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Thursday, February 28, 2008

Vaclav Havel's "The Memorandum" continues at MTU's McArdle Theatre through March 5

HOUGHTON -- Michigan Tech's Department of Visual and Performing Arts is presenting Vaclav Havel's satiric comedy The Memorandum at 7:30 p.m. in the McArdle Theatre (Walker 207 on the MTU campus). The performances began on Feb. 27 and continue daily (except Sunday) through Wednesday, March 5.

Director Christopher Plummer says he's looked forward to staging one of Havel's plays for years, fascinated by his brilliance and insight into how people attempt to control others, especially through misuse of language.

Havel, a political activist as well as a philosopher and writer, put it this way: "Alongside words that electrify society with their freedom and truthfulness, we have words that mesmerize, deceive, inflame, madden, beguile, words that are harmful -- lethal, even. The word as arrow."

Havel's fame as a writer contributed to his emergence, during the 1970s and '80s, as a leader of the pro-democracy movement in Czechoslovakia. To his own amazement, the quietly charismatic professor became the first president of the democratic Czech Republic.

More information on The Memorandum and Havel can be found on Tech Today and on the visual and performing arts website, http://www.vpa.mtu.edu/. Tickets to the play are available from the Rozsa Box Office (487-3200 and http://www.tickets.mtu.edu/) and at the door an hour before performances: $10 general, $5 students.

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