I’d returned to Joe Papp, to the Public Theater, at the height of Joe’s power and influence. I put my head inside the door, and Joe came to me with open arms like the force of nature he was. “I forgive you, I forgive you,” he laughed with his gorgeous face. I was home.
I’d brought him a brilliant anti-Soviet play with a huge cast. Instead, he suggested putting together the short plays of Václav Havel. I’d never heard of him. This was 1983. Havel was a Czech writer. The Communist Czech government cracked down on free speech. Havel, a brilliant satirist, kept writing short plays that infuriated the government. He’d been jailed for about three years when Joe suggested we choose several of his short plays and put them together under one title. I don’t know who suggested A Private View, but that’s what we called it.
Havel’s friends and wife had managed to spirit his plays from his cell to living rooms all over the country, where actors performed them for anti-Soviet rebellious Czechs.
It was a great time for me, a great choice from Joe. The plays and the cast were brilliant and caustic; Richard Jordan received an Obie for a star turn in the last play.
I met Havel years later, after the Soviets were thrown out, before he was elected first president of the Czech Republic. Joe Papp set up a meeting in the sacristy of St. John the Divine. I genuflected. He shook my hand. So many heroes in our lives.
And finally, thirty years later, thanks to Joe, I worked on a play expressing my own private views about a regime that imprisoned and killed artists.