The effort to match the others has remained with me all my life
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Jan Lorman was born on 1 June 1946 in Prague. His parents came from wealthy business families, but after 1948 the family fell into material poverty. His father Jiří’s great hobby was puppet theatre and he was also the director of the Central Puppet Theatre. His mother Libuše, née Brožová, was a puppet maker for Dílo association. Little Jan was strongly influenced by his childhood in the 1950s, when he perceived that they were uwanted as a family and tried to match the others, to belong somewhere. He excelled at recitation in primary school, and although he later studied engineering, he remained faithful to this hobby. Thanks to this, he also got into the Viola Theatre Café as a secondary school student and later worked as an actor in the Theatre Behind the Gate. He saw these acting years as the best school of his life. In 1969 he was admitted to the Theatre Faculty of the Academy of Performing Arts, where he studied directing. He then joined Czechoslovak Radio as a director. Here he also accepted an offer to join the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, which he took as a concession for the opportunity to do his profession. He still blames himself for this move. After the change of management at the radio station in 1988, the atmosphere became unbearable for him and he perceived himself being unwanted there. He took a job as director of the S. K. Neumann Theatre in Libeň, but even this job did not bring him much satisfaction. He gratefully welcomed the events of the Velvet Revolution, even though he had to leave the theatre. After the restoration of the Theatre Behind the Gate, he returned to its ranks and at the same time, together with his wife Blanka and friends, they founded the civic association Život (Life) 90, which aimed first of all to improve the lives of the elderly through volunteering. Later on, they managed to acquire and renovate a house in the centre of Prague, where a number of services were offered. The association became professional and Jan Lorman was its director until 2018. At the same time, he was and is active in a number of governmental and non-governmental institutions focused on the topics of social and health care for the elderly; from 2006 to 2020 he was a member of the Government Council for the Elderly and Ageing Issues. He has received numerous awards for his activities in the Czech Republic and abroad; in 2020, the Silver Commemorative Medal of the President of the Senate of the Parliament of the Czech Republic for his indomitable, visionary, educational activities and assistance to the elderly and socially disadvantaged. At the time of recording (2023) he was living in Prague.
