During totalitarianism, I felt like a fish in an aquarium with poisoned water that I can’t get out of
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Marie Pištěková was born on February 4, 1955 in Ostrava into a Catholic family. My father worked at the Moravian Chemical Plant. She had five siblings. Since childhood, she has been interested in theatre, painting and music. She sang and played guitar in Catholic choirs and in a Christian big beat group. She studied singing and acting at the folk conservatory. After high school, she unsuccessfully applied to the Theatre Academy in Prague. She worked in the operetta choir of the theatre in Teplice. Under the influence of the book St. John by G. B. Shaw, she wrote a play for one actor, The Last Night of Joan of Arc. In 1978 she was admitted to the Janáček Academy in Brno. Since 1979, she has performed her play about Joan at secret and legal performances throughout Czechoslovakia. She participated in theological lectures and meetings of the underground church led by the Salesians. She played in drama ensembles in Český Těšín and Jihlava. She then taught at the Folk Art School in Olomouc and at the Folk Conservatory in Ostrava. In the early 1990s, she learned the play of Joan of Arc in French and began performing it in France. She received a scholarship in Brittany, where she moved. She founded her own theatre there and started teaching acting.
