Vaclav Havel Center

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Vaclav Havel Center Human rights, theater, literature.

Founded in 2012, the Vaclav Havel Center honors, preserves and builds upon the legacy of Vaclav Havel, a playwright and human rights activist, the former President of Czechoslovakia and the Czech Republic.

Did you spot yourself in these photos from our Havel at 90 step and repeat? 📸Find out more at: https://havelcenter.org/h...
10/13/2026

Did you spot yourself in these photos from our Havel at 90 step and repeat? 📸

Find out more at: https://havelcenter.org/havel-at-90/

Photo credit: Caroline King

10/05/2026

October 5, 1936 — December 18, 2026.

On what would have been Václav Havel’s 90th birthday, President Bill Clinton remembers his friend in a deeply personal and touching conversation with Czech Radio.

We are incredibly grateful to President Clinton for taking the time to share these memories on such a special day, and very happy that the Vaclav Havel Center could help facilitate this interview.

Interview by Jana CiglerovĂĄ for Czech Radio.

https://english.radio.cz/bill-clinton-havel-told-me-we-have-trust-freedom-and-democracy-8899083

10/05/2026

90 years ago today, Václav Havel was born. 🎈

He could not have known that his life would take him from the theater to prison, from a brewery to Prague Castle, or that words written under censorship would still be read around the world decades later.

Havel was serious about serious things, but he also knew how absurd the world could be. He loved theater and music, long conversations, ci******es, b**r, and the company of friends. He questioned power, but he questioned himself, too. And even after becoming president, he remained, at heart, a writer trying to make sense of the strange business of being human.

That may be one reason he still feels so present.

So tonight, we are celebrating his 90th birthday in a way we think he might have appreciated: with theater, conversation, friends, food, and a glass raised in his memory. 🍺

Join us at Bohemian National Hall at 7 PM for Unveiling (Vernisáž), Havel’s darkly comic one-act play, followed by a conversation about his theatrical legacy — and birthday goulash.

📅 October 5 | 7 PM
📍 Bohemian National Hall, New York City

Happy 90th birthday, Václav. 🤍🇨🇿

🎬 Citizen Havel

What does dissent look like today? 🎙️For Václav Havel, dissent was never simply about opposition. It was about the indiv...
10/05/2026

What does dissent look like today? 🎙️

For Václav Havel, dissent was never simply about opposition. It was about the individual’s responsibility to live truthfully within a system built on conformity — an idea he explored most famously in The Power of the Powerless.

Nearly half a century later, those questions have not gone away. They have simply taken new forms.

That is the idea behind Dissent Lab , a new Vaclav Havel Center podcast series created in honor of Havel’s 90th birthday. Through conversations with contemporary writers, journalists, activists, and others confronting authoritarian power, we ask what dissent means now — and what it demands of those who practice it.

Today, we recorded our second episode live in New York, with Russian writer Sergei Lebedev, whose work confronts Russia’s buried history, political violence, and the legacies that continue to shape its present.

Havel’s questions belong to history. But they also belong to us.

Dissent Lab is available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and Amazon Music. Follow the podcast to hear our conversations with today’s dissident voices and for new episodes as they are released.

2 days to Havel at 90. 🎙️

From rolling b**r barrels to writing one of his most famous plays. 🍺Did you know that Audience was inspired by Václav Ha...
10/04/2026

From rolling b**r barrels to writing one of his most famous plays. 🍺

Did you know that Audience was inspired by Václav Havel’s own job at a brewery?

In 1974–75, with his work banned in communist Czechoslovakia, Havel worked as a laborer at a brewery in Trutnov. That experience became the inspiration for Audience, introducing Ferdinand Vaněk — a banned playwright working in a brewery and Havel’s unmistakable alter ego.

In the play’s brilliantly absurd situation, Vaněk’s boss is expected to report on him to the authorities — and eventually suggests that Vaněk could make things easier by writing the reports about himself.

Havel later recalled that he wrote Audience quickly, originally to entertain his friends at Hrádeček. Instead, it became one of his best-known plays.

Shortly after the Velvet Revolution, Audience could finally step out of the shadows at home. That extraordinary moment was captured in Jiří Menzel’s 1990 documentary Havel’s Audience with History, bringing together Czech and American productions of the play in Prague.

Last night at Bohemian National Hall, we screened the film and were joined for a Q&A by American filmmaker and producer Michael Wolkowitz, who helped bring this remarkable project to life and was there in Prague as history was unfolding. Hearing his firsthand memories gave us a wonderful glimpse into the story behind the film — and the extraordinary moment in which it was made.

3 days to Havel at 90.

From playwright to dissident. From prisoner to president. And then, at 74, film director. 🎬Did you know that Václav Have...
10/04/2026

From playwright to dissident. From prisoner to president. And then, at 74, film director. 🎬

Did you know that Václav Havel was 74 when he directed his first—and only—feature film?

Leaving (Odcházení) was Havel’s own adaptation of his final play, a darkly comic story about power, identity, and what happens when someone who has spent years at the center of public life suddenly has to leave it behind.

For a man who had spent much of his life in theater—and then found himself at the center of history—stepping behind the camera was yet another unexpected chapter.

And tonight at Bohemian National Hall, you can see Leaving on the big screen as part of the Havel 90 festival.

A chance to see Havel not as president or dissident, but as filmmaker.

4 days to Havel at 90. 🎈

🎬Photo from “Havel, speaking can you hear me?”

A president with a rock ’n’ roll side. 🎸Did you know that Václav Havel’s world included Lou Reed, Frank Zappa, The Rolli...
10/03/2026

A president with a rock ’n’ roll side. 🎸

Did you know that Václav Havel’s world included Lou Reed, Frank Zappa, The Rolling Stones, Joan Baez — and, of course, the Czech underground band The Plastic People of the Universe?

His connection to rock music began long before the presidency. In 1968, Havel brought home from New York a copy of The Velvet Underground’s legendary “banana” album — at a time when Western rock music was anything but ordinary in communist Czechoslovakia.

Years later, after becoming president, Havel agreed to an interview for Rolling Stone on one condition: he wanted Lou Reed to interview him. Reed flew to Prague, and the two went on to become friends.

When Joan Baez came to Czechoslovakia for the Bratislavská lýra festival in June 1989, Havel was still a dissident under close surveillance by the communist secret police. To avoid being detained before the concert, he posed as a member of Baez’s crew, carrying her guitar as her “roadie” — a disguise that helped him make it into the hall.

The moment produced the now-famous photograph of Havel carrying Baez’s guitar — and the unforgettable line:

“I’m just her roadie.”

It was a story we had the pleasure of remembering at last year’s Vaclav Havel Center Gala, when Joan Baez joined us in New York — a beautiful reminder of the friendships Havel formed across the worlds of music, art, and dissent.

5 days to Havel at 90. 🎈

Havel at 90, last night in New York.🥂His legacy. Our moment.And what a beautiful moment it was.✨We were deeply honored t...
10/01/2026

Havel at 90, last night in New York.🥂

His legacy. Our moment.
And what a beautiful moment it was.✨

We were deeply honored that Dagmar Havlová and Alice P. Albright accepted our invitation to join us as Guests of Honor for this very special evening marking what would have been Václav Havel’s 90th birthday.

The evening also marked 10 years of Rehearsal for Truth , our international theater festival bringing contemporary Central and Eastern European voices to New York, and 10 years of the Disturbing the Peace Award, honoring courageous writers who speak out at great personal risk. This year’s award was presented to Vietnamese writer, journalist, and human rights advocate Phạm Đoan Trang, who remains imprisoned in Vietnam.

At Bohemian National Hall, friends, artists, diplomats, supporters, and members of our community came together not simply to remember Havel, but to celebrate a legacy that remains very much alive.

There was laughter, theater, music, friendship — and a reminder that Havel’s words and ideas still travel far beyond Prague and far beyond his own time.

And this was only the beginning. Havel 90 Festival starts tomorrow, with theater, film, conversations, podcast, and more.

More photos from this very special evening coming soon.

📷 Bruce ByBee

Did you know VĂĄclav Havel wrote his own presidential speeches?It may be difficult to imagine today, in an age of speechw...
10/01/2026

Did you know VĂĄclav Havel wrote his own presidential speeches?

It may be difficult to imagine today, in an age of speechwriters, communications teams — and now AI — but Havel continued to bring his own voice as a playwright, essayist and dissident into the presidency.

On January 1, 1990, just days after becoming president, Havel gave his first New Year’s address. Rather than celebrating his victory or simply blaming the previous regime, he asked Czechoslovaks to think about something much more uncomfortable: their own responsibility for the society they had lived in.

“We are all responsible.”

It was a remarkably direct message for a new president. Freedom, in Havel’s view, was not only something people had regained — it also came with personal responsibility.

He spoke about a country damaged not only economically and politically, but morally, after decades in which people had learned to say one thing and think another.

And he ended by looking toward what could come next: a society built on humanity, justice and responsibility.

The playwright had become president — but he never stopped thinking like a writer.

6 days to Havel at 90. 🎈

Photo credit: Oldrich Skacha

7 DAYS TO HAVEL AT 90!THE LAST. AND THE FIRST.Few people in modern Czech and Slovak history have stood at such a remarka...
09/30/2026

7 DAYS TO HAVEL AT 90!

THE LAST. AND THE FIRST.

Few people in modern Czech and Slovak history have stood at such a remarkable crossroads.

Václav Havel was the last president of Czechoslovakia — and the first president of the independent Czech Republic.

On December 29, 1989, just weeks after the Velvet Revolution began, the playwright, dissident, and former political prisoner was elected president of Czechoslovakia.

As political negotiations moved toward the dissolution of the common state, Havel resigned from the Czechoslovak presidency in July 1992. Czechoslovakia ceased to exist at the end of that year, and on January 26, 1993, Havel was elected the first president of the Czech Republic.

From dissident to president. From Czechoslovakia to the Czech Republic.

His life and presidency are inseparable from a history Czechs and Slovaks share — from the fall of communism and the return of democracy to the peaceful end of their common state.

Two countries today, with a history — and a president — they once shared. 🇨🇿🇸🇰

Photo credit: Oldrich Skacha

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