Program Notes:
Vaclav Havel's theatrical career began in the early 1960's, a time in Czechoslovakia when its Communist rulers had relaxed their containment of public expression. In 1968 his play, The Memorandum, won an award Off-Broadway, but in that same year Soviet tanks rolled through the streets of Prague again to secure a stable and severe Communist regime. Some of the harshest censorship and oppression that followed was directed at the now vigorous and abundant avant-garde theatre in Czechosolvakia. Havel became an outspoken political activist resulting in a ban of his plays, the confiscation of his passport, and, eventually, his imprisonment. After the fall of the Berlin wall, Czechoslovakia's "velvet revolution" was led by prominent members of the Czech theatre community with Havel as one of its most respected spokespersons. Only six months after his last release from prison, the Communist government fell and Havel became, in January of 1990, the freely elected President of a now democratic Czechosolvakia.
Temptation is Vaclav Havel's most recent full-length play and was first performed in the United States only three years ago. Like his other plays, Temptation reflects a unique sense of humor that could not be repressed by the prison sentences that were imposed on the playwright by humorless and paranoid bureaucrats, as well as the wisdom and social conscience of this honorable new player in international events.