The trilogy of one-act plays by Václav Havel,

,

 [

] and

(the first two written in 1975 and the third in 1978), are often known as the Vaněk plays (“vaňkovky” in Czech) because they are connected through the character Ferdinand Vaněk, whose biography closely resembles the author’s: a former playwright prohibited from publicly staging his plays and resigned to working in a brewery. Havel initially wrote

and

to amuse his friends, but they were among his most successful both domestically and internationally. While the character of Vaněk links the trilogy into one series,

emerged from a radically different political reality in Czechoslovakia, with a dramatic increase of dissident activity in the later 1970s, in which…

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Citation: Orsak, Mary, Karen von Kunes. "The Vaněk Plays: Audience, Vernisáž (Unveiling), Protest". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 30 August 2021 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=40572, accessed 25 November 2024.]