Havel reveals new play, marking return to drama

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Former Czech president Vaclav Havel has returned to his roots as a playwright after years in politics, revealing a new drama set to debut next spring.

The 71-year-old Havel left the arts in late 1989 to lead the bloodless "Velvet Revolution" that overthrew communism in Czechoslovakia in November of that year.

He was president of Czechoslovakia from 1989-92 and president of the new Czech Republic, after the split with Slovakia, from 1993 to 2003

He had been writing plays since the 1960s but his works were mostly banned during communist rule in Czechoslovakia -- he spent nearly five years in jail for his human rights activities -- and he found little time to write while leading the country away from its past as a frontline Soviet state.

But Havel told a local daily on Thursday that the new drama, entitled "Leaving", had nothing to do with his leaving the presidency.

"I began writing the play a long time before the revolution in the 1980s, when it did not cross my mind that I could become president," the daily Lidove Noviny quoted him as saying.

Despite that, Havel acknowledged that his years in politics gave him inspiration.

He said the play portrays a ruler whose term has ended and who has to leave a state villa -- or he can stay if he supports the new government.

"(In my play) the ruler's court is crumbling and the usual archetypes of a sycophant and a traitor are appearing," he said, adding that there are also links to William Shakespeare's "King Lear".

The play has been shrouded in secrecy but keen speculation about its plot led the author and his publisher to announce its early release. It is expected to hit the bookshops later this month.

Choosing the venue for the premiere of "Leaving" has turned into a drama in itself.

Talks with Havel's home theatre of the 1960s, Divadlo na Zabradli, ran aground and negotiations with the National Theatre also collapsed over Havel's insistence on casting his wife and other actors of his choice.

Havel has said he wrote the play with Dagmar, whom he married in 1997, in his mind as the main character.

His agent, Jitka Sloupova, said about eight translations of "Leaving" were being completed and the first foreign performance would be in Slovakia.

"Interest abroad is big, mainly in the United States and Britain," she told Reuters.

(Editing by Robert Hart)

Keywords: LIFE HAVEL/PLAY

[PRAGUE/Reuters/Finance.cz]