09/03/2023
By wizewebsite
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Actor tomáš měháček says: when I see a moron, I cry<

How have you managed the course of the pandemic so far as a freelance actor?

I'm a freelancer with the best brigade in the world, so it wasn't that painful. (Tomáš Měcháček means the commercials for the bank, which he and his colleague Tomáš Jeřábek have been shooting for the ninth year, editor's note.) Otherwise, we spent the first month of the first lockdown in Maringotka in the Krkonoše Mountains, and we didn't give a damn. We had a one-year-old son at the time, at thirteen meters in March in the Krkonoše mountains, when it was not possible to go outside much... The second lockdown we were in a semi-secluded rented cottage. But life was different in the Krkonoše mountains, boarding houses were full, that is, until people started dying there and the district was closed.

And the hospital in Vrchlabí was one of the first to collapse. You volunteered there if I have the correct information.

Three weeks. This spring. We already had two children, a baby was added to our two-year-old son. At first I was with my family a lot, but as Matildička and I learned it, I thought that I could help out elsewhere if I wasn't doing anything else. In addition, my first son, who is eighteen, was born in Vrchlabí. So I went there. (The interview took place in October 2021 - editor's note.)

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How did you help?

I worked as a nurse. He changed diapers, changed clothes in the post-covid ward, especially old people. It was a powerful experience, both professionally and emotionally. When those people are there alone, relatives are not allowed behind them or only behind the glass or simply do not go. It was sad. But I had a lot of energy, I was rested, not crushed by routine, so I paid attention to them, I went out with them, we talked. And on the other hand, it was encouraging how everyone there goes above and beyond the call of duty. That's for the medal.

Did you have a slump during that time?

First of all. I think a lot of freelancers who were banned from work or covid made it impossible for them to work first of all rested. But then the stress of security came. In my case, mainly fear for health, for my family, I supplied everyone everywhere with masks, respirators, disinfectants.

Did you catch it?

We both caught it. Klárka, eight months pregnant, had a more difficult course than me. But it turned out well. Depka was, but let's be optimistic in this conversation.

And joy! Are you allergic to the word HAPPY now?

But no, I'm not. I have to go give an explanation to the police, as a response to a criminal complaint. But my lawyer Mr. Rozehnal says it will be good... He is cheerful. Like smiling.

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Let us remind you that these are your statements on Luboš Xaver Veselé's show, where you were a guest, then you told him he was a hypocrite and a liar. But then you missed the problematic and unsubstantiated statement that his XTV was being paid for by Russian intelligence.

I know, I made it complicated. She was an exaggeration, an exaggeration of what the gossip was about. An interview with Mr. Veselý awaits us in some public media, so we will discuss it in more detail there, I suppose. But I have more important things to do now, so later.

Don't you regret it?

Not at all. I'm just sorry that the main problem has been lost, that his activities in XTV have nothing to do with Czech Radio, and certainly not with the Council of Czech Television.

You say you enjoy provoking and "going for a break", as you said somewhere. "When I see a moron, I snap."

I don't know, I don't particularly go out for a break, but sometimes I rap. Yeah. Especially when I see self-deprecation, the absence of self-irony, when people take themselves seriously, I tend to disparage them.

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Actor Tomáš Měčáček says: when I see a moron , rejpu

Have you ever run?

Many times.

Since childhood?

Authority is to be tested to be earned. Since elementary school, someone applied authority to me, which I did not immediately recognize. I needed to find out if he was into her… I was wild eggs after all. For a long time, for example, I did not understand the concept of "sitting". My mom is a teacher so she was on the side of the teachers and I had a stricter regimen. A beautiful childhood, but a stricter regime... but then children could still fight. A slap is better than a sack of reproach or a long educational speech.

Do you think? Who slapped you?

Just like everyone else, right? Teachers, mom, sometimes dad. In the second grade, I transferred to the school where my mother taught. Although she did not directly teach me there, she supervised me, I went to her during breaks for feedback. What she got from the teachers. I have a wonderful note hidden: “Renato, keep him there for a while or I will kill him. He shot this rubber band in the eye of a Rusyn. Deal with him, but only at home. I don't want to beat him." I don't want to dramatize it, but with me in 1987 it almost seemed like some kind of special school, mom chose the transfer for my good. I fought a lot, shouted, didn't sit still. We still came up with something... Did you pack milk in a bag too?

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Sure. They were thrown around in our class.

We always let them ripen for a few days, then put them under the wheels of the bus at the bus stop. When it started, it splashed beautifully on everyone. It's been years.

Did you swim out of those wild eggs?

Not really, but it helped. Two-phase training. Morning and afternoon. That's why I'm here, I had a lot to do and didn't have time for the biggest bullshit. Otherwise I might not be here, I'd be on drugs, in jail or dead. A lot of friends from the childhood party are no longer…

Enough?

Oh yeah. We were friends, the environment also played a role, someone's older siblings, one brings something, another tries it and it's off. But I was swimming. I had things to do. When children have nothing to do, they invent entertainment themselves.

Did you like swimming?

Getting up at half past six wasn't good, but I did it. And I probably enjoyed it. I swam until I was fifteen. Then a freshman at the sports gymnasium in Prague. Maybe even the national team, but I gave up after a month. I overtrained, something rumbled in my stomach, so I returned to Ústí to the gym and then discovered a different life. And theater. And girls. And calbes. A life I didn't know until then.

And you weren't as if ripped from the chain?

You know that, right? I remember how I swam master's in Podolí, a 15-year-old girl, and I realized that I had been swimming from wall to wall for ten years and that I didn't enjoy it anymore. And I let it go. I started going to concerts, doing theater and making a mess.

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You don't carry any wounds on your soul from childhood?

No, none. I just thought for a long time that violence was a legitimate means. I don't think so anymore. And I certainly do not beat my children. I fought a lot when someone didn't understand me and I ran out of arguments, I tried to beat him up to believe me, to convince him.

Did it work?

Well… sometimes they listened. Another time I got caught. Sometimes the cravings get the better of me, but we're adults now...

And your son Nikita is also almost an adult. Do you get along well?

He hated me for a while, when I was the crisis manager of the selection process at Hellichovka (High School of Graphic Arts in Prague's Hellichova Street, editor's note) and I stood over him with a whip. He got in, he had the most points. I say: "Do you understand that it was for something?" "Yeah, but I didn't have to have a hundred and twenty points, devade was enough." He got a photo. He's a skater. He doesn't take drugs. Good.

After some sixteen years, two small children. Are you enjoying it?

Power. But it's complicated. However, my new stand-up is called Complications.

Where will we see you now?

In August, the movie Sleeping City based on the novel by Martin Vopěnka premieres. And the film Known Unknown: Four Couples of Friends at Dinner premieres in Slovakia. They'll put their phones on the table, read aloud what's coming, and put phone calls on speakerphone... It'll turn out... Beautifully.

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And theater?

In September, the premiere of Koura on Fidlovačka. I also play in Testosterone there. And further in the performances of Komediograf with Zkurvení havlisti and Jak se Husák thought she was Věra Čáslavská. Stand-ups and my new solo project Complications.

No longer playing with the nomadic company NIE?

But yes.

I was interested that twenty years ago you and NIE made a clown about the story of a Hungarian who lost his leg in the war and somehow ended up in a Russian asylum, where he lived for fifty years.

In general, the entire trilogy is about people with whom history has swept away. But as they say, tragedy is dead. Comedy is the only way to tell tragic stories. Then one laughs all the time, except at the end. We pour fernet before the show, bitter as the story. Our shows were more or less fixed improvisation. With live music.

What is fixed improvisation?

We know where we are going. We have guardrails. Text. In between clown improvisation. It's supposed to take fifty minutes, sometimes it takes an hour and a half. In the New York Times they wrote: "Sometimes too much self-indulgent clownery." Sometimes we enjoyed it too much. At the expense of the story.

But having a response in the New York Times, you can count on that!

Yes, of course. We played on Broadway. Off Broadway, that is. And we sold out shows in Edinburgh, that counts.

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When did you say enough was enough?

When in your twenties you sleep in hotels two hundred days a year, it's a ride, a party, great... but then it wears off. We already felt the tension, a bit of a submarine. But you don't leave NIE, it's just a pause. Sometimes I was surprised, sometimes I tried something. And next year we have a big thing waiting for us in Stuttgart, Hotel Europa, where eleven nationalities will play.

Was your first-born son Nikita a child of nomadic times?

He was. When he was a few weeks old, I had to go away to play for a few weeks. Other times, we both played with his mom and traveled with the show, and with several acting families and children around the world. We were also in Japan and China...

Do you still teach at DAMU?

Jojo. Clowning around. Not the circus. But simple being on stage. Playfulness. Basic rules of acting. Listen, watch what's happening, don't make up your mind. I don't tell them how to play. I tell them how not to play.

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Are you enjoying it?

Awful. Sometimes it's tiring, but I really enjoy it. I'm playing... and suddenly you're making a play and you end up with something terribly fragile.

How do you perceive the initiative No! you have to endure it, when especially drama students define themselves against some forms of pedagogical leadership, including sexism at school and so on...

It is mainly a problem of drama and scenography, I think, we are alterna (department of alternative and puppet theatre, editor's note). The alternative also includes a different approach of teachers. Drama is a classic acting and directing education, a pure and hard craft, an old school that does not stick to the alterna (sometimes to its detriment) so much, where creativity is preferred. I say that drama educates actors, but alterna educates theater people more. But it also intertwines…

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But even if it probably doesn't directly concern you, so it affects you, doesn't it?

Sure. I don't want to get into big lawsuits. It is certainly good that some topics have been opened up, some things are probably not right. On the other hand, acting is hard work, those people can't be complete snowflakes. And if a teacher makes an acting student cry, it is mostly for pedagogical and directing reasons. I hope so! So I try not to make the students cry. Anyway, the discussion is healthy, I'm a fan of it.

When you look back, do you have work and life as you once imagined, or is it completely, completely different?

Since I was little, I didn't imagine or plan anything. And I don't plan to. The few times I planned something, the future showed how useless the work was. And I don't like it. Yeah, it's beautiful, I can't complain. But whine sometimes, right?