American Premiere of Josef Topol's Play "Hour of Love"
at American University's Experimental Theatre in Washington, DC

To honor the 20th World Congress of the Czechoslovak Society of Arts and Sciences which took place at American University August 8-13, 2000, the University's Department of Performing Arts decided to stage a play by the Czech Republic1s foremost living playwright, Josef Topol.   Although not so well known in the USA, Josef Topol has been in his country the recipient of  many prizes and honors, most recently this spring he received the prestigious Karel Capek award.

The play chosen for the SVU event was Topol1s play "Hour of Love," written in 1966 but first produced in Prague in 1968.  More than thirty years later the play had three performances in Washington, DC - in English translation by American University's professor Vera Borkovec. The play was directed by Prof. Gail Humphries Mardirosian who has Czech roots.  The three actors in the play were Adjunct Professors in the Department of Performing Arts: Peter Avery (El), Jewel Orem (Ela) and Barbara Pinolini (Auntie).

"Hour of Love" is very typical of Josef Topol1s poetic dramas which as a rule, explore human relationships and examine problems of human existence in general.  They are all about love, life and death and this play as the title indicates is all about time, aging, and the endurance of human feelings.

The lovers El and Ela are faced with an imminent separation which gives them one last hour before they part forever.  As they try to act out this game of their last hour of love, the news arrives that they will not have to be parted after all.  The Man is elated that his problems have been solved; the Woman still feels the torment of the last hour and cannot come to grips with the new reality.  She looks at the cranky, irascible old Auntie behind the curtain and already projects herself into the image of old age.  What will become of the lovers in the future? Will their love endure or must it of necessity change and grow old? "Whatever loves -- grows, changes, ages -- and that1s it," says Ela.  The audience is left to decide if they want to agree with her.

The audiences who came to the Preview performance on August 10 and the Opening Night performance on August 11 (which were reserved for the Congress participants) were quite impressed with the production and for a long time afterward engaged in discussions of the play and its different levels of meaning.  The translator had visited with Josef Topol in Prague in May and invited him to Washington so he could see the American premiere of his work. Unfortunately, because of poor health (result of many hardships suffered during his dissident years under the Communist regime), Mr. Topol was unable to come.

Submitted by Vera Borkovec

Note: The writer of these notes, Vera Borkovec, has translated three other plays by Josef Topol: "Good-bye, Socrates", "Migration of Souls" and "The Voices of Birds".

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