The official program of the two-month long festival of Havel's plays starts with a "birthday" party for the donors on Thursday 5 October 2006 at 7 pm in the renovated Bohemian National Hall on 73rd East Street. The party is organized by the New York Consulate General of the Czech Republic together with the main Festival organizer, the New York Untitled Theater No. 61. Aura-Pont participated on the dramaturgy of the Festival from the very beginning. There will be readings of fragments from Havel's plays, live music by Russ Kaplan, Czech food and drinks and a charity auction to benefit the Festival. There is a bonus in the form of concert by the Mendoza Line Group that will present for the first time a new album and play compositions by William S. Niederkorn written specially for the Festival and inspired by the playwright's work.
The festival itself consists of all of Havel's dramatic work and is a celebration of the author's seventieth birthday during his two months study program at the Columbia University. It will open on October 26 with a performance of his one act play The Mistake and with the Garden Party at the Brick Theater in Brooklyn. The festival will present one world premiere (an independent production of a one-act play Motormorphosis - that was first presented as a part of the production of Hitchhiking (Autostop), a collaboration between Václav Havel and Ivan Vyskočil - five English premieres and five premieres of the new English translations. The translators are Paul Wilson, Jan Novák, Štěpán Šimek and the duo Carol Rocamora and Tomáš Rychetský.
The productions are directed by a total of twenty directors, including the artistic directors of the theatres hosting the performances Robert Lyons from the Ohio Theater on the Manhattan, Michael Gardner from the already mentioned Brick Theater and the Festival's instigator Edward Einhorn, the artistic director of the Untitled Theater No. 61. There will be added interest thanks to the participation of the Russian actor/director Sergey Zemtsov, who teaches drama at the MCHAT theatre school in Moscow. He is involved in the closing production of the festival: the Beggars Opera at the Miller Theatre at Columbia University will conclude the theatre program on 1 December 2006.
About a hundred New York actors will perform at the festival. The biggest star appearance is expected to be that of Kathleen Turner (The War of the Roses, Romancing the Stone), who will appear in Conspirators.