2024-06-04 13:18:28
Theater actor Jan Schmid, founder and director of Studio Ypsilon, died this Monday on the age of 87. Kateřina Kovandová from this Prague scene introduced it on Tuesday. Schmid left not lengthy after he and his colleagues commemorated the sixtieth anniversary of the founding of the theater, which was directed by Evald Schorm or Jan Grossman and whose performing ensemble had the very best focus of excellent Czech comedians on the time.
The anniversary was commemorated within the spring by an exhibition on the Prague Home of Pictures. The historical past of the famend scene was advised by means of archival pictures and posters of the founder Jan Schmid.
“It is a satisfaction, particularly for me. Ypsilonka, so far as I can bear in mind, has at all times existed below such an umbrella of freedom, which I take into account a miracle to at all times preserve it,” recalled the director, creator, artist, playwright and actor Jan Schmid again in March. He based Ypsilon in 1964 and remained its director till the tip of his life.
Though Oldřich Kaiser with Jiří Lábus, Marek Eben, Luděk Sobota, Martin Dejdar and Jiří Schmitzer successively performed in Ypsilonka, its founder by no means needed to do well-liked theater. “I did not even take pleasure in it. However for an individual to depart the theater and really feel that they actually got here to phrases with what they skilled,” stated Schmid.
Studio Ypsilon was based in Liberec in 1963 as an unbiased experimental group of Jan Schmid, from the start till now the chief of the ensemble and the creator of its type and poetics. He fashioned it throughout his navy service. “There was an terrible lot lacking within the society and the theater on the time. I felt that theater ought to be considered in a very completely different means. I used to be irritated by the inflated psychology and, for instance, faux pauses,” Schmid stated in an interview for Hospodářské noviny.
Beneath the title Ypsilon, the ensemble existed since 1964, 5 years later it grew to become skilled. His artistic technique has at all times been collective improvisation. The ensemble labored programmatically with managed likelihood and infinity. “Improvisation was forbidden below socialism, however after some effort we received permission. However we needed to file every part and submit it to the censors,” talked about Schmid.
Jan Schmid within the movie We Eat the Fruit of the Paradise Bushes from 1969. | Photograph: Bonton Residence Video
He additionally strove to combine all professions and musicians become actors. “Even the playwright Zdeněk Hořínek performed, and it turned out that he’s extra convincing than any actor, as a result of he’s extraordinarily genuine. After all, he could not be, for instance, Macbeth, who was performed by Jiří Lábus. He wasn’t geared up for that,” he stated.
Because the finish of 1978, Studio Ypsilon has been based mostly in Prague, within the early functionalist Olympic Palace at Spálená 16. There, video games resembling Dispatch and others on wheels, Voni sou a very good boy or Anabáze by Jaroslav Hašek, Amerika, Somebody likes it scorching or variations of Smetana’s Bought have been born brides and Dvořák’s Rusalka. At first, the studio was hooked up to the Jiří Wolker Theatre, in 1990 it grew to become an unbiased stage.
Outdoors the theatres, Jan Schmid wrote books, illustrated them himself, drew posters for productions, appeared on tv and radio. As an actor, he was, for instance, a mysterious seducer in Věra Chytilová’s parable The Fruit of the Paradise Eats Bushes and a sociologist in her Kalamita. He additionally appeared within the movies The Parson’s Finish directed by Evald Schorm, The Vampire from Ferat by Juraj Herz or The Fortress by Drahomíra Vihanová.
Schmid invented a novel technique of theatrical montage. Amongst others, he staged Jarry King Ubu, Macbeth, Woody Allen’s God and others. The husband of the actress Jana Synková labored as an artist creating posters, e book illustrations, costume design and scenography. Musical accompaniment at all times performed an enormous position in his performs. “I take music as one thing that helps an individual reside. What provides an expertise, what clears the top and heals, what deepens emotionally,” he defined why, amongst different issues, he staged operas in a novel means.
“You are able to do good theater all of your life, however it’s a must to be forward of the instances and slightly forward of it, it’s a must to stay a baby in your self and have a uncooked soul,” Schmid was satisfied. Many performing stars grew up within the atmosphere of distinctive collective improvisation organized by him. “You need to have the strategy of managed improvisation firmly in your fingers. Figuratively talking, like on the reins. Even on these reins, nonetheless, it’s a must to really feel fully free. And have a little bit of the sensation of a magician who cannot be shocked,” he described.
He was born in a searching lodge in Táborsk on June 14, 1936, and the theater attracted him from an early age. “In my deepest childhood, I performed a number of puppet theater, made puppets and decorations myself, invented video games,” recalled the educated glass painter, who first grew to become the designer and director of the North Bohemian Puppet Theater and later the Naivní Theater.
Amongst different issues, he wrote prose straddling actuality and mystification, resembling With eyes on prime of my head or How silly I used to be. In December 2018, he christened his e book Improvisation, likelihood and different prospects, through which he elevates improvisation to a primary means of perceiving the world and encourages higher mindfulness. He additionally printed travelogue options from Ypsilonka’s tour all over the world.
Even on the opening of this 12 months’s exhibition commemorating Ypsilonka’s jubilee, Jan Schmid didn’t wish to reminisce an excessive amount of. “I at all times just like the work that I do and that’s proper now and presents me with an issue. It’s typically unsolvable, however mainly it’s at all times by some means comparable. There may be some nostalgia there, that we have been younger, however that is all. I want to proceed creating,” he stated.
“I suppose I’ve a clique, it even appears to me that age permits me to have a deeper perspective and uncover new prospects. You at all times experience the identical observe for some time and repeat your self. The essential factor is that there’s a swap that strikes you to the subsequent observe,” he claimed versatile artist. For a few years, he handed on his concept of the world, theater and life to the scholars of Prague’s DAMU, the place he labored within the division of other and puppet theater.
In 2017, he obtained the Thálie Award for extraordinary creative contribution to Czech theater artwork.
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