán was a Czech translator, actor, writer, screenwriter, and politician. A dissident and signatory of Charter 77 during Czechoslovakia's Communist era, Kořán translated over seven dozen books, mostly by American writers, from English into Czech, including major works by Kurt Vonnegut, Henry Miller, Roald Dahl, Ken Kesey, Charles Bukowski, John Kennedy Toole, and John Wyndham.
The Anticharter was the 1977 reaction of the Communist Czechoslovak ruling power under Gustáv Husák, combined with a signature campaign by prominent cultural figures, condemning Charter 77, a civic initiative drawn up by Václav Havel and Pavel Kohout, among others, in 1976.
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