Václav Helšus

* 1947

  • "It was a significant shift in my life towards freedom, which, taught by Masaryk, I always perceived as a responsibility. And that responsibility was great. She meant not to spoil the whole thing and not to provoke them to some action... For example, the action corps were still here back then and were able to intervene on command, including the army. So I was also afraid, but it was also clear that we must not back down. We drove to the factories, we had such a chat with people there. I spoke in Jablonec in front of the town hall."

  • "I saw the whole thing a bit like... like a carnival. Kind of weird, sad, wild, messy. Suddenly it was not necessary to drive the way we used to drive. People were running around the streets, I had never experienced anything like that before - apart from May Day parades. I have come to the point that a person has a sense of horror and at the same time a sense of beauty from a storm or from a natural disaster. When a man is a part of it and when a man is able to and at the same time can observe it... So that's when I found such a strange - not perverted - interest in the beauty of horror. It was a life experience to move between canons and at the same time among fellow citizens, who otherwise always behaved in such a way that no one noticed them... They behaved like: I am Czech, but no one really needs to know that. And suddenly they were open, spontaneous. Italians cannot hold a candle to us... This menacing disaster that flew here seemed to cast a spell on me, and it was certainly dramatic.'

  • "I got to know what homesick is, simply homesickness. It's not fiction, it hurts, it tears. It lies on the chest like a pain. I'm not making this up, it's the way it is."

  • "When I found out that they wouldn't apologize, that they wouldn't say, that it was a mistake, and that they would never go home again... So, before I understood that the goal was to get here, and that the spring was just an excuse to get their rockets and influence here, when things started to fall apart at home... I just didn't like it here anymore. I joined that class after the holidays, we were trying something, I looked around and the people were changing and they started working with them. And I saw Czech people against Czech people and I said to myself: I will not be here."

  • Celé nahrávky
  • 1

    Liberec, 29.07.2020

    (audio)
    délka: 01:57:32
Celé nahrávky jsou k dispozici pouze pro přihlášené uživatele.

He emigrated after the occupation. Painful sadness brought him home

Václav Helšus during the ballroom dancing training, 1960s
Václav Helšus during the ballroom dancing training, 1960s
zdroj: archive of the witness

Václav Helšus was born on March 6, 1947 in Louny, where he lived with his parents and two brothers in the building of the local mill. In the mid-sixties, he began to study at DAMU under the guidance of professor Vlasta Fabianová and director of the Realist Theater Karel Palouš. The occupation of Czechoslovakia in August 1968 and the subsequent reaction of the public disappointed him so much that he decided to emigrate to Great Britain at the end of the year. For almost a year, he supported himself by manual labor and visited theaters in his spare time. However, after a one-year stay in the West, he returned to Czechoslovakia and graduated from DAMU in the academic year 1969/1970. After successfully graduating, he joined the Kladivadlo in Ústí nad Labem for a few months, and later the Ypsilon Theatre, which was operating in Liberec at the time. He excelled in several famous productions, but it was also there that he met his future wife, Dagmar Gregorová. In 1978, the Ypsilon Theater decided to change its location and the troupe moved to Spálená Street in Prague. However, Václav did not like the new poetics of the theater very much, so he took the opportunity and went to work at the F. X. Šalda Theater in Liberec, where (with a two-year break spent at the National Theater) he remained until the revolution in 1989. In the revolutionary days of November, Václav and the Liberec theater troupe joined the strike. He and his wife, Dagmar Helšusová, drove around North Bohemian factories, talking to workers or delivering speeches to crowds of protesters. Later, both were at the birth of the Liberec Civic Forum. Václav Helšus continues to be an actor to this day. In 1995, he was nominated for the Thália Award for the role of Vávra in the theater play Maryša. In 1999, he won the prize for the best acting performance at the Festival of Czech Theater in the play Crime and Punishment. He has also acted in a number of film and series roles. In 2020, viewers could see him in the movie Modelář.