Rehearsal for Truth International Theater Festival is an annual showcase of contemporary Central and Eastern European theater, established in 2017. The festival 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.
The 2025 festival, entitled Perseverance, features work from Austria, Belarus, Estonia, Czechia, Germany, Hungary, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, South Africa and Ukraine. Much of the work featured this year deals with the subject of how to survive difficult times, sometimes with art, sometimes with humor, but always with a search for what is right and moral. It is inspired, as always, by Havel’s life and art.