evald schorm – the theater man

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Evald Schorm was a film maker body and soul. Let me remind the reader of his movies from the sixties like „Courage for Every Day“, „House of Joy“ – a segment of a collection of shorts called „Pearls of the Deep“, „Return of the Prodigal Son“, „Five Girls Around the Neck“, „End of A Priest“, „Seventh Day, Eighth Night“. His interest in theater arose from necessity. It happened in the 1970s, when he was forbidden to make movies. All his movies ended up in a "normalization vault" and Schorm found himself jobless. One does wonder how it came that his theatrical activities were allowed. Of course, he had certain prerequisites for working in theatre: he enjoyed going to see theatrical plays, worked with brilliant actors in his movies and loved opera. He was even a singer for a brief while after finishing his military service. He had a strong sense for theatre and, during the 1970s and 1980s, he created some of the best Czechoslovakian theatres.

Among the film makers of his generation – the so-called „new wave“ – he was the one with probably the greatest philosophical bent. His works at FAMU revealed a very interesting personality with a unique film imagination and with a distinct philosophical immersion. He tended to express himself by serio-comic means which he was able to successfully apply to his theatrical works. He also transferred his philosophical approach which is visible in almost all his productions. I myself met Evald Schorm at the end of the 1950s during our studies. His first theatrical production, Dostoyevski’s „Crime and Punishment“ took place in The Drama Club (Činoherní klub) in 1966 when the political atmosphere in the country had loosened up a little. Schorm’s hosting in The Drama Club was a crucial moment in his career as a theater director. Interestingly enough, he became an outcast, running from one company to another, from one stage to another, first The Drama Club in Ústí nad Labem, then the State Opera in Brno (a remarkable "inscenation" of Martinů´s opera „The Three Wishes“), then back to The Drama Club in Prague, then, staying in Prague at least, Rubín, Vinohradské Theatre, Semafor, the list goes on.

Ultimately, Schorm established a relatively continuous co-operation with Studio Ypsilon and later on with the theatre On the Balustrade (Na zábradlí). His activities in Laterna Magica are considered a separate chapter in his work because here he could make use of his film experience, for instance in plays like „A Magic Circus“, „The Snow Queen“ and „Ulysses“ for which he wrote the scripts. In the 1970s, created several pivotal "inscenations" in the Ypsilon theatre in Liberec, like Grabbe’s „Comedy, Satire, Irony and Deeper Meaning“ (coincidentally, I played the character of Devil and he directed the play), Dostoyevski’s „The Eternal Husband“, Ilf and Petrov’s „The Twelve Chairs“ (with Melen‘s amazing stage setting), and the brilliant production of one of my plays called „Thirteen Scents“ (which was played for over ten years with only one break). When the Ypsilon theatre moved from Liberec to Prague it brought its version of „The Twelve Chairs“. It was always sold out but they were not allowed to keep it on the program because it was labeled undesirable, and one of the causes was Schorm’s name.

By pure luck Schorm was allowed to adapt my "inscenation" „Carmen Not Only According To Bizet“ to film. Abandoning the stage, we shot in locations like a botanic garden, an airport, a furniture warehouse and also outdoors in the snow. This short film was screened in The Drama Club before Landovsky’s one-act play „Hourly Hotelier“ which was also directed by Schorm. During the Prague era of Ypsilon we produced „An Outsider“ together, which also caused many scandals and also stayed on the program for quite a long time. Schorm himself staged my play „A Party“ at Ypsilon theatre. Schorm’s co-operation with the theatre On the Balustrade was also very famous. It started in 1976 and I recall especially his production of Dostoyevski’s „Karamazov Brothers“ and Shakespeare’s „Hamlet“. Big political problems followed when Schorm fell into disfavor with the regime because of his 1978 adaptation of Hrabal’s „Too Loud A Solitude".

When Evald Schorm directed, it looked as if the work was done by itself, or at least the parties concerned felt that way. His directing never lacked pleasant atmosphere, tact, mutual understanding and a willingness to help. Schorm was not a screaming director. His authority lay in his humor and charm was a necessity. He always managed to put a great cast together, making use of actors as individuals and motivating and occupying them much more ambitiously than they were used to. And he did it all in his own innocent way. We were very close in this respect and I think that this similarity was one of the reasons why he liked working with Ypsilon theatre so much. I realize that he was „an embodied humility“ but his lack of ostentation was only illusory because he always knew what he wanted and he could be very uncompromising. His greatness was also in his ability to let things go their way and thus create space for solutions that might go beyond his original ideas. He was also impossible to overlook because of his considerable height. And since I got to know him so long ago, let me just remark that there was something of a savior in him, even when we were at school. As if he was trying to carry the weight of those times we lived in on his shoulders. On the one hand, this was probably dragging him down but on the other, it may have been uplifting. This was certainly one of those things which made him hard to overlook. His reciprocal attitude towards life and work guaranteed a human depth to everything he created.

Jan Schmid

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