Dagmar Bláhová

* 1949

  • “We would go camping in the bushland, anywhere we wanted, with our kid in a bag. That was something I loved. Nowadays, it's much more complicated. All those restrictions, roadblocks and national parks. Back then it was all just open and free. We lived in a small flat and we didn't lock our door. That was in 1980. but in the 1980s, as more emigres came from Asia and Europe, bringing their customs with them, the situation had been changing rapidly. I remember putting laundry to dry in the garden which would just disappear. So I thought: 'Here it comes!' And Sidney was just a beautiful city, with no tourists. There was nothing all around the main bridge, where nowadays all those skyscrapers are. It was just a clean, small and nice city in a bay, not yet discovered by the world. Nowadays, it's just one big America. We had been living near Bondi Beach, a well-known place. Today, it's just crammed with people, and all this stuff. Back then, it was just deserted, they would say it was a place where emigres would hang out. In eastern part of Sydney, there were many Hungarians, Czechs, Slovaks and other people like this.”

  • “After there was the Charter, we were discussing what we should do. They wanted us all to sign the Anti-Charter. Not a chance. No one did! It was in the papers recently, that we were the only ones who refused. After that, they were forcing us to join the Communist Party. After we were taken over by the Brno State Theatre. We said: 'But we weren't even in the Socialist Youth. Let us establish a Socialist Youth cell first.' So we established our Socialist Youth cell. Kocourek, the strongman, had been serving as a treasurer I think. All his life, he couldn't save a penny, he had always been broke. I was a librarian. We had no books. But we would write reports from our meetings. Those clowns! But this was the only way. There wasn't any other. So we didn't have to join the Party.”

  • “I remember that as we would go from Hradební Street, through the back, through Haštalská Street, we would pass Hotel Haštal where those Russian soldiers had been accommodated, young men, all of them. So we would go there, why would no one shoot me I no wonder, and we would yell at them in broken Russian, asking them what they were doing there. They had no idea where they were. They would just stand there like a bunch of blockheads. And once, their commander came, with stars, and told us to leave immediately. The soldiers were just standing in front of the hotel, in the evening they would screen their Russian war movies right in the street. It was just unbelievable. They were issued some newspapers and we kept bringing them leaflets, so they could find out what they did, where they were and why.”

  • “On 21 August we were climbing the stairs to Sacré-Coeur and all of a sudden I heard the Czech anthem from a window. 'That's weird, that's really weird, we better hurry to the news stands.' We didn't speak French, just some broken English. We wanted to cross the Channel by boat, to England. And now I see this title 'Prague has been occupied.' Again, the hair on my back would stand up, if there was any left. I remembered how I almost passed out. We rushed to the Czech embassy. There were people crying, yelling that their children were in the country. They were deciding if they would return. Absolute mayhem. Everyone wanted to know what was going on. It was just horrible, like if a war would break out, and in fact, it did.”

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    Praha, 03.06.2021

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    Praha, 04.06.2021

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I couldn‘t accept abnormality as a norm. I just had to leave

Dagmar Bláhová, Prague, 1970s
Dagmar Bláhová, Prague, 1970s
zdroj: archiv Dagmar Bláhové

Dagmar Bláhová was born on 5 March 1949 in a poor, blue-collar family in Radčice near the city of Liberec. She studied puppet theater at Prague‘s DAMU. From 1972 to 1980 she was a member of Brno‘s On the String theatrical troupe. With Boleslav Polívka, she starred in ‚Am and Ea‘ (‚Am a Ea‘), a clown performance, which had much success also in the West. In film, she gave her most distinctive performance as Anna in Věra Chytilová‘s The Apple Game (‚Hra o jablko‘). In 1979 she gave a guest performance at a theatre in Paris and didn‘t return home after that. After marrying a man who had emigrated from Slovakia, she left with him for Australia. She succeeded both as actress and theater director. She has become notable for her role in Neighbors, an Australian soap opera. For her leading role in the film ‚Displaced Persons‘ she won the Penguin Award. She gave birth to two children in Australia. In the late 1990s, she moved back to Prague. She translated The Vagina Monologues and helped to popularise the play. She founded ‚Intimní divadlo Bláhové Dáši‘, a theatre group. For 25 years she had been teaching at Prague‘s FAMU. In 2021, she had been living in Prague and in Radčice, a place where she was born.