Solange uns Zeit bleibt* - As Long As We Have Time

Better now than never, because sometimes one has to learn the hardest possible way.

*title of a compilation of political essays by Jan Procházka - they are still very up-to-date and highly recommended!

Measure for Measure

In the late 1990s I was at exhibition of works of art fromthe collection of the museum of Capodimonte, Naples, in Bonn. When I was studying the pattern of the blouse worn by Mary Magdalene on a painting by Titian, a woman behind me burst out: "I would pay millions for this painting." At first I was a little bit disgusted because money is the last thing I would think of when confronted with art, but then I realised that money is probably the last remaining, objective measurement to relate to another person one's appreciation of whatever object, one is talking about.


All else has been corrupted and yet money is exactly the best means to corrupt people...

Sublime

"There's a kind of silliness in the theater about what one contributes to a show. The producer obviously contributes the money... but must the actor contribute nothing at all? I’m not a modest fellow about those things. I contribute a great deal. And they always manage to hang you for having an interpretation. Isn’t [the theater] where your imagination should flower? Why must it always be dull as shit?" - Zero Mostel responding to criticism that his performances were too dominating of the material

About both he is absolutely right - interpretation and imagination. As an actor you should have an idea of what it is all about and a means to translate this to the audience.

His Tevye is sublime, especially the final lines where he is haggling with the Lord like Abraham blow my mind.

Doubly Lifelike

Walking across the graveyard, she suddenly burst out:"When I'm dead, I want a tomb slab because this will be far less work for the bereaved." She had always been rather fond of orderliness. Just like when she had admonished her son to not play with the cords of his sweater and she suddenly dashed forward and cut them.

Face To Face

And suddenly reality hit me as I was walking with Darren in Torquay in the summer of 1988. We were both eighteen, and he told me that he had been stationed as a soldier in Northern Ireland. Maybe there were still the words of my teacher ringing in my ear that no matter what anybody would tell us about it being a religious conflict, this was one of the last colonial wars still being fought - and probably one of the longest ever. So here was somebody to whom this was no mere subject matter, just like to the man I met recently.


He called me radiant by the way.

Urging

Sometimes there is something urgent on my mind and though I try very much to talk myself out of it, suddenly this applies again.

So being angry with some people's assumptions I had to post this comment:  "First of all let me start with apologizing for using English but I do not speak Czech this well. Jaromír Hanzlík mighht have a lot of faults - I do not know him personally -, just like everybody memost certainly included, but I cannot see why people believe that he held any sympathies for the Communist regime during the era of what you call Normalization. Just have a look at the people he associated with in the late 1960s like Václav Havel or Jan Procházka or movies he played in like Žert or the songs he wrote in August 1968. And if he was a popular actor not only with the regime, it certainly was even harder for him to avoid them. Thanks anyway for reading this."



And by the way: "Nobody's perfect."!


 

The Litmus Test

So how in God's name can you tell if a person is authentic and never had to give in?!


Easily, if he or she is still able to laugh genuinely and infect you with a smile even at - let's say - the age of seventy.