The first play by former Czech president Vaclav Havel in 18 years will be published in his country this week.
Leaving is about a politician whose life is thrown into turmoil when a new regime takes over and he is pushed out of his position. The play will be available for purchase in the Czech Republic on Monday with some nine translations underway.
Former Czech President Vaclav Havel, right, and his wife Dagmar Havlova are pictured here in 2006. Havel's first play in 18 years will feature his actress wife in a leading role.
(Michal Krumphanzl/Associated Press)
Havel insists the work is not autobiographical and says he began working on the five-act play back in the 1980s.
In an interview with Czech radio, the 71-year-old playwright said Leaving has some resemblance to Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard and Shakespeare's King Lear.
"King Lear is also a ruler who lost power and his world began collapsing," Havel said.
Havel, whose oeuvre includes dozens of plays, essays and books, was a dissident writer who was often thrown into jail during Communist rule.Â
He was one of the leaders of the Velvet Revolution in 1989 that peacefully toppled the Communist regime. He subsequently became president.
Havel stepped down from his post in 2003.
In the foreword to the play, the writer has set out some stern guidelines for theatre directors and actors.
"It must be acted in a civil manner, seriously, soberly, normally," Havel writes.
"Do not tart it up with grotesque movements, clever staging ideas, exaggerated gestures or intonations, mugging, biomechanics or anything striking that attempts either to explain, interpret or illustrate the text, or simply make it more amusing."
The play itself was at the centre of a larger drama involving Havel's actor wife, Dagmar Havlova. Back in the spring, he withdrew the play from Prague's National Theatre after officials there refused to give her one of the lead roles, preferring to use their own roster of actors.
In September, the playwright found a home for Leaving at the Vinohrady Theater in Prague where it will premiere in May or June 2008.
With files from the Associated PressRelated
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