I longed to open a world that was closed
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Jan Komárek was born on December 12, 1953 in Prague-Vršovice. His parents were communists and they also raised him in the spirit of this ideology. Already in his teens, however, Jan realized that he did not agree with the regime, and as an adult he often defined himself against it. He got into a fight with the police several times and gradually began to think that he was emigrating from Czechoslovakia. He made his final decision in 1982, when a few days after the wedding he went on vacation to Yugoslavia with his new wife and her young daughter. However, their attempt to escape was unsuccessful, as the border guards caught them in the forest, and they had to return home from the trip. But it worked out the second time. A year later, they traveled to Spain, from where they managed to get to Paris through a network of contacts. They applied for asylum and were taken to Laon, where the witness performed a puppet show with his wife. They lived in France for two years and then moved to Toronto, Canada, where Jan started working on lighting design and founded Sound image theater. He was only able to return to his native country at the end of 1989 thanks to political changes. He joined the celebrations of the fall of the regime, but soon had to return to Canada for work. He moved to Prague permanently in 2001 and lived in Vinohrady at the time of recording in 2022.
