Petr Veselý

* 1965

  • "The developments of 1989 started in Prague, at Albertov, on Friday and then what was happening in Prague didn't come to Brno until Sunday. We were supposed to play a show on Sunday, but the show got cancelled as one of the first ones in Brno and it wasn't played. After that, we agreed that JAMU would go on strike the next day, which is what happened. We were on strike that week, but of course we didn't know what was happening and what was going to happen. There was no information feed back then. The TV was the source of information, but it worked for a very limited time, and the veracity of the news it was giving was highly doubtful. It was the same with the radio. There were no other sources of information. It was a near miracle when, after about three days, we got a telephone at JAMU to use. I mean a fixed-line table top machine. We had no means to get much information. We were dependent on word of mouth, television and so on. In the middle of that week, I think it was Wednesday, we got a guaranteed news that tanks were storming Prague. We were sitting at the department, and I suffered a breakdown. I broke down, I cried for two hours, I was completely broken. Then I pulled myself together and it was fine. So if you ask me, that was probably my biggest fear."

  • "During the Bolshevik era you graduated from school, went to work somewhere, and unless you made some cardinal screw-up, you retired from that very place, that very job. Not that this is universally true, of course. But the perception, the feeling was exactly that. Things were a given. Things were clear. That's the way it was. You graduate from elementary school, you don't get into high school, you go work the shovel, and that's where you retire. You go to high school, you don't get into college, well, see if you can do something, and if you can't, you're gonna stay down somewhere. Those things were obvious. I went to JAMU to study directing and it was clear that I would get a job at a theater. A director was the so-called middle-management cadre, so they were expected to join the Communist Party. If they behaved well all the time, they would become the artistic director, the director. And then they would retire. That was a given. There are shops in the streets. Now, you walk down the street and you notice: this shop is no longer here - this was a drugstore before, and now they sell dog kibble. There was no such thing back then. There were the same shops all the time. They were always the same shops, they had the same goods. There was one laundry detergent on the shelf. There was no normal movement. What I think one perceives as normal movement today wasn't there. It was dead, it was stagnant. By movement, I mean a philosophical category. Movement is one of the basic attributes of life. Things that are alive move. The world didn't move. What was life like under the Bolsheviks? Static, grey, in fact, from that broad perspective, it was extraordinarily boring."

  • "It was 68, especially August 68, and I was three years old. I remember very little of it, but do I remember something. There are some bits and pieces in my head. I'm from Prague, and I used to live not far from the big Dejvice roundabout. It's a circular square and there were two or three playgrounds in a part of it that is no longer there. Big sandpits surrounded by a massive concrete circle and with a lot of sand inside. One sandpit was as big as this room. I recall being in that sandbox and there's three tanks standing around and pointing at that sandbox. I remember that, I was with my dad and I was excited as a kid, it was fantastic. Then I remember, we lived in Dejvice, which is about eight, nine kilometres away from the Ruzyně airport. I remember the night of the 21st of August when the military planes were landing over us at Ruzyně. I remember the noise. My mother was a Volhynian Czech, she was born in Volhynia before World War II. She had a hysterical fit that night as the planes were landing, which is something she didn't normally get. She locked herself in the bathroom and cried and screamed terribly that the war was starting. That was a very difficult, traumatic moment for her."

  • Full recordings
  • 1

    Brno, 24.04.2023

    (audio)
    duration: 01:00:39
    media recorded in project The Stories of Our Neigbours
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Life was motionless under the Bolsheviks. It was dead and stagnant

Petr Veselý in his youth, 1980s
Petr Veselý in his youth, 1980s
photo: Witness's archive

Petr Veselý was born on 7 March 1965 to a Czech father and a Volhynian Czech mother who had escaped Stalin’s regime to Czechoslovakia. His earliest memories include August 1968. He remembers playing in a sandpit with tanks pointing at him from three sides, which as a three-year-old he saw as a great adventure. On the night of 21 August, the family could hear military planes landing at the Ruzyně from their home. Another memory is of his mother who, because of her own life experience, locked herself in the bathroom and had a hysterical fit, crying and screaming that the war was starting. When Peter Vesely was eleven years old, his mother died. His father remarried and the family relations were not ideal. During his grammar school years, Petr Veselý started to escape to the theatre. It eventually charmed him so much that he repeatedly applied for directing studies at JAMU and was rejected three times, including for political reasons. He joined JAMU for the fourth time. During the Velvet Revolution he was the head of the strike committee and then became the first ever chairman of the academic senate at JAMU. Petr Veselý worked as a theatre director and at an advertising agency for a brief stint. He also made his living by editing dubbing scripts. Petr Veselý lived in Brno in 2023.