Pavel Kohout is a Czech

Czech people

Czechs, or Czech people are a western Slavic people of Central Europe, living predominantly in the Czech Republic. Small populations of Czechs also live in Slovakia, Austria, the United States, the United Kingdom, Chile, Argentina, Canada, Germany, Russia and other countries...

 and Austrian

Austrians

Austrians are a nation and ethnic group, consisting of the population of the Republic of Austria and its historical predecessor states who share a common Austrian culture and Austrian descent....

 novelist, playwright, and poet. He was a member of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia

Communist Party of Czechoslovakia

The Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, in Czech and in Slovak: Komunistická strana Československa was a Communist and Marxist-Leninist political party in Czechoslovakia that existed between 1921 and 1992....

, a Prague Spring

Prague Spring

The Prague Spring was a period of political liberalization in Czechoslovakia during the era of its domination by the Soviet Union after World War II...

 exponent and dissident in 1970s until he was expelled to Austria. He was a founding member of the Charter 77

Charter 77

Charter 77 was an informal civic initiative in communist Czechoslovakia from 1976 to 1992, named after the document Charter 77 from January 1977. Founding members and architects were Václav Havel, Jan Patočka, Zdeněk Mlynář, Jiří Hájek, and Pavel Kohout. Spreading the text of the document was...

 movement.

Because he and other dissident theatre workers had been banned from working in the official theatre, he formed the company Living-Room Theatre with the actors Pavel Landovský

Pavel Landovský

Pavel Landovský is a Czech actor, playwright and director.Landovský studied at the Faculty of Theatre in Prague and then played in regional theaters in Teplice, Šumperk, Klatovy and Pardubice. He wrote his first play Hodinový hoteliér premiered at the Činoherní theater on 11 May 1969.In 1971 he...

, Vlasta Chramostová

Vlasta Chramostová

Vlasta Chramostová is a Czech film actress. She has appeared in 35 films since 1950. She starred in the 1950 film The Trap which was entered into the 1951 Cannes Film Festival.-Selected filmography:* The Trap...

, Vlastimil Třešňák, and his daughter, Tereza Boučková to covertly perform an adaptation of William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon"...

's Macbeth

Macbeth

The Tragedy of Macbeth is a play by William Shakespeare about a regicide and its aftermath. It is Shakespeare's shortest tragedy and is believed to have been written sometime between 1603 and 1607...

in living rooms in Prague. Czech-born UK playwright Tom Stoppard

Tom Stoppard

Sir Tom Stoppard OM, CBE, FRSL is a British playwright, knighted in 1997. He has written prolifically for TV, radio, film and stage, finding prominence with plays such as Arcadia, The Coast of Utopia, Every Good Boy Deserves Favour, Professional Foul, The Real Thing, and Rosencrantz and...

's Dogg's Hamlet, Cahoot's Macbeth

Dogg's Hamlet, Cahoot's Macbeth

Dogg's Hamlet, Cahoot's Macbeth are two plays by Tom Stoppard, written to be performed together. This was not the first time that Stoppard had made use of Shakespearian texts in his own plays or even the first time he had used Hamlet although the context is far different from that of his earlier...

is inspired by these events.

His most notable play is the drama Poor Murderer

Poor Murderer

Poor Murderer was a 1976 Broadway play written by Pavel Kohout that premiered at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre on October 20, 1976 and closed on January 2, 1977 after 87 performances.-Setting:...

, that opened on Broadway in Ethel Barrymore Theatre

Ethel Barrymore Theatre

The Ethel Barrymore Theatre is a legitimate Broadway theatre located at 243 West 47th Street in midtown-Manhattan, named for actress Ethel Barrymore....

 in 1976. It is based on the short story "Thought" by Leonid Andreyev

Leonid Andreyev

Leonid Nikolaievich Andreyev was a Russian playwright, novelist and short-story writer. He is one of the most talented and prolific representatives of the Silver Age period in Russian history...

.

His novels include White Book (an absurdist picture of life under Communism), I Am Snowing (a post-Communism story about the opening of the Communist-era secret police informer files, the effect of that opening on the informers and their victims, and thus about the corrosive effect of the Communist regime), The Widow Killer (a detective story set in World War II Nazi-occupied Prague), and The Hangwoman (a black-humor story about executioners).