Josef Stehlík

“I started playing music and doing theatre when I was still at school; later I could think only of theatre. I founded the travelling cabaret show Kočka [Cat; but also an abbreviation of ‘KOČovný KAbaret’, the Czech for ‘travelling cabaret’ - transl.]. Each year [1966-1968] we spent the two months of the summer holidays touring Bohemia and Moravia, we did ‘Culture for a Bob’ [an approximation of ‘bůra’, slang for a five-crown coin, very roughly comparable in value to a shilling at the time - transl.], which was still quite a bit of money back then. The Russians came, that was a political cabaret, and that put an end to it. They confiscated our moving can, which we had converted for sleeping and performing. They took our instruments and sound system, which we’d bought for our hard-earned money. We just weren’t allowed to do theatre. [...] I was a thorn in the eye of this one culture boss in Karlovy Vary, who had a wonderful name - Joža Lokajíček [in Czech the name has a quaint, fairy-tale ring to it - transl.]. Lokajíček found out we were playing in Prague, so he [decided to] ban me from sculpting and the like. So we played in Brno and Olomouc. My brother and sister stayed in Switzerland, where they had been on holiday. I didn’t want to leave, I thought someone had to stay and do something. After two years I understood there was nothing to be done.”

“I received a summons to the police, why had I said that the Communists were so and so back in Velké Hranice. I didn’t even remember that we’d performed in Velké Hranice. So I tried to get out of the country. I bought a package tour from Čedok [a famous nationwide travel agency of the time - transl.], I requested a foreign exchange permit and got a letter of invitation from my sister in Basel. The answer was always nyet, nyet, nyet, so I didn’t succeed until after ten years, in 1978, when I escaped and stayed here in Switzerland. Back in Bohemia I wasn’t allowed to work as a sculptor, but I arrived here on Thursday, and on Monday I started working as a stone carver under what is now my best friend, Ludwig Stocker. So I can work in the field I loved and continue to love.”

“Back then in Teplice they had a cabaret called KKK (Koenigsmark, Kučera, Kryl). Alex Koenigsmark and I were constantly in touch, we were supposed to perform there once. That’s where I met Karel Kryl, his songs were brilliant, no one knew them. We played Kryl’s songs in our theatre. Karel Kryl sang his song Bratříčku, zavírej vrátka [Little Brother, Close the Gate] for the first time with us in Ústí nad Labem.”