Rudolf Felzmann

* 1941

  • “Changes which significantly impacted the amateur theatre occurred after the Velvet Revolution. During the Communist era, many amateurs were doing amateur theatre not because they would have liked to be actors or playwrights, but because it was the only way for them to be in touch with people who thought in a similar way. Politics were not being brought to amateur theatre, but at the same time there existed certain possibility to comment on the current events. All this as if came to an end in 1989. Among the people involved in theatre there were mostly people with lots of energy and a great intellectual potential, and they had not been able to invest their efforts into anything else during the totalitarian regime, but suddenly all kinds of other possibilities opened up for them. Some of them were elected to local or even higher-level governments, some started their own businesses. This impacted a great majority of amateur theatre ensembles in the country, many of them began to grow weak and became disbanded, and theatre festivals during the first years after the revolution were thus quite constrained.”

  • “(What was the cause of your father’s death?) Skin cancer. Perhaps it would have been possible to treat it, but it was after the war and he was German. Our dad had spent several months in the camp, where there were Germans awaiting their deportation. I remember that we brought him a paper Christmas tree there. It was shortly before his death: Dad then died in the middle of January.”

  • “When I was a student at the pedagogical school, from time to time there was an opportunity to act in a play or a scene or something like that. That’s where my attempts at directing began, because if I wanted to act, I had to put the whole play together, direct it, and sometimes I had to write the script as well. The performance of Ibsen’s Peer Gynt was done at the pedagogical faculty as a kind of protest, in a way. Grieg’s music played an important part in it, and I loved his music. Perhaps it was thanks to Grieg that my affinity to music grew. I directed the Peer Gynt play, although I acted the main role in it as well. I was then doing it like this for many years to come, and only later I began to focus purely on directing. It became a principle for me in the amateur as well as in the professional theatre for me.”

  • “I kept reading books all the time, I was going to theatre and I was thinking about how the directors and scene artists and others were doing it. I tried to get as much as possible from their work, and for me, it was a certain substitution for the fact that I have not studied directing nor dramaturgy at school. Many interesting books started to be published in the 1970s, informing about dramaturgy in the world and about the famous directors – now there was no longer just Stanislavsky! It was interesting when Radovan Lukavský transcribed Stanislavsky’s method of actors’ work and thus he brought it closer to a contemporary Czech actor. I was absorbing all these things and sharing them with my colleagues from the amateur theatre.”

  • Full recordings
  • 1

    Děčínský Sněžník, 09.01.2009

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    media recorded in project Stories of 20th Century
  • 2

    Děčínský Sněžník, 01.05.2015

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    duration: 
    media recorded in project Stories of 20th Century
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I do not regret anything

Rudolf Felzmann as a teacher in the reform school in Chrastava (1959)
Rudolf Felzmann as a teacher in the reform school in Chrastava (1959)

Rudolf Felzmann was born October 5, 1941 in Liberec. He comes from a mixed family. He graduated from the pedagogical school for elementary school teachers, and later he studied the Pedagogical Faculty in Ústí nad Labem while he was already working (specializing in Czech language and special methodology). He has done many jobs - he was a teacher at schools in the Liberec district (1959-1962), a secretary of the university Klub-S in Liberec (1967-1970), a methodologist of the Prague University Club Vltava (1970-1972), program manager of the theatre Činoherní Studio in Ústí nad Labem (1972-1973), head of the labour union club in the company Setuza in Ústí nad Labem (1973-1975), director of the Ústí branch of the Czech Radio (1975-1982), director in the Workers’ Theatre in Most (1982-1990), manager of the Municipal Theatre Děčín (established by the Cultural and Social Centre, 1990-1991) and the director of the Municipal Theatre Děčín (1991-2002). Throughout his entire life he was intensely involved in amateur theatre as a reciter, actor, director and member of many committees. While still a student he won several regional and national competitions. In the first half of the 1970s he was the leader and the head teacher in the North Bohemian Club for Artistic Recitation, in 1973-1989 he worked as a dramaturgist and director of the Malé Divadlo Theatre, in ZV ROH in the Setuza company in Ústí nad Labem. Later he became a member of the expert committee ARTAMA for amateur theatre. In 2008 he received the Czech Ministry of Culture Award for his life-long contribution to the development of amateur theatre and artistic recitation. Five years later he was awarded the Gold Badge of J. K. Tyl for his long service to the Czech amateur theatre. At present he still occasionally publishes his texts in the magazine Amateur Scene and in the local and regional press.