The Curtain Opens

''What we have here is not political freedom,'' says Laszlo Krasznahorkai, 36, the thin, goateed author of the novel The Satan Tango, who lives with his family in the artist's colony of Szentendre, about 30 miles north of Budapest. ''I would call it political chaos. Because Hungarian culture was suppressed for so long, we can't just start with a tabula rasa. The same people are still there, after all.'' Krasznahorkai had his own solution to censorship. ''I always wrote what I wanted,'' he says. ''I just didn't publish it.''

Five hundred miles to the northwest is the socialist-spartan Theater am Schiffbauerdamm, home since 1954 to the Berliner Ensemble, founded by Marxist playwright Bertolt Brecht. The ensemble was one of several Berlin theaters that called for the mass demonstration of last Nov. 4, which led to the opening of the Wall five days later. ''Because of Brecht, we always had greater latitude than the other theaters,'' Manfred Wekwerth, the ensemble's director, says.

Still, there were limits. The theater's production of Volker Braun's Lenin's Death was banned in 1975 (it showed Stalin's rival Trotsky in a favorable light). Another modern work, Heiner Muller's Germania: Death in Berlin, also was banned. But today, both plays are in the company's repertory.

''No question, there is more freedom now,'' says Dieter Mann, 49, director of East Germany's Deutsches Theater, which lies just over the Wall from the capitalist glitter of West Berlin. ''In principle, we could always do what we wanted to. But in practice...'' Before the Honecker government fell late last year, Mann had to meet with the minister of culture to get approval for his artistic seasons; today, he doesn't. So pervasive was the suspicion that even a classic like Goethe's Egmont — about a Netherlands patriot who battled the occupying Spanish in the 16th century — or Beethoven's only opera, Fidelio, a hymn to freedom, had to be approached carefully. ''Remember, when you stage Egmont here, you are still living in a city occupied by four powers. And the chorus of prisoners in Fidelio of course has a different meaning to us than it does in the West.''

Walfriede Schmitt, 46, has the name of a Valkyrie and the sturdy build of a farmer. An actress with the Volksbuhne (People's Stage) since 1966, she believes artists must get involved in the political process to make sure their freedom is never circumscribed again.

''The tragedy of communism was that it cut off parts of your personality,'' she says. ''When I went to Vancouver last year, at first I couldn't believe how happy everybody seemed. I thought there must be something wrong with them. Then I realized something was wrong with me.''

Now acting in a play called Gorbachev-Fragment, Schmitt finds herself more active politically as well.

Recently, she became the leader of the Trade Union of the Arts, which represents artists throughout East Germany. ''We used to live under the pressure of ideology,'' she notes. ''Now this block is gone. Now we have to live with the possibilities. You can't just keep banging people on the heads all the time and say, 'Think properly.' They have to be able to think for themselves.''