Pavel Kohout (born July 20 1928, Prague) is a Czech and Austrian novelist, playwright, and poet. He was a member of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, a Prague Spring exponent and dissident in 1970s until he was expelled to Austria. He was a founding member of the Charter 77 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, Vlasta Chramostová, Vlastimil Třešňák, and his daughter, Tereza Boučková to covertly perform an adaptation of William Shakespeare's Macbeth in living rooms in Prague. Czech-born playwright, Tom Stoppard's Dogg's Hamlet, Cahoot's Macbeth is inspired by these events.

His most notable play is the drama Poor Murderer, that opened on Broadway in Ethel Barrymore Theatre in 1976. It is based on the short story Thought by Leonid Andreyev.

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 WWII Nazi-occupied Prague), and "The Hangwoman" (a black-humor story about executioners).

References