ABSTRACT
The theory that unlike the prose writer or the poet, the playwright cannot produce without constant contact with his audience has been effectively refuted by the works of Havel, Klima, and Kohout. These three most successful contemporary Czech playwrights have no opportunity to see their post-1968 plays staged either at home or abroad, since the authorities refuse to allow them to leave their country. The "exile" work of the Czech dramatists substantially continues the anti-illusionary and antipsychological trend that began in Czechoslovakia in the first half of the 1960's. Most of the works of these three playwrights are parables, allegories, play-models, or adaptations that retrace the themes of modern society's alienation. Thunder and Lightning is an allegorical satire on the socialist Utopian paradise on earth and on the idiocy of totalitarian power. The locale is a small sanatorium that has been converted from a baroque castle.
