Václav Havel's plays of the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s were evaluated primarily for their dissident content. Leaving, which he wrote in 2007, followed his thirteen-year premiership and presidency of the Czech Republic. In this article, Michelle Woods asks whether perception of Havel's plays in England was confined to their alleged politics, how this view affected their translation, adaptation, and reception, and whether they can now be read beyond the ideological positions of the Cold War. She focuses on Protest at the Royal National Theatre in London in 1980 and Sorry on BBC Television in 1977, as well as on two commissions which failed to be produced: The Garden Party for the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1964 and The Conspirators for the National in 1970. She argues that the plays were fundamentally misread through the prism of a Western conception of East European dissidence, which determined whether they were produced or not, and led to the dismissal of Havel's translator, Vera Blackwell. Material from Blackwell's recently opened archive is here used to reassess her role in the dissemination of Havel's plays in the English-speaking world. Michelle Woods is Assistant Professor of English at SUNY New Paltz and is the author of Translating Milan Kundera (2006) and several articles on the translation of literature and film.