2024-06-01 23:03:20
The life story of director and actor Jan Kačer was not only a lengthy checklist of achievements and awards, because it might sound when studying company obituaries. The theater and movie idol of the Sixties needed to take care of inventive and life twists and turns after his stardom. As a creator and an individual, he didn’t cease trying to find the which means of what destiny gave him, he actually admitted his weak spot, doubts, and feelings till the top.
The final farewell to Kačer, who died final week on the age of 87, will happen on June 5 in Prague’s Nationwide Theatre, the place of his final directorial and appearing engagement. Paradoxically, the place, based on him, “theatre started to betray him”.
Founder
For some motive, the commercial metropolis of Ostrava turned deadly for the native of Holice. The idiosyncratic viewers there, which values braveness, truthfulness and humor above all else, “conquered” for the primary time with classmates from DAMU throughout a five-year engagement within the Petr Bezruč Theater on the flip of the Nineteen Fifties and Sixties. Along with his ensemble, he stood on the very beginnings of this scene, passing on the genes of a theater that relentlessly follows its personal path and isn’t afraid to play brazenly about what its creators and viewers reside by.
The character that Kačer printed on the “Handless” throughout a number of intensive years determines the profile of the theater to at the present time.
He began within the Prague Drama Membership with a number of of “his” actors in 1965, understanding that he would even be doing theater there with a alternative of associated personalities. At the moment already as a film star. What should have been his charisma when, in 1963, the administrators Jan Kadár and Elmar Klos discovered him in Ostrava, the place at the moment it was a six- or seven-hour prepare trip from the metropolis, and forged him within the lead function of their movie Dying Says Engelchen, which then received on the Worldwide Movie Competition in Moscow.
Věra Galatíková, Petr Čepek and Jan Kačer within the movie Valley of the Bees from 1967. | Photograph: Etiquette movie
In 1964, Kačer received the lead function in one other important title of the Czech new wave, Evald Schorm’s debut Kádí den udvahu. Three years later, when he was already directing on the Drama Membership of his well-known Revizor, he concurrently shot one of the vital lovely Czech movies The Valley of the Bees with František Vláčil and with Václav Vorlíček the Bond parody The Finish of Agent W4C by means of Mr. Foustka’s canine.
Due to his movie successes, all of a sudden “Honza z Holic”, as he stated himself, “who had by no means even been to the GDR, discovered himself in competitors with world actors, all of a sudden I used to be in Rome, behind me was Paris or New York”. In an American evaluation, a critic in contrast him to Marlon Brando, solely he has the benefit of being extra mental.
The drama membership was characterised by the actor and translator Leoš Suchařípa as “a theater of actors impressed by administrators”. Jan Kačer, co-determining its course with Ladislav Smoček and Jaroslav Vostrý, had the benefit of being each. His brooding, empathetic and lyrical soul gravitated in direction of Russian authors. He entertained the viewers with a weird cartoon in his well-known course of Gogol’s Inspector, ready an exciting interpretation of Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard, performed the assassin Raskolnikov in Evald Schorm’s manufacturing based mostly on Dostoevsky’s novel Crime and Punishment.
“We revered human life and the richness of human coexistence. Each efficiency was like a joint mass,” he recalled in an interview from current years. “Jiřina Třebická was fully unknown, however when she performed Soňa in Crime and Punishment, it was one thing unimaginable. She was sitting on the stage, sporting a white shirt, she was so skinny, no breasts… She was so pathetic. And I performed a assassin. And when she instructed me “Go, bow down on all 4 sides and say: I’ve killed! And for those who do, God will increase you up!”, I cried each present… And other people with me.”
When Jan Kačer tried to explain in an interview what made the then Drama Membership and its actors like Josef Abrhám, Josef Somr, Pavel Landovský, Helena Růžičková, Libuše Šafránková or Nina Divíšková so particular, it appeared atypical. “Absolute emphasis on fact, authenticity, perfection and element work. We took all the pieces critically, we dug deep, we did not attempt to replace something, quite the opposite, to get nearer to what’s within the sport, completely get to what the creator meant , however to carry it into the context of the occasions, to carry it to what we, as actors, nonetheless give it some thought,” he stated.
It was a confrontation of the actors’ private themes with authorial and social themes, which may naturally be achieved between personalities who share not less than the same outlook on life. “The drama membership was a analysis theater about human prospects,” summed up the director.
After the Russian occupation, with the so-called normalization originally of the 70s, the Drama Membership in its authentic type ended. It solely took 5 – 6 years for him to grow to be a theater legend without end. “After which they broke us up and it by no means got here again. In all places I attempted to someway uncover the rules of appearing, in all places I paid for a director who is aware of find out how to work with actors. I attempted in all places, virtually nowhere did it work.” The roles I performed within the movie remained, the theater disappeared, said Kačer just a little bitterly.
Jan Kačer and Jiřina Třebická within the manufacturing of Crime and Punishment directed by Evald Schorm on the Prague Drama Membership, 1966. | Photograph: CTK
An exile
In 1976, he got here to Ostrava once more, this time to work on the then State Theatre, and for the subsequent ten years he commuted by prepare between his household in Prague and work. It was a return, however it was compelled by circumstances – he had a political background and his comrades would not let him work elsewhere.
If there’s discuss of “normalization grey” in reference to this era, it utilized to Ostrava many occasions over, which the creator of this textual content can verify from her personal expertise. The theater there was actually not one of many worst, like “Bezruci” on the time, when Kačer joined them on the finish of the Nineteen Fifties, however the drama was carried out right here conventionally, there was no lack of well-proven interpretation clichés and so-called “marking” or pretending to behave with out interior content material.
Jan Kačer and Táňa Fischerová in a manufacturing of Chekhov’s Black Monk in Prague’s Laterná magice, 1983. | Photograph: CTK
When he labored, Jan Kačer slept within the theater or at his mates’ homes, as if he had refused to simply accept the mining city as his residence, albeit briefly. Even in these exhausting situations, he was capable of create and encourage others. His first premiere, Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night time’s Dream, was already an occasion. Pure theatricality invaded the scene, no psychologizing experiences, however relaxed comedic creations, the enjoyment of play. And beneath them an odd, melancholy unhappiness.
Kačer collaborated on this after which most different Ostrava productions with folks with whom he had work and friendship ties from earlier than, as if he wanted to take care of continuity along with his “former” life not less than on this manner. Otakar Schindler took care of the inventive type of the productions, the motion idea was taken care of by the actor Václav Martinec – he met each of them already in his first engagement in Ostrava, and he knew the composer Petr Skoumal from the Drama Membership.
In the meantime, in Ostrava they opened the Chamber Scene within the puppet theater, the place Kačer carried out Rostand’s Cyrano from Bergerac with Jan Vlasák within the title function. A perpetually sold-out manufacturing, to which the folks of Ostrava went as if on a pilgrimage, and the place the mental viewers of Prague gathered. The actors in Cyrano occupied the staircase and the stuccoed lobby with etudes, songs and stylized dance. The painted backdrops on the stage created a baroque perspective. And in that interval exaggeration, the story of a swaggering, loving soul came about, who is prepared to surrender her life for her goals, wit, comedy, and above all, love.
On the identical stage, Kačer offered Turgenev’s quick story The Wrestler in a dramatization by Antonín Máša, screenwriter of the movie Each Day of Braveness. The story of the love triangle performed by Jitka Smutna, Jan Vlasák and Zdenek Žák was a fascinating drama even on a extra normal, philosophical stage. The battle of energy and tradition, a charismatic macho with a cultured educated man for love, raised so many questions.
“I did not attempt to criticize them for what they could not do or converse badly or have sibilants or be small and needs to be massive. I centered on what they have been good at and praised that… These folks have been actually rising earlier than my eyes. No due to me, however as a result of they all of a sudden felt that they have been being relied on, that they’d confidence,” Kačer described his method to the forged.
Tomáš Töpfer, who belonged to it, says that it was like when the solar shines above the clouds of smog. Jan Vlasák remembers that Kačer gave him the muse of theater – self-confidence. And stage grasp Jan Benek reminds us that the native of Holica launched the strategy of teamwork to the theater.
“An actor, that was a miracle, Ostrava the second biggest expertise in life,” the director summed up his mission there. It’s apparent from the surface that these have been exhausting years and the vitality with which he entered the Ostrava drama step by step pale away. It’s onerous to say whether or not his subsequent engagement at Prague’s Vinohrady Theater within the late Nineteen Eighties ought to nonetheless be thought-about exile or a wonderful return. However it’s positively doable to state that he didn’t betray himself.
“All 4 of Kačer’s productions of the ‘Czech program’ made a big influence within the public area, not solely within the theater, however in the entire of society’s rising self-awareness and the braveness to take a stand and stand by one’s phrase,” writes Vinohrady dramaturge Jan Vedral in his memoirs.
Deputies of the Federal Meeting Jan Kačer and Rudolf Hrušínský throughout a session break, November 1991. | Photograph: CTK
A revered bard
“When an individual is humble to life, then in truth he has to take all the pieces that life brings him as whether it is for his profit. Life is a privilege, life will not be an obligation, we received that by likelihood. And I attempted desperately to he did not take it as a punishment, so I took it as a part of life,” Jan Kačer regarded again on the Nineteen Seventies and Nineteen Eighties.
After the November revolution, wherein he actively participated in composed evenings in Vinohrady and journeys to debates within the areas, he tried his hand at political engagement within the Federal Meeting for 2 years, within the following years he ran twice for the Senate. For 4 years he taught appearing at DAMU, for instance Martin Finger or Roman Zach.
As early as 1990, he was engaged within the Nationwide Theatre. His first course in a historic constructing was a dramatization of Vančura’s first novel Pekař Jan Marhoul, which he staged, not very efficiently, already on the finish of the Ostrava period. He forged the actors he introduced from there: Jan Vlasák and Jitka Smutna. He tried what labored for him, drawing the viewers into the motion already within the lobby. He gave himself on the market and smelled of bread. However the idea didn’t match the area, time or temper of the viewers, the destiny of the baker Marhoul left the viewers and critics chilly. It was in all probability the very first time that Jan Kačer hit a wall.
Till 1997, he directed various productions at Národní: performs by Josef Topol, Ferdinand Peroutka, Henrik Ibsen, William Shakespeare, Arthur Miller and Vasilij Sigarev. It was an excellent job, however not distinctive. On the primary scene, he was extra profitable as an actor, in 2015 he left the engagement. A yr later, he tried to return to the Drama Membership, the place he acted in his play Late Summer season Wedding ceremony directed by Smoček.
In 2003, he printed the primary balancing ebook Jedu okay máma, adopted by three others: Mírnou oklikou, Okay přítelům and Zadní vrata. The final one the yr earlier than. “I began writing when the theater started to betray me, after I failed in it,” he stated in one of many late interviews.
It occurred to Jan Kačer – and he was actually not alone amongst Czech theater administrators, as a result of success in that career is fragile – that he didn’t meet the correct group of actors, place, time for the third time. He was the one one I bear in mind who had the braveness to say it.
There was nice energy within the openness and perspective with which he mirrored on his life lately. He remained true to himself on this, as his mom, whom he beloved a lot, put in his coronary heart. He accepted his destiny because it was, with a sure melancholy, maybe a slight bitterness, but additionally with the information that it belongs to life, and with humor: “I actually needed to, and I used to be satisfied on my own that if I learn rather a lot after I’m outdated, I am going to write a handbook for outdated males and outdated women on find out how to see and perceive outdated age.”
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