Josef Kundera

"At Easter we used to rattle on Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and White Saturday in the morning, in order to substitute the church bells. According to the legend, the church bells flew to Rome. We used to go from the top of the village above the church to the lower end. In Wallachia we had these wheelbarrow rattles, it was little carts with cog wheels, these wooden rails. It made a great rumble. We kept various folk customs. Masquerade balls, carnivals and things like that. There were various societies, firemen, Sokol, Red Cross and so on. We organized trips and tours, and festivities and things like that. The village was alive and it's still alive to this day."

"I think that the disappointment of my parents, caused by the 1968 occupation, influenced me in some way. I don't know. I couldn't stop thinking about the disappointment from the 1968 and the occupation when experiencing the events of 1989. I was glad, of course. We already had our son Filip and my wife was pregnant with the second one. From a parent's point of view, one was cautious not to make any mistake, not to make any hasty decision. We lived a normal life. I didn't actually learn about the Charter 77 until 1989, or a little while before that. When I found out that my colleague Vláďa Volf signed it. He passed away. So it was only then that I found out about it. I must say that I was never interested in politics. I kept thinking about my parents, who believed at the beginning, the Prague Spring in '68, and then the terrible disappointment, the disillusionment."

I remember to this day exactly. We had a rehearsal on 18th, it was just the day after. We had a rehearsal, it was in the old theatre, in the original Horácké theatre. We were sitting there in front of the rehearsal room, and a colleague who had just come back from Prague came in. She was there and experienced it. She told us what was happening there, that police was beating up students on Národní třída, arresting them, things like that. Of course, there were riots before, but this time it was huge. Because in 1989 it all cumulated, and I guess it was the right time. So it started in the theatre. And then at Komenského Street, there was a shop window with photos and posters, so our technicians put a screen there and a video player. The colleague brought a video tape of the demonstration filmed by people. It was copied and distributed all over the country by the students and the actors. So she brought one of these tapes, and it was played in the shop window and people, who were passing by, watched it. Because they had no idea what was going on in Prague. On the news, they mentioned that some students were protesting and that the police dispersed them. But the video tape clearly showed what it was like, that the students were just sitting there peacefully.

"I joined the professional theatre in 1982, it was actually in the middle of the season, at the Slovácké theatre in Uherské Hradiště. Because I didn't get into university after my graduation. I applied in Prague, I applied in Brno, but you know, it was such a strange time. My dad was in the Communist party after the war, and when 1948 came, he just handed his legitimation in, and said, 'I don't want to be part of this.' And unfortunately, at that time, it meant that all of his children, including me, didn't have a chance to get into university. My brother was a great mathematician, he calculated everything in his head, and he was excellent, he was very good at maths. He wanted to design buildings, bridges, things like that. He ended up going to a cook-waiter apprenticeship because he didn't even get into proper secondary school. It was in the fifties, unfortunately it was such times. If you didn't follow the right political views, you weren't allowed to study. And on top of that we were a religious family, my parents were religious. They were in the People's Party then. So we always received 'we don't recommend' when applying for university. I only found out later about it. I was doing theatre, I enjoyed it, I was good at it, so I believed I would get into university easily. But then I found out that it's not that simple. The local national committee received a report on our family and based on this they always wrote 'we don't recommend university admission'. So no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't succeed in getting into university."

"It's a strong experience. It still gives me goose bumps to this they when I think about it. It was August 1968, when I was visiting my aunt in Gottwaldov with my parents and two of my older siblings. Today the town is called Zlín. I was eight years old, and I went to bed the previous night, unaware of anything happening. And in the morning I woke up and came downstairs. My aunt lived in that classic Baťa's half-house, if you know what I mean, the classic Zlín building. And I came down from the upstairs bedroom to the kitchen and there I saw my parents standing by the radio crying. They thought we were in a war. I remember that to this day."