Uhde Milan

 

Moravian writer, dramatist and politician. He grew up in a family where both parents were lawyers. In 1958 he graduated in Czech and Russian studies from (now) Masaryk University in Brno. He became an editor for the important Brno monthly for literature, art and criticism Host do domu (published 1954-1970 In 1972his name was placed on the list of banned writers. He wrote plays under the names of other writers (most frequently for the Theatre on a String in Brno), published work in samizdat, and worked with foreign theatres and radio and television companies.

Milan Uhde was one of the first signatories of Charta 77. In 1989 he and other dissidents founded the publishing house Atlantis, becoming its editor-in-chief. In 1990 he followed Milan Lukeš as the second post-November Minister of Culture. In 1992 he qualified as a "docent" (senior lecturer) at Janáček Academy of Performing Arts (JAMU) in Brno. From 1992 to 1996 he represented the ODS (Civic Democratic Party) at first in the Czech National Parliament and, after the division of Czechoslovakia on 1 January 1993, in the Chamber of Deputies. On 29 June 1992 he was voted Speaker of the House.

In 1998 he retired from active politics and again made his living from writing. His earlier work was republished by Atlantis, but he has not hesitated to throw himself into new projects. For his latest play Miracle in the Black House, staged by Theatre on the Balustrades, he was awarded Alfréd Radok Award 2007 for Best Czech Play of the Year. His awards include also Egon Hostovský Award and Tom Stoppard Award (for the script of Lord of the Little Flames).

 

 

LIST OF PLAYS (selection):

Král Vávra (King-Vávra), 1964, première 26.2.1964, Večerní Brno

Výběrčí (The Collector),1966, a radio drama later adapted for the theatre, première 26.3.1990, Divadlo JELO Praha

Balada pro Banditu (Ballad for a Bandit) (1975) - a musical adaptation of a play on the theme of Olbracht's Nikola Šuhaj the Robber, written under the name of the theatre director Zdeněk Pospíšil, première 7.4.1975, Divadlo na provázku (Theatre on a String) Brno

Pohádka máje (A May Tale), 1976, - an adaptation of the 19th novel by the Mrštík Brothers, written under the name of Zdeněk Pospíšil, première 23.3.1976, Divadlo na provázku Brno

Pán plamínků (Lord of the Little Flames), 1977 - originally a play for television, published in samizdat, not yet performed

Velice tiché Ave (Ave Maria Played Softly, 1981, - a radio play, published in samizdat and later rewritten for the theatre, première 15.5.1990, Reduta Praha

Zvěstování aneb Bedřichu, jsi anděl (The Annunciation or, Friedrich, You Are an Angel), 1986, staged reading 18.10.1989, Malé české divadlo Praha, première 21.6.1990 Divadlo F.X.Šaldy Liberec

Prodaný a prodaná, Sold and Bartered, 1987, written under the names of Petr Oslzlý and Peter Scherhaufer, première 28.1.1987 Divadlo na provázku Brno

Zázrak v černém domě (Miracle at the Black House), 2004, première 9.3.2007 Divadlo Na zábradlí Praha

Nana, 2005, a musical based on Zola's Nana, première 2.4.2005, Městské divadlo Brno

 

TRANSLATED PLAYS (selection):

Komedie s Lotem German - Kommödie mit Lot

Svědkové English - Witnesses, German - Die Zeugnisse

Výběrčí French - Le Percepteur, German - Die Kassierer

Parta French - L´équipe, German - Der Trupe,

Zubařovo pokušení German - Zahnarzt in Versuchung

Modrý anděl French - L´ange bleu, German - Ein blauer Engel, Italian - L´angelo azzurro

Balada pro banditu Polish - Ballada dła bandyty

Zvěstování aneb Bedřichu, jsi anděl German - Die Verständigung oder Friedrich, du bist ein Engel

Zázrak v černém domě English - Miracle at the Black House, Russian - Čudo v čjornom dome, Croatian - Čudo v kući jada

 

 

THE ANNUNCIATION OR, FRIEDRICH, YOU ARE AN ANGEL

ZVĚSTOVÁNÍ ANEB BEDŘICHU, JSI ANDĚL

2 men, 2 women

 

Although this play is inspired by real events in the life of Karl Marx, it shows him less as an exceptional philosopher and politician and more as an ordinary person. Marx is living a common story that could happen to anybody; that's why the text remains topical. It is neither satire nor parody on Karl Marx's life targeting things that would be difficult to understand nowadays, almost twenty years since the Velvet Revolution. First of all, the play is a slapstick comedy involving a marital triangle with complications that can only be righted by an Angel - the family friend Friedrich Engels.

The central character, inspired by Karl Marx, is called significantly Karel Max. His family is penniless, moreover the maid Leni is expecting Max's child, the fact that has to be kept secret from his wife Beni. In the meantime, Max is organizing a Revolution. Under the circumstances, he's unable to sleep, and when he manages to fall asleep, he goes through nightmares. Into this situation, the family friend Bedřich comes into the flat without knocking. Nobody else visits Max's household; they cannot afford to invite anybody anyway as everything they used to have had been pawned ages ago.

The main source of comedy consists in Max's efforts to keep many things secret from his wife why trying to keep up pretence of normal life. On the other pole there are Beni's suspicions and her snooping around. Leni is powerless, looking on silently and commenting with much less silent screeching. Bedřich complements the trio as an element trying to calm the situation.

I was countering my fall with terrible venom. I kept explaining quite loudly to my family that, were it not for my own wife and children, I would have started on the path of individual terror taking a couple of Communist criminals while leaving this world. Mad anger and hatred that cancelled the ability to love in a persecuted man and made him concentrate on himself then became the subject of my play, The Annunciation, Or, Friedrich, You Are An Angel. The model for the character of the protagonist was far from being Karl Marx of whom I only knew a couple of almost unusable biographical facts. But I remembered well a nasty and self-centred Milan U and based my Karl Marx on him. I think it was a miracle my family survived this with me. Since them I know miracles can happen.

Milan Uhde, MFDnes, 11.3.2007

 

MIRACLE AT THE BLACK HOUSE

(ZÁZRAK V ČERNÉM DOMĚ)

4 men, 4 women

The "black house" was built as a grandiose family residence by a young and successful lawyer, with the help of her parents. Her intention was to put pressure on her colleague, Dr. Pompe, who had avoided marriage for some years. His hesitation had been caused by a family tendency to mental instability. Eventually they do marry, and stay married. However, the house - a sinful attempt to buy love - leaves its mark on the whole family. Dr. Pompe's attachment to the house led him, before the outbreak of World War II, to refuse to take his Jewish wife and her parents abroad. Later, he similarly refused to sell the house to pay for his wife's brother's flight across the frontier, thus sealing the fate of his brother-in-law. Still clinging to the house, Dr. Pompe talked his wife into denying her Jewish origins and, in a paternity case, present counterfeit evidence that she was not her parents' daughter and did not have Jewish blood. His wife still suffers guilt over this. Fear of losing the house meant that thirty years later Dr. Pompe disinherited his son Dušan after he (Dušan) had fallen foul of the Communist authorities. Even today this morbid fear of losing the house is the reason why Dr. Pompe tries to prevent his daughter Šárka from being taken into a psychiatric clinic. Šárka and her husband have a daughter, and Dr. Pompe knows that if Šárka's husband divorces her, no court would give a mentally ill wife custody of the child. In this way his granddaughter's share of the house would pass to an "alien" family.

That, at least, is how the lawyer Dušan Pompe, a fanatic for truth, sees the family history. Dušan is the elder son of the owners of the "black house". One Sunday in June 1992 he arrives with his wife Viťka for a family gathering and that is where the play starts...

Milan Uhde begins by presenting us with a truly grotesque portrait of one quarrelsome family, full of stored-up illusions and grievances, and then leads us step by step into the tragic historical roots of their problems.

 

SELECTED REVIEWS:

One would have expected a political theme rather than a dark comedy about an unhinged family from Milan Uhde, a playwright who is a former dissident and also a former Culture Minister from the post-Velvet Revolution period. The Miracle at the Black House (...) doesn't leave out the political connections, though it gets to them inconspicuously through a story about family inheritance. (...)

Saša Hrbotický: Milan Uhde surprises with a family grotesque, Hospodářské noviny 20. 3. 2007

Is it a bourgeois morality about mending the damaged family relations? Of course it is, but that's not all. It's also a message saying that a real remedy cannot be achieved by technical means only, and a parable going far beyond a framework of one family's oppressive atmosphere. The playwright brings his own problems to the stage not only figuratively but also literally: his play is made up from his own life's tissue.

Josef Mlejnek: Milan Uhde rattles a successful skeleton, iDnes.cz, March 27, 2007)

 

Milan Uhde - Miloš Štědroň

NANA

(an original musical)

15 men, 8 women, chorus

An original Czech musical commissioned from the well-known partnership of Milan Uhde and Miloš Štědroň for the Municipal Theatre in Brno. The new musical is based on the novel Nana by Emil Zola, a leading representative of French Naturalism. His Nana was first published in 1880 and was a harsh portrayal of Parisian society. Zola tells the story of a girl who, from the lower depths of society, attains the heights through the manipulation of rich and successful men. A variety star, a Parisian prostitute, Nana guides us through Paris in its legendary years, the Paris of glitter and misery, of enjoyment, sin and forgiveness. The Catholic priest who is throughout her mortal enemy, in the end gives her some sort of absolution for saying that at least "she is sorry not to be sorry about anything". And because this is a musical, the sinful Nana rises up from her dead body and joins the chorus for the closing song.

 

SELECTED REVIEWS:

Uhde knows (...) that today the prostitute is a symbol of all evil only for a certain type of minority audience. For the others - and it is for those he is writing in the popular genre of the musical - she is merely an everyday tourist attraction, for some hard to accept, for others welcomed. (...) The music betrays that its creator is the erudite composer and musicologist in one, Miloš Štědroň. His style is to match all tastes - from Renaissance to jazz and music-hall. We catch the idioms of old dances alongside impeccable operetta intonations, Broadway-style hits alongside folk ditties.

Ivan Žáček, Divadelní noviny, 19.4.2005

 

Milan Uhde, a dramatist to his fingertips, has created an adversary to the worldly-wise Nana in the fanatical Abbé Vénot, for whom the relationship to Nana is a source of agonising inner dilemma. Nana is not a black-and-white character; she has room for womanly pragmatism, unwomanly cynicism, and emotional irresolution. Uhde's lively and elegant script is the basis for a varied fresco of the time, just as it is for a contemporary view of the gutter press, fanaticism and exaggeratedly displayed show biz conditions.
Radmila Hrdinová, Nana as a drug with destructive effects, Právo, 3.5.2005

 

Works:

 

Milan Uhde is the author of short stories, theatre and radio plays, film scenarios and poetry. His plays include:

King-Vávra (premiere 1964 in the theatre Večerní Brno [Evening Brno]) - a play satirising politics, a variation on the theme of the 19th century writer Karel Havliček Borovský's satirical poem King Lávra, depicting a mechanical world of alienated people where a trio of rulers govern a terrestrial hemisphere. The play has 10 ten scenes, 9 songs, a ballad, a romantic blues and an interlude.

The Collector (1966) - an absurd radio drama which he also adapted for the theatre.

Ballad for a Bandit (1975) - a musical adaptation of a play on the theme of Olbracht's Nikola Šuhaj the Robber, written under the name of the theatre director Zdeněk Pospíšil for the Theatre on a String. On the basis of the play a film of the same name was directed by Vladimír Sís in 1978.

Professional Woman (1975) - a dramatisation on the theme of Vladimír Páral's novel of the same name, written under the name of Zdeněk Pospíšil.

A May Fairy Tale (1976, produced under the title The Last Hunt) - an adaptation of the 19th century play by the Mrštík Brothers, written under the name of Zdeněk Pospíšil, who however emigrated in 1980 and made known his cooperation with Milan Uhde.

Lord of the Little Flames (1977) - originally a play for television, published in samizdat. The motif is the true fates of several dissidents who were criminally treated for mental illness.

A Blue Angel (1979) - originally a radio play rewritten for the theatre: a monologue by an usherette who, playing with other people's lives, compares her situation with the lot of the Blue Angel of Justice, weighed down with responsibility for the fate of mankind.

Ave Maria Played Softly (1981) - an autobiographical retrospective in the form of a radio play. Published in samizdat and later rewritten for the theatre.

The Annunciation or, Friedrich, What an Angel You Are (1986, produced in 1990) - a dramatised biographical parody about Karl Marx, leading to the audience's disillusionment, published first in samizdat.

The Bartered and the Bought (1987) - a play about the 19th century libretto writer Karel Sabina and the conflict between an individual, political power and society. Written for the Theatre on a String under the names of Petr Oslzlý and Peter Scherhaufer.

Miracle in the Dark House (2004) - written for the Vinohrady Theatre in Prague.

Depart in Peace (2004) - a television play set in 1945 during the expulsion of the German-speaking population from Brno.

Nana (2005) - a musical on the theme of Zola's Nana written for the music stage of the Municipal Theatre in Brno

 

Antologies:

Ten Plays (Atlantis 1995) - a collection of Milan Uhde's ten most important plays for the theatre, radio and television (King-Vávra, Witnesses, The Collector, The Gang, The Dentist's Temptation, Lord of the Flames, Hour of Defence, A Blue Angel, Ave Maria Played Softly and The Annunciation or, Friedrich, What an Angel You Are)

Ballad for a Bandit and other plays incognito (Atlantis 2001) - a collection of 10 plays published for the most part under other people's names (Ballad for a Bandit, Professional Woman, A May Fairy Tale, The Bartered and the Bought, The Morning Star of our Glory, The Nose and the Overcoat [adapted from Gogol], Beautiful Wound [adapted from Pushkin]).

Awards:

Egon Hostovský Award

1987 Tom Stoppard Award for Lord of the Little Flames