"[The exhibiting photographer] took great pictures and called me because we knew each other and said, 'Hey guys, you have this band now, I heard about it. I'm having an opening at Fotochema...' At the time, Fotochema was by the Elbe Bridge. I told him he was out of luck because we had just cancelled the band. He said we couldn't do it for him. He said let's go over there, get our instruments and play something. I thought it would be a problem, we'd get booed, we had no repertoire. And in those two instruments... I couldn't bring the piano. I could only bring a clarinet or some 'recorders'. Finally he talked me into it and Martin [Brunner] and I said, 'It's a lottery bet, we'll just go. You take the flute, I'll take the clarinet and some cymbals.' Martin calls it 'the mists of the mountains', we'll improvise there. We came in and started playing something, we didn't know what it was going to be. I started rustling the cymbals and stuff... They clapped, they didn't boo us and it seemed to be a success. Even when the opening was over, a guy came up to us and asked if we had a record. We stayed completely dead. And we were like, 'Aha! That was the birth of duo Ventil."
"We were just a kind of rescue for them, because on the one hand we were going out and we were famous since 1978, when we won some worldwide festival UNIMA, where the whole puppetry world gathered, so everybody knew about us and then we were automatically invited to all these festivals, we were already known. That was one thing. So if we were cancelled, that would be like that: And where's DRAK Theatre, what's going on? So it didn't work. And secondly, we were bringing money, the Western ones, weren't we? And they needed that too, and that wasn't a small thing then."
"So it happened that the Drak Theatre, apart from an old, old economist who was in the Party but then left, had no one in the Party - including the director - it was the only institution in the country without a single Communist. They knew that, of course, and they always came there and begged in all sorts of ways. We had a favourite excuse that it was such a responsible matter that we didn't feel up to it. That's what everybody did most of the time. And they said at least let the SSM, or it was called the CSM then, right. So we sort of set it up for show, but then it ended right away. They didn't do anything about it. And then we got into some trouble where they threatened us. For example, an actor made some reference or something in the lyrics, made some joke about something like that. People laughed, and coincidentally there was a 'cultured tiger' from the city, it was some kind of premiere. He totally flew out of the river when it was over and shouted, 'Show me the text, show me the text!' And now, of course, he couldn't find it, and he was saying that he was going to destroy us, that we basically didn't exist anymore. His name was Pravda, it was a beautiful name. He was some kind of a builder and he was a chief over culture, a builder over culture."
Jiří Vyšohlíd was born on February 16, 1943 in Hradec Králové. After studying puppetry at the DAMU (1960-1964), he worked for a year in the Central Bohemian Puppet Theatre in Kladno and then completed his basic military service in the Vít Nejedlý Army Art Ensemble. In 1967, at the invitation of director Miroslav Vildman, he joined the Drak Theatre, where he still works as an actor, director, composer of incidental music and stage designer. He made his debut as a director in 1991 with Nalaďte si forličku (Tune Your Fork), followed later by Černošská pohádka (Black Fairy Tale). He was a member of several bands, in the 1980s he co-founded with Martin Brunner the jazz duo Ventil, which won first place at the MJF in Karlovy Vary. In 2014 he formed another jazz band Dragon’s Brew, this time with his son and other musicians. In addition to his original work, he has arranged for Dragon such works as The Bartered Bride, Sleeping Beauty, Shepherdess Wandering to April, and The Song of Life - A Plague on Your Families! In 2015, he received the Thalia Award for his lifetime of mastery in puppet theatre. He is the father of three children - Petr, Jana and Jiří. In 2025 he lived in Hradec Králové.
The end of the Dragon's Brew performance in front of the Drak Theatre, Jiří Vyšohlíd Sr. (second from right), Jiří Vyšohlíd Jr. (second from left), 2015, Hradec Králové
The end of the Dragon's Brew performance in front of the Drak Theatre, Jiří Vyšohlíd Sr. (second from right), Jiří Vyšohlíd Jr. (second from left), 2015, Hradec Králové
