About this Event
The Embassy of the Czech Republic invites you to Václav Havel’s 90th Birthday Commemoration: Rolling Barrels and Banter on October 8, 2026, at 6:30 pm (Area for the event opens at 6 pm), at Lost Generation Brewing Company.
Celebrate the life, wit, and legacy of Václav Havel with an informal evening of theater, music, Czech beer, and conversation. The program will feature recorded music from the Czechoslovak dissident underground and excerpts from Havel’s play Audience, read by Georgetown University students under the direction of distinguished Theater Professor Maya E. Roth.
Inspired by Havel’s years as a dissident playwright and his own experience working in a brewery after being barred from his profession by the communist regime, the evening brings together two unmistakably Havelian ingredients: barrels and banter. Through a lively reading over Czech-style beer, guests will encounter Havel’s distinctive humor and the absurdities of life under an authoritarian regime.
Written in 1975, Audience introduces Ferdinand Vaněk, Havel’s semi-autobiographical alter ego, a dissident writer forced to work in a brewery. Vaněk is summoned to the office of the brewery foreman for what begins as a seemingly casual conversation over beer. As the drinking continues, however, the true purpose of the meeting emerges. The authorities expect the foreman to report on Vaněk’s activities.
Both humorous and unsettling, Audience transforms an ordinary conversation into a revealing portrait of life under communism and the everyday compromises demanded by a system built on surveillance and conformity.
Raise a glass to Václav Havel on what would have been his 90th birthday.
Cheers - Na zdraví!
Event Details:
Date/Time: October 8, 2026, at 6:30 pm
Location: Lost Generation Brewing Company
327 S Street, NE, Washington, DC 20002
Please be sure to RSVP for all members of your party.
Admission is free. | Seating is first come, first served.
First 60 guests (21 and over) receive a complimentary beer!
Truth and Love: Celebrating Václav Havel and Freedom of Expression
The event is part of the project Truth and Love: Celebrating Václav Havel and Freedom of Expression, an initiative marking the 90th anniversary of Václav Havel’s birth, hosted by the Embassy of the Czech Republic and partners in fall 2026. Through theater, public dialogue, and youth creativity, the project honors Havel’s lifelong defense of human dignity and the power of truth.
The initiative is part of the larger EUNIC Project: The Art of Freedom: Voices of Expression from Europe to America.
The image above is derived from a famous photograph of Havel working in the Trutnov brewery taken by Karel Hádek. It is used with the permission of the author.
Event venue & nearby stays
Lost Generation Brewing Company, 327 S Street Northeast, Washington, United States
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