“It was a problem, this song - we ended the whole performance with a song that Václav Havel also included in his show Talks from Lány and which ended: 'And see you in better times.' So it was clear that we had it clearly written and were lucky that we played three shows. After the third came a definitive ban.”
“And I said: 'Well, I'm not going to call it off.' So the director and I were still arguing a little bit. And then the vote came and I didn't call it off, so in the 1970s there were communist inspections. Well, after less than two years of my being part of the Communist Party, I was of course expelled, because I signed the declaration Two Thousand Words, I did not revoke the resolution against the entry of Soviet troops, I joined the Communist Party at Dubcek's call and I acted in the play called Caesar.”
“In 1961, the Berlin Wall was built and we... Of course, we were the first to go to the line, we had a combat alarm, we had to line up with everything we had. We packed sharp ammunition - both for mortars and submachine guns. And the regiment commander let us in and said, 'Comrades, we're going straight, if something starts, so if you last at least twenty minutes, you have fulfilled your patriotic duty.' Well and someone shouted: ´And that means it is going to be over just in 20 minutes?´ And the commander said, "No, we have a replacement for you in twenty minutes." So, as they said at the time, we were cannon ´futter´, that means the food for cannon heads.”
Rudolf Brázdil was born on November 10, 1940 in Prostějov, but grew up in Kroměříž. From childhood he devoted himself to recitation and theatre, which then accompanied him all his life. During his military service, he experienced an emergency in 1961 during the construction of the Berlin Wall. After the war, he joined the Pedagogical Institute in Zlín. In 1964 he was placed at a school in Mělník. After the occupation in 1968, he signed a resolution against the entry of Warsaw Pact troops and at the same time joined the Communist Party at the urging of Alexander Dubcek. As he later refused to repeal the resolution, he was expelled from the party and had to leave the Mělník school. He taught at a vocational school in Neratovice for a few years, but in 1974 he had to leave school permanently and joined the Kaučuk factory as a worker. After 1989, he was rehabilitated and returned to the Mělník school, where he taught until 2004. He devoted his entire life to amateur theatre, but during the normalization he also faced a number of problems in this area.
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