As an actor in the Forman project, you have to think about what made Miloš Forman the person he was. What did you come up with?
First of all, it’s a childhood that I had no idea about before we started rehearsing this production, and that was really cruel and rough and tough for Mr. Forman. In my opinion, he had to stand on his own feet very quickly – and we are talking about childhood, when he lost his parents, his mother, his father, he was kicked out of school. When you get kicked out of boarding school and told to “go” and you have nowhere to go because you don’t have parents, I can’t imagine that happening to me.
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When I read his biography, a lot of the things that happened to him would be enough for me personally to go to therapy for the rest of my life and try to get over it. And he flew to America and won the Oscars. He probably just had some strength, determination and a huge personality in him.
I also imagine that if I had seen him in Čáslav at the age of fifteen, or at DAMU at the age of nineteen, and then in America in his apartment in New York at the age of fifty-five, I think he would be the same. I think that he was such a personality that even the tinsel of the Oscars did not move. And I like that about him too.
Was his biography enough for you? Because here you can talk to people who worked with him: you can talk to Petr and Matěj Forman and clarify a few things if you need some details.
This is a very complicated thing. We spent a very long time collecting material, we looked at documents, we started interviews, we read this very book What do I know? That’s such a base.
Miloš Forman himself already said that unnecessary devotion to the original only leads to the fact that a person loses the creative possibility.
Patrick Dergel
We were looking for various information, I also talked to Jirka Lábus, who knew him well. And I suddenly felt that I had to forget all that, let it somehow be stored inside me: maybe it would come to the surface, but now I had to concentrate on the production and the character, the theater. Also, we are not making a documentary on a theater, but a theater production.
Mirror normalization
In addition to Forman, where you will be playing Miloš Forman, you are also playing Karl Steigerwald in La Fabrice. The game “And I beg you, prince” was created in 1982 and was tailor-made for the standardization society. What can this game say about today, when the normalization society is, at least as some of us naively hope, long gone?
Well, right now! But you know, that human smallness is actually the same across time and that’s what resonates even today.
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It’s kind of an absurd grotesque, like Waiting for Godot, where two guys meet at the door and wait for the prince to open it. In doing so, they cheat, outrun, lie to each other and expose all their characteristics, which are a mirror of society.
So I’m going to see a range of absolutely horrible human traits?
Yes, but of course it’s funny. Karel has a great sense of humor in him, so there are humorous passages, but I think that from such a smile and fun, during the production, we will get into something where a person could even freeze – precisely because he is looking at the mirror of something that is , as you say, 40 years old, but it still works.
When we discount some values and distance ourselves from them, we are always one foot in just such a time or in such a disruption.
You said that the text was quite complicated. Was it taught wrong? Was it difficult to live up to him in every detail?
I have to say it was one of the hardest texts I’ve ever had to learn. I don’t mean just memorizing, but acting because it’s so absurd. And Karl’s sly smile when I asked him what it meant, and all I got was: well, you’ll see… It was so helpless at times.
The two people standing on that stage are having fun like this. One will say: that apple tree looks nice. And the other answers: I’ve already had a glass. Did you have a drink? Well, because trams run in the air.
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It doesn’t make any sense at all until you find that sense in it, some inner line that guides you as an actor. Then those people start talking to each other and it starts to have the contours of a normal dialogue. But the start is quite difficult.
Sometimes we don’t listen to each other, that’s true.
Exactly.
Respect to Forman
I keep thinking that maybe it’s easier for you, because when Meda was performed, Mrs. Meda Mládková was still alive and went to see the performance. So I wouldn’t want to play Meda Mládková so that Meda would look at me. Maybe the Formans will come to see you.
Maybe yes. You are trying to stress me out!
No, I’m just imagining what it would be like. They are usually good relatives.
I don’t know, maybe not, who knows? But we wouldn’t want to offend anyone or touch anyone, so we don’t do it. But at the same time, we have to get rid of it a little – or a lot.
I don’t want to be bound by having in my head: what will those who knew him or those who went out for a beer with him say about it? They will say that he wasn’t like that at all, you don’t know him at all and how can you play him.
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Miloš Forman himself already said that unnecessarily letting yourself be bound by a model, unnecessary piety to a model only leads to the fact that a person loses the creative possibility. It has to be something that inspires him, something that he takes, inspires him and makes a new living work, at that given time, at that given moment, with those given people. That’s what Miloš said in his time, and I think it’s great.
Look, today people sometimes come to the theater and say: I prefer this classic. And what is this, the classic?
What we have seen before.
What we have already seen once, probably yes! But it’s very difficult to fight against that, isn’t it? That’s a strange alibi. You probably want to be somewhat safe as a viewer. I already know it from somewhere, so I want to see it again.
How did Patrik Děrgel become Hamlet “with the best ass”? And what connects him with Miloš Forman? Listen to the full interview
