Česky
Was it your idea to play, or were you nudged by your surroundings?
I toyed with the idea of acting in amateur theatre for a long time. I even once wrote a letter to the Exile in Pardubice (a small original amateur theatre), but in the end I didn't dare to come to the rehearsal. And then one fine day I went to the theatre with my friend. It turned out that her friend was sitting next to the seat, and she announced towards us, "I see you have a friend with you, would she like to play theatre with us in Heřmaňák? We're looking for someone right now." Nothing is a coincidence. It just came to me. Word got around and I've been here for ten years.
Have you had an actress in you since you were a kid?
Yeah, yeah. I was told I could be heard and seen everywhere. I'm an extrovert. A Gemini who likes to show off. But it's one thing to talk about it and another to go on stage and try it out.
What did you have to learn as an amateur? How are you doing with, say, your delivery? Or how do you manage to fake the same surprise ten times in a row?
That's why I took playwriting classes here and practiced. Like how to drop my voice at the period. I'm still learning. Not everyone has it down pat.
You confessed to me that our interview made you nervous. How can you be? You, of all people?
You're performing in front of people, but you're still scared. You want to be perfect.
I take it you're not afraid of being looked at, but of messing up?
Yes, I am. The stage fright where your guts are shaking, that's what I had in the beginning. I'm over it now. Now I'm afraid I'm gonna ruin it for my colleagues. They tell me not to take myself so seriously, that it's no big deal. But I'm always having a terrible time. It's best to let it flow naturally. Like now, when I'm out with you guys. And our principal is an older gentleman and sometimes he forgets his lines, so you have to improvise. I mean, I think sometimes he does it on purpose.
Maybe he knows you'll catch on.
But not always! But I'm definitely gonna get my strength back here. Everything falls off me and I can relax mentally. When you work in oncology, you need a valve.
I'd say you have to expend a lot of energy at work, you're charging patients.
Mm-hmm. Patients come in scared. Now, you know, there's 30 of them sitting in the waiting room because we have two radiation rooms and there's an outpatient clinic. An anxious patient needs to be relaxed, reassured, made to laugh, even though not everyone is capable of that. The energy of fear is heavy and creeping. You can literally feel it physically. Now imagine being in that energy all day. I comfort them with a word, a look, sometimes I hold their hand and stroke them, I pass on the energy, but I have to keep some of it. And where does one keep getting that tremendous, amazing power and solar energy to make patients feel good?
I see... Hence the theatre and the healing laughter.
I'm looking for something that recharges me. I'm going outdoors. Or just to the theater, among healthy people. I want laughter and merriment. I like to laugh and I like to give laughter, but I have to get that joy somewhere. Sometimes I come home from a hard day's work squeezed like a lemon.
Is there anything about your work that you enjoy the most? Is it even possible?
(takes a deep breath) I wanted to leave so many times. Many times. I'm telling you straight up. What I enjoy is that Mr. Owner supplies us with modern technology, so I have to learn new things all the time. I started out on a cobalt irradiator, manually twisting screens. Now you come in, you take the hand controller, you do it that way, and you're done. That's a huge motivator for me because you don't get tired. It always takes me a while to get familiar with a new machine, and I tell my younger colleagues who have it in their arm: let me, with my common sense, touch it a few times. I give it a go every time, and I'm glad I know how to operate all the instruments the girls and I take turns on. There's only a few of us. I hear the Starfleet... (laughs)
You told me that you also deal cards in your spare time. What interests you about that?
I'm interested in things between heaven and earth. I'll calm down and look under the hood. It's a matter of the heart for me. Some people just rely on reason. He often says to you, "Do it because other people do it." "It should be done." "What will people think?" But when you calm down and nudge it closer to the heart, you find it's about something else. Because your mind leads you somewhere else than your heart. And often people just need someone to talk to over cards. They need a hug with a word.
So you're actually doing again what you do in your job...
You're doing your job. But I treat them differently than with radiation.
You're actually glowing! Not just with the machines, but with your energy. That's an unusually beautiful ambiguity.
Yeah, people tell me that. I often hear from patients, "Oh, nurse, I saw you in the CT scanner, you're such a sunshine." For me, it's rewarding when they say goodbye to me after thirty radiation treatments and confide that they felt they were in good hands.
So let's get back to the theater. How many of you are in the Heřman company?
About twelve. All enthusiasts of various stripes. Four pensioners, three working women, two women on maternity leave and college boys. Our biggest problem is getting everyone together once a week. That's why we can only rehearse one game a year at most. That's all we can do. In Heřmanov Městec we will do at most one reprise (this year's one with the current play, The Rejžák from Prague, will be there on April 8) and then we will take it five times around the surrounding towns.
You rehearse a play all year that you only do five times?
Yes, that's right.
How is amateur theatre different from "normal" theatre?
As actors, we don't get any money at all. We do charge admission to our plays, but it only pays our travel expenses. It's just a hobby. We play without costumes and we don't worry too much about props.
Don't you miss it then to get into character?
No, I don't. The set for us is a free stage, a chair or a bench. Sometimes we paint the set, like three posters. It's also so we don't have to go with a moving truck. So that we have a minimum of stuff. But of course we also have some hats, guns or wooden swords. And we have beads for the princess made out of yellow kinder eggs. We'll make something and we'll leave a lot to the imagination of the viewer.
What roles have you played?
I've been a member of a theatre company, basically myself. Then the lady with the cigar. A fairy. I played a cat in a fairy tale. Then a farting girl. Also a peasant or a pregnant woman on an island where the castaways landed.
How do you choose the plays you decide to rehearse?
We're thinking about making sure the game has enough characters so that we can all be realized. But sometimes it's enough for someone to play the grim reaper and just walk across the stage with a scythe. If someone has been in the company for 35 years, they've had so many roles that they like to take a break.
Do you have anything that you do to get you going before a show?
When the whole house is packed and you can feel it shaking, we'll get together here in the dressing room and sing one of our songs. The principal picks up his guitar and starts "In the theater, the world spins like a mirror..." Then we wish each other boo hoo hoo hoo and off we go!
