Vladimír Stoklasa

Once, I wrote a play called Tadpoles for my children’s theater. We were invited for a show to Nymburk and so we had a rehearsal on Sunday morning. And all of a sudden, the doors opened and a group of around twenty people entered. So I stopped the rehearsal and asked: “What are you doing here?” They just said: “Don’t worry about us, we don’t want to disturb you, we just will rehearse the Beggar’s Opera after you. We’re looking for someone who would take care of us and let us rehearse. It was an excuse, actually. But then, director Krob introduced himself saying: I am Krob, from Na Zábradlí, so if you need anything for the stage set, let me know. I said I was fine with that as I was working with Milan Čech. “Milan Čech?” he asked. “He is working in our theater!” Milan was just doing them the stage set for Shakespeare’s The Tempest. I told them I have a children’s theater company and invited them to join us. Then, they invited us to see their show. After we finished, they did their rehearsal and then I went to their show. I arrived a couple of minutes late and the piece had already started. When I was going through the court, it was full of cars. So I open the door – the hall is crowded. I stood by the stove, and suddenly I saw that there was Pavel Kohout standing right by my side. During the break, the lights went on and I could see: Svitáček, Landovský, Chadimová, Tříska, and many other TV faces that I didn’t know by name. And then, some boy approached me: “Mr. Stoklasa, the actors would like you to stay until the end and tell them how you liked it.” In the first half, I was still convinced that I am looking at a slightly modified Brecht. But in the second half, it was one whip to the regime after another. After the play was over, they came all over me and a told them: “Boys and girls, I wish you all the best so that you don’t get locked up until the morning!” Once I said it, they burst out laughing. They knew very well what I didn’t know. Even Václav Havel was among them, but I didn’t know him back then. The whole thing was organized by Hraběta. He was a driver at Xaverov and he knew me through my wife Jarka. After all, it became clear that I was involved in this show, but there was also Milena Špačková and her husband Jirka on that show and she protected me. She was a protégé of the wife of the Communist official Buchar and told her, that I was on the show until the end. The next day, a friend of mine came that the whole On Zábradlí theater was busted. “So when they come to you, tell them how it was, straight, there is no reason to lie about this.” But they didn’t come. They came to that Mrs. Buchar, but she loved me and told them that I was there but didn’t like it at all and left after the first half.

"There were three theater companies here in Horní Počernice. At Chvaly, there was Hájek, and in Počernice there was Tyl and Beseda. It all merged under Nové divadlo (New Theater) in 1948. At the time, there was a new generation of students that was rehearsing pieces such as Pirandello’s Each In His Own Way or Manon Lescaut. They wanted to do Cyrano de Bergerac, but then February 1948 came and it brought purges to the theater. So it all fell apart. I read in the local chronicle that out of the former 158 members, just about fifteen remained. Then, comrade Buchar had it renamed The Theater of Czechoslovakian-Russian Friendship. The Friendship only lasted five years until it became known as Beseda. It worked like that until 1985, when the comrades were doing a ball at the Čelikovský Hotel and Mr. Špinka bored a hole in the main joist, wanting to mount a giant shining star there. The joist cracked and it was not safe to hold any events there anymore. So the inn worked as before, but the theatre hall was closed and we lost a place for performing."

You were born in Horní Počernice in 1933. How did you as a child perceive the pre-war times, and what came after Munich and the occupation? "That was interesting. My mum was born in České Budějovice. My grandpa and grandma were born there too and at the time, everybody spoke German in that area. So my mum knew how to speak German too. She was one of five sisters: one died, one stayed here and the other two went to Budapest for work. When they came back, some of their friends told them that Paris was even better. So they went there in 1925. One stayed there forever and the other returned as a repatriate after 1945. And the sister who stayed abroad had left a large leather suitcase at our home. The Khodl family were our neighbors. They helped paratroopers by concealing their parachutes. They put the parachutes into a coffin and brought them out as a dead body. But there was also the Jelinek family living in their house. They were good people, but Mrs. Jelinek allegedly turned the Khodls in to the police. So all three members of the Kodl family ended up in Auschwitz. At the time the Germans were searching our whole neighborhood. Two of the Gestapo officers came to our house and did a search. Fortunately, my mum could speak German with them. They asked about the suitcase and she explained it belonged to her sister who was currently in France. She didn’t have the key, so the officer only shook it, and as there was just kitchen water in it, they left. Then we learned that had they found something there, the whole neighborhood would be sent away. So this was my childhood. But also, my childhood was the street. When it started to rain, we played with little ponds. The streets back then were not concrete but only dusty. I was living on the top of a hill and made my pond first. When it was full, it ruptured and the water flowed into a lower pond and so on down the corner, where it ran into someone’s basement. So my childhood was also full of these boyish mischiefs."

"My first performance in the theater in Horní Počernice ended up a terrible disaster. My friend, Jarda Žebrů, was directing Oscar Wilde’s Ideal Husband. It is a beautiful salon comedy, great humor, English wit. I came in for a rehearsal and by coincidence someone just brought the news that the actor playing Lord Chiltern got pneumonia. The performance was scheduled within a week. And I came there and all the women who were rummaging through the costumes (what a beauty, Art Nouveau, great hats!) jumped at me and prompted me: 'Dáda, take it!' I had no idea what it was about. But they were calming me: 'No worries, you’ll handle it!' Well, they simply talked me into it. And I said yes! Then I came home and opened the book: There was Chiltern on page ten, page fifteen… I wouldn’t get offstage for two hours. And it was due within a week. So I kept the book open in my drawer at work, with the calculator making noise just to make it sound like I was actually working. And I really made it in that week; I swotted it up. I say I swotted it up, because that was all. And to make matters even worse, another actor, Bohouš Poštolka, was taken to hospital. Here comes another replacement – and he was just such a duffer! They put his chair right in front of the prompter and Mariánka was telling him what to say and showing him who to say it to. The audience could hear that as far as the fifteenth row and they went crazy, the people laughed so hard because it was funny as hell! Not because of Wilde, though - it was funny because of the way we were doing it all. I was ashamed to step into light in public for a month afterwards. So this was my beginning and my terrible disaster."