Leading Without Hope: Vaclav Havel’s Absurd Theatre and Its Lessons for a “Post-Truth Era”

AAU proudly invites you to a seminar with Dr. Ondřej Pilný and Dr. Josh Hayden on Leading Without Hope: Vaclav Havel’s Absurd Theatre and Its Lessons for a “Post-Truth Era” in partnership with the International Leadership Association (ILA), the world’s largest network of leadership scholars and practitioners. 

Join us as we explore the essence of absurd theatre, its lessons for leadership in a “post-truth” era and experience a scene from The Memorandum.

About the event: Vaclav Havel’s absurdist plays have captured the moral imagination of the Czech people, dissidents and audiences across the world since the 1960’s when they first premiered. His plays put on display the absurdity of life under communism: the language, bureaucracy, blind automism, and the loss of identity. Havel (1990) himself said, “Absurd theatre does not offer us consolation or hope. It merely reminds us of how we are living: without hope. And that is the essence of its warning.” We will explore the genre of absurd theatre, an overview of Havel’s plays and the role that they served during communism, and implications for responsible leadership today. Plus, it’s not enough to talk about the plays, we will experience first-hand a scene from Havel’s play The Memorandum and discuss its meaning in the communist context and how it might be a mirror for our own social challenges today.

The Memorandum premiered in 1965 and were an immediate hit in Czechoslovakia and abroad. It takes place in an office setting where bureaucracy, language, power struggles, and ambiguity are pervasive. There are many “high-context” clues in the play that offer insight into communist society and the humor of those who lived under it. As these plays originally premiered in small theatres in Prague (its own cultural phenomenon), they formed an intimate connection between audience and actors. These plays made their way into theatre-goer’s lives and mindset and served as “islands of freedom,” as Havel referred to them. Plays like the Memorandum were seismographs of the times, they brought people together in a “conspiratorial sense of togetherness.” Absent a moral message, they raised issues of morality and responsibility. Absent hopeful leadership, they raise questions of the very essence of hopeful leadership.

This event comes as Prague hosts the ILA Global Conference on October 15–18 at the Hilton Hotel with 800+ leaders, academics, and professionals from top global universities in attendance all interested in people and groups working towards social, organizational, national, and global change.

AAU will be in the spotlight with our own Dr. Josh Hayden—Department Chair of Social Sciences and Lecturer in Leadership Studies—serving as Program Co-Chair, presenting in five sessions, and hosting the special session in Room 2.07.

All are encouraged to attend this inspiring event.