DEIRDRE ‘…“tell them that great Pan is dead”…’
ESME What is it?
JAN Nothing.
Ferdinand finishes telling a story, then asks for the camera, in Czech.
He takes a photo of Jan and Esme.
ESME (insists) No—tell me.
JAN Ferda saw a friend from Plastic People. Now he is in a new band, Pulnoc—it means ‘midnight’. They’re going to America.
FERDINAND (in Czech) Smile.
ESME What’s the matter?
JAN Really nothing. Nothing. These are new times. Who will be rich? Who will be famous?
FERDINAND (in Czech) Smile.
Ferdinand takes pictures.
DEIRDRE ‘…and Thamous in the stern shouted towards the shore—“Great Pan is dead!” Before the words were even out of his mouth …’
LENKA (Good.)
DEIRDRE ‘… there was a great cry of lamentation, not one voice but many …’
Ferdinand finishes telling a story in Czech. Jan is convulsed by it. Jan, Esme and Ferdinand move to one of the café tables. The cloud has passed.
JAN (laughs) He says President Havel showed the Stones round the castle. When they went to wave to the fans from the balcony they found the balcony door was locked and no one had the key …
Bar-room noise and music. The music is the Plastic People. The music and the noise remain as background.
A WAITER arrives with a menu and greets Jan. They talk about going to the Rolling Stones. Ferdinand orders three beers.
JAN But we must eat before the concert.
Esme takes the menu from Jan.
ESME I’ll tell you what I want.
JAN You can’t read it.
ESME Can I have anything I want?
JAN (?)
Esme indicates different places on the menu.
ESME To start, I want the all-over kissing—and for the main course, I’ll have the shagged senseless. I’ll let you know about dessert, (handing back the menu) So can we go before I die?
JAN (to Waiter) Did you get that?
WAITER (deadpan) I’ll come back with the beer.
The Waiter leaves. Esme doesn’t care.
ESME (exuberantly) I don’t care. I don’t care. I don’t care.
Smash cut to Jan, Esme, Ferdinand and unknown others at the Rolling Stones concert, and the pre-concert crowd noise from the first track of the Rolling Stones live album, ‘No Security’. They are focused on the distant stage.
The crowd noise changes when the band appears, at which point everyone stands up.
The first guitar chords slash through the noise.
Blackout.
The End
BARRETT, HAVEL, AND OTHERS: SOME DATES
Dates of musical events are in italic type
1967
MARCH
The Velvet Underground and Nico
AUGUST
Pink Floyd, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn
DECEMBER
Velvet Underground, ‘White Light/White Heat’ (June 1968 in UK).
1968
Syd Barrett’s last performance with Pink Floyd.
MARCH
Angry demonstrators try to storm the American Embassy in London after a rally protesting against the Vietnam War.
MAY
Thousands of students, supported by striking workers, fight the police in Paris. At the London School of Economics and other universities and art colleges, students take over the college buildings. Meanwhile, Moscow moves Soviet troops to the Czech border, alarmed by the liberalisation of Czechoslovakia under the Communist leader Alexander Dubcek.
JUNE
Syd Barrett, ‘Jugband Blues’ (on Pink Floyd, A Saucerful of Secrets).
JULY
Soviet and Czech leaders meet at a frontier village to resolve their differences over the ‘Prague Spring’.
AUGUST
20–21 The forces of the Warsaw Pact invade Czechoslovakia.
OCTOBER
Czechoslovakia and USSR sign agreement to allow Soviet troops to remain ‘temporarily’.
1969
JANUARY
Czech journalists agree to self-censorship to end their conflict with the government.
JANUARY
16 Jan Palach sets himself on fire in Wenceslas Square, Prague, and dies three days later.
FEBRUARY
Czech Destiny, an exchange between Milan Kundera and Václav Havel.
MARCH
Velvet Underground, The Velvet Underground (April in UK).
APRIL
Dubcek is sacked from the Czech leadership. ‘Normalisation’ begins in earnest under his replacement, Gustav Husák.
MAY
Czech Central Committee adopts hard-line policies and begins purges of reformers.
JULY
First man on the moon.
The Rolling Stones give free concert in Hyde Park for 250,000 people.
NOVEMBER
Syd Barrett, ‘Octopus’ / ‘Golden Hair’ (single).
1970
JANUARY
Syd Barrett, ‘The Madcap Laughs’.
FEBRUARY
Czech Communist Party announces loyalty checks.
APRIL
The Beatles formally split up.
MAY
Four students shot dead by National Guard at Kent State University, Ohio.
JUNE
Dubcek expelled from Communist Party.
NOVEMBER
Syd Barrett, ‘Barrett’.
1971
Andy Warhol’s Velvet Underground featuring Nico (UK).
1972
JANUARY
Syd Barrett impromptu, King’s College Cellar, Cambridge.
FEBRUARY
Syd Barrett impromptus, Dandelion Coffee Bar, Cambridge; Market Square, Cambridge.
24 Syd Barrett’s last performance, Corn Exchange, Cambridge.
MARCH
Czech Journalists’ Union announces that 40 per cent of journalists have been dismissed since August 1968 for not following the government line.
JUNE
Five burglars arrested in Watergate Building.
1974
Havel spends nine months working in a brewery, the inspiration for Audience, his first ‘Ferdinand Vanek’ play.
1975
FEBRUARY
Margaret Thatcher becomes Tory leader.
APRIL
Havel’s ‘Letter to Dr Husák’.
1976
JULY AND SEPTEMBER
Seven members of the Czech Rock ‘n’ Roll underground receive prison sentences for spreading anti-socialist ideas.
SEPTEMBER
Seven Czech writers sign a letter to Heinrich Boll appealing for solidarity with the rock musicians on trial.
1977
JANUARY
240 people sign Charter 77, accusing the Czech government of violating human rights that it had agreed to uphold by signing the ‘Helsinki Agreement’.
AUGUST
Elvis Presley dies.
1978
OCTOBER
The Power of the Powerless by Havel rekindles ‘dissident’ debate in Czechoslovakia.
1979
MAY
Mrs Thatcher becomes British prime minister.
Eleven leading ‘Chartists’, including Havel, are arrested. In October, six of them receive prison sentences of two to five years.
1980
DECEMBER
John Lennon shot dead.
1985
MARCH
Gorbachev becomes Soviet leader.
1987
JANUARY
Gorbachev announces perestroika (reconstruction) and greater ‘control from below’.
The Czech leadership refuses to publish Gorbachev’s perestroika speech, despite the fact that Soviet TV is available in Czechoslovakia.
Andy Warhol dies.
APRIL
Gorbachev visits Prague.
JUNE
Mrs Thatcher elected for a third term.
DECEMBER
Mrs Thatcher and Gorbachev meet in London.
Husák resigns from Czech party leadership but retains his presidency.
1988
OCTOBER
Syd Barrett, ‘Opel’.
1989
NOVEMBER
Fall of Berlin Wall.
Czech Communist leadership resigns.
DECEMBER
The USSR and four other Warsaw Pact countries jointly condemn the 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia.
10 The first non-Communist Czech government for forty-one years is sworn in by President Husák, who resigns immediately afterwards.
29 The Federal Assembly, under the re-elected chairman Alexander Dubcek, unanimously elects Václav Havel as President of the Republic.
1990
JANUARY
The Czech government appoints Frank Zappa, the American rock musician, as Czechoslovakia’s representative of trade and culture and tourism; appointment later rescinded as ‘over-enthusiastic’.
FEBRUARY
President Havel meets Soviet leader Gorbachev in Moscow to agree to the immediate withdrawal of Soviet troops from Czechoslovakia.
AUGUST
The Rolling Stones play in Prague.
2006
JANUARY
6 Syd Barrett’s sixtieth birthday.
sources:
Gregory C. Ference, ed., Chronology of Twentieth-Century
Eastern European History (Gale Research).
Chronicle of the Twentieth Century (Longman).
Julian Palacios, Lost in the Woods: Syd Barrett and the Pink
Floyd (Boxtree).
Victor Bockris and Gerard Malanga, Up-Tight: The Velvet Underground Story (Omnibus Press).
Jan Vladislav, ed., Václav Havel, or Living in Truth (Faber and Faber).
1. All the information about the Vanek plays comes from Carol Rocamora’s careful and comprehensive book about Havel’s life and work, Acts of Courage (Smith and Kraus, 2004), which, absurdly, I never got round to reading earlier because I was too involved in my play.
2. Much of Havel’s prose writing, notably ‘The Power of the Powerless’ (in Open Letters, Faber and Faber, 1991) and Letters to Olga (Faber and Faber, 1988), has been translated by Paul Wilson who made translations for me of the exchanges between Havel and Kundera, Vaculík and Pithart referred to earlier. Wilson, a Canadian, has the further distinction of having been a member of the rock band Plastic People of the Universe between 1970 and 1972 (vocals and rhythm guitar).