Rehearsal for Truth International Theater Festival 2024: Dark Dreams

Rehearsal for Truth International Theater Festival is an annual showcase of contemporary Central and Eastern European Theater, founded in 2017. It is a shared endeavor of the Václav Havel Center and the Bohemian Benevolent and Literary Association in partnership with numerous other cultural and performing arts organizations. The festival honors the artistic and political legacy of the Czech playwright/dissident/president Václav Havel. They support exchanges between American and European theater professionals and celebrate the power of the theater to transform our lives.

This year’s festival features work from Austria, Belarus, Estonia, Czechia, Germany, Hungary, Romania, Slovakia and Ukraine. Much of the work featured this year is surreal or dreamlike, finding ways to comment on past and present tragedies, from the legacy of the Nazi and Soviet years to the current war in Ukraine. It explores fascism but also beauty, darkness but also laughter.

The festival begins with one of the oldest authors in the vein of the dark and comically surreal, Franz Kafka, on the 100th anniversary of his death. It continues on with not only theater but dance and music. This year, for the first time, film is included in the lineup, specifically film of theater and dance. Most programs include discussions with either the authors, experts on some of the subjects addressed, or both.