Václav Havel
GARDEN PARTY (ZAHRADNÍ SLAVNOST, 1963)
6 men, 3 women
A play in four acts
It was with this play, a classic and irrepressiblly comic example of the Czech brand of absurd theatre written in 1963, that Havel became internationally known.
The officials of Inauguration Services are in a state of war with employees of the Liquidation Office. Both bureaucratic institutions have become so empty of meaning that to control them it is quite enough just to speak thier language. Hugo manages not only to get into their garden party and their secrets, but also to find their points of contact. The height of his triumph comes when he is appointed head of the Central Comittee for Inauguration and Liquidation. Hugo is prototype of the adaptable offspring of totalitarian - and other - regimes, who understand that „only someone who in certain situation knows not to exist, can exist all the better in another situation."