Music fans Jan (Shaun Smyth, left) and Ferdinand (Cyrus Lane) defy Czechoslovakia's Communist authorities in the Canadian premiere of Tom Stoppard's historical drama Rock 'n' Roll. (Canadian Stage Company)

True story: a hippie rock band with a Canadian vocalist inadvertently helped bring about the collapse of Communism in Czechoslovakia. The band was the legendary Czech group the Plastic People of the Universe; the singer was Ontario native Paul Wilson; and their role in what became known as the Velvet Revolution is the stuff of Tom Stoppard's award-winning play Rock 'n' Roll.

'In a totally politicized state, being apolitical is political. Even if you don't want to be, you essentially are – especially if you engage in something as public as making music.'

— Paul Wilson, former singer for Czech rock band the Plastic People of the Universe, who are the focus of Tom Stoppard's play Rock 'n' Roll

The British playwright's London/New York hit, currently receiving its Canadian premiere at Toronto's Canadian Stage Company, is a heady elixir of history, ideology and rock 'n' roll, set partly in Czechoslovakia during the final decades of the Soviet-backed regime. It spotlights the Plastic People, whose persecution in the 1970s inspired the human rights movement that would eventually topple the Communists.

The play, co-produced by Edmonton's Citadel Theatre, contrasts the old-school Marxist idealism of a Cambridge professor (Kenneth Welsh) with the harsh reality of life behind the Iron Curtain. The latter is embodied in the experiences of Jan (Shaun Smyth), a Czech graduate student and die-hard Plastics fan, who endures blacklisting and prison in his devotion to rock 'n' roll.

Although Stoppard was born in Czechoslovakia, he grew up in England and was enjoying early success with his play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead at about the same time the Plastics were forming in a Prague suburb. So, when he began research for Rock 'n' Roll, he turned to Wilson to provide him with firsthand knowledge of the band.

Now a distinguished translator of the works of Vaclav Havel, Josef Skvorecky and other Czech literary figures, Wilson was just a rock-loving graduate student himself when he came to Czechoslovakia to teach English in the late 1960s. He arrived in time for the Prague Spring of 1968, the period of reform under new party secretary Alexander Dubcek that promised a more humane brand of Communism.

"I intended to stay for a year," Wilson recalls by phone from his home near Collingwood, Ont. "But I got really involved in the life there." He remained even after Moscow sent in the tanks that August and crushed the attempt at reform. The following winter he encountered the Plastic People, who, despite an official crackdown on rock music, continued to perform as an underground band. The musicians and their manager, poet Ivan Jirous, were devotees of subversive American rock acts, taking their name from one of Frank Zappa's satirical songs and their lo-fi aggression from the Velvet Underground. They wanted to cover the songs of their idols, but they needed someone who could sing in English. "That was something I could help them with," Wilson says, "so, I joined the band."

Paul Wilson during his days as a member of the Plastic People of the Universe. (Jan Sagl/Canadian Stage Company)

In the play, Jan speaks admiringly of the Plastic People's refusal to adopt a political stance. That echoes Wilson's initial impression of the group. "It was the first time since I'd been in Czechoslovakia that I met people who were not interested in the Prague Spring at all," he says. "They kind of turned their backs on it; they didn't expect much to happen. So, they were, in that sense, apolitical. But of course, in a totally politicized state, being apolitical is political. Even if you don't want to be, you essentially are – especially if you engage in something as public as making music."

They wound up at the centre of a massive underground rock scene that drew in the kids and drove the authorities mad. "The police really put a great deal of effort into trying to contain it and stop it," Wilson says. "It was that clash that made the Plastics the political force that they became."

The band members were finally arrested in 1976. They were tried for disturbing the peace, and Jirous and reed player Vratislav Brabenec were sent to prison. Playwright Havel, already a leading dissident and a rock fan to boot, was outraged. Their treatment led him and others to draft the Charter 77 manifesto, the foundation for the opposition movement that would eventually facilitate the peaceful Velvet Revolution of 1989 that ousted the Communist regime.

Wilson escaped arrest, having quit the band in 1973. By then, the Plastics had gone from VU covers to writing their own music, with lyrics by Czech poets such as Egon Bondy. But his association with the group and with signatories of the charter led to his deportation in 1977.

Back in Canada, Wilson defiantly launched an indie label, Bozi Mlyn, and began releasing smuggled Plastic People recordings in the West. "Whenever anyone here wrote about the band, they wrote about it as a political phenomenon, but no one really knew what their music was like," he explains. "I thought it was really important to get the music out there so people could judge for themselves."

The stint in prison didn't keep the Plastics from continuing to secretly play and record. Ironically, they only broke up in 1988 – the year before the revolution they'd helped bring about. In 1997, Havel, now president of the new Czech Republic, urged the band to reunite for a gig to mark the 20th anniversary of Charter 77. "It was meant to be a one-night stand," Wilson recalls, "but they had so much fun, they kept on going, and they're still performing today."

Paul Wilson, now a translator and journalist. (Canadian Stage Company)Wilson's own career in Canada took him into translation and journalism, both as a magazine editor (Saturday Night) and a CBC Radio producer (Morningside). He has kept in touch with his former bandmates and visits Prague annually. It was there, several years ago, that he met Stoppard, who was gathering material for a new play. Wilson became his consultant on the Plastic People and got a glimpse into the playwright's mania for detail. When he was writing Rock 'n' Roll, Stoppard would make transatlantic calls to Wilson in the wee hours, wanting to know, for example, about the layout of a certain room in which the band had played.

"We also had long discussions about the possible motives that the Plastics had for disbanding in 1988," Wilson says. "He was really trying hard to get inside the mindset of these kids. When you see the play, you realize that he managed to do it. It's an amazing feat of imagination."

Rock 'n' Roll premiered at London's Royal Court Theatre in 2006, then transferred to the West End. It made its Broadway debut the next year. The Canadian Stage/Citadel co-production, directed by the Stratford Festival's Donna Feore, opens Oct. 1, but Wilson won't be in Toronto for it. He'll be in Prague, where he is receiving the Czech Foreign Ministry's Gratias Agit award in recognition of his lifelong devotion to promoting Czech arts abroad.

Wilson says he saw the acclaimed London production of the play, but the most moving one he's witnessed was at the Narodni Divadlo, Prague's landmark national theatre, in 2007. That version featured the actual Plastic People of the Universe, who played before and during the performance.

"That was quite an emotional experience for me," he says. "This is a band that, under the Communists, were not even allowed to play in the dingiest of small-town community centres. And here they were, vindicated by playing in the largest theatre in the country."

Rock 'n' Roll runs at Toronto's Canadian Stage Company, Oct.1-24, and at Edmonton's Citadel Theatre, Nov. 7-29.

Martin Morrow writes about the arts for CBCNews.ca.