[Reading from notes] …and started their activities. 15th June 1983, letter from the Jazz Section to the chairman of the liquidation committee for Jazz Section, that they didn't accept the rules and regulations of the regime. Yes, in a sense. On the 15th of June they got permission to start the activity of the Prague branch office of the Jazz Section. And then 14th of July was the first meeting of the committee for Jazz. They chose as chairman Mr Joska Skalník, and they accepted the plan of the activities of the Jazz Section, including the materials which they took over from the former Union of the Musicians.
When there is more it's okay — because the tape I will edit anyhow. It's only for you. You don't have to put it down.
Then on the 5th of October 1983, the committee of the Jazz Section informed that they finished the activities of the former body and started as a Prague branch office of the Jazz Section. There were some legal problems because they had to finish the activity, so they transformed into a new organisation and tried to continue somehow. But they had to liquidate their former body, and in '83 they took over all the membership from the Union of the Musicians of the Czech Republic into the Prague branch of the Jazz Section, which had some legal — started to be a legal body.
I've heard of them, yeah. In fact, a Canadian was involved in that, I think.
I don't know exactly. I think so.
How did the Jazz Section affect you personally? What kind of connection did you have? Did you listen to their music?
Oh, they didn't play any music. We had a book from them about [John] Lennon and Yoko Ono — the story of their common life. We have more books than one. We have a book from the Jazz Section about E. F. Burian. Then another book by Hrabal — I Served the King of England — was published in the Jazz Section, and some others.
How did you become a member?
Because I found out somewhere their address and I wrote to them. They sent me an application form, and I sent it there. And I was once in Prague in their office as well. It was somewhere in Karmelitská [the Lesser Town, exact street to verify]; in a small house. You sent the money and then you could get all the books printed in the year, I think.
Was there some danger of being associated with the Jazz Section?
I think not.
Nothing at all?
Well, almost nothing. No special danger. For some people it might be not profitable if they wanted to have a good post or career. But it was a pleasure to be a member of this organisation. It was something against the government.
But it would seem to me, if that was the case, then there would be some kind of ramification — there would be the government —
I don't know. Everybody wanted to support activities like that. So we were doing underground theatres, and we wanted to perform plays written by illegal writers, and so on.
Do you mind if I keep on recording? Is it okay?
Yeah, it doesn't matter. If you don't mind.
I think that Lucy had some more materials and did more non-permitted activities. Because she tried to organise theatres of absurd drama — such as Beckett, Ionesco, and others. She had to rewrite the scenarios and get the permission, so she could tell about it.
That would be very interesting to hear. Just make sure that —
I don't know what to say about you. I always wanted to do something for the support of culture. Most of the topics which interested me were forbidden. My favourite writer was Samuel Beckett.
What was that period?
It was after Normalisation — I think the 1970s, yeah. It was much worse than the '80s.
Was it possible to put a theatre production on without all of this? Did people put on these productions without the official —
No.
Never?
Sometimes. It happened once in a student club on Šenova [street name to verify]. We were playing for half a year, once a month, Samuel Beckett — but the lady who was the head of the students' club didn't take her plan to the controllers. After half a year they found out, and we were forbidden again.
When they closed you down, how did they close you down? Did they just not let you in, or did they say "look, you have to stop"?
After I finished university I wanted to find a job supporting these theatres. And all these underground theatres — nowadays we can say underground — had to be organised by a local centre. And I found a job in this local centre. My job was to control these theatres and be at their performances as often as possible, be at their rehearsals, and control if the text they were really playing was in the way it was checked. And help them.
Many times, for example, Havel wrote plays that were banned here. Because of these reasons, they weren't able to be played, even if people had underground scripts and so on?
They weren't against the government. There wasn't much against the government. Havel was not permitted to be performed. Could be normally performed. It was more because of his person than his work. The plays were wonderful and —
But you could never perform any — just because of the person who wrote it.
Because of the person. It was very often the same. What's the first name of Topol?
Josef. Or Jáchym?
Jáchym Topol.
[Showing letters] These two letters are from the Czechoslovak State Bank. [Reading] You had to have signatures from about six or seven different bodies — such as the Communist Party in the town where you lived, or in the office where you work; then the trade unions; then your boss or your teacher (it depends on whether you are a student or not); then you have to have organisational permission, and so on. And after it you can send the application for the hard currency for travelling abroad to the non-socialist country.
And this basically says the same thing as this.
Yes — probably. Here it is said that because they don't have enough hard currency, they choose first the people who haven't been in a non-socialist country before. But I hadn't either. So they said to me that I have a good chance for next time.
And this is the next time?
No, no, this is the next time. So much for the good chance.
It's incredible. I can keep this then?
Yes, yes.
Well, in 1968 in August I was at my grandmother's on holiday. When the Russian army came, the railway was blocked. My grandmother was afraid to send me home — I had to stay in the village even after the school had begun.
Did you meet anybody from that army? Did they try to make contact?
No, no. I was too small and I wasn't allowed. The granny kept me at home.
Well, in 1989 we got to know about the strike of the students and theatres in Prague.
How did you find out about them?
About one week later.
During the week?
During the week. We knew that something could happen because of Poland and East Germany before it.
How did you find out about those countries?
Oh, it was on TV probably, and newspapers. There was some propaganda, but they informed us about it.
Did they have some kind of loudspeaker system?
Yes. They had a balcony in one house and used the balcony. It was somebody's flat there. And later they had a tribune.
Part of the poster?
Yeah, that poster from that time. We had it on the house.
It was a year — in September I started working in this school. And there still was a communist headmaster and deputy master. One of them is still in the school.
Was that — Srotková?
Yes — Srotková.
And then?
Then the government changed, and we had voting for headmaster. And they didn't get enough votes. Some people took their walks [went forward as candidates], but they didn't get enough for working in their places. And our colleagues persuaded Eda to take the headmaster role at the school. And since that time it was the renaissance of the school.
Oh, has it?
Yes. He has left. The lady who is the master there now is not bad — but she is a typical teacher. She is not able to think in a different way than proper lessons and using books. She is not able to think about the future of the school. She is only a controller of the children — of the beginning of the lessons.
It's sad that he's not there anymore. Something has changed.
Ah — what did you do here? Here are photos from 1989, from November. Here are the shop windows with posters. Here is — "We want to have the government by the coalition, not only the Communist Party."
What does that mean? "TV does what it can" — what does it mean?
What it is able to do. [Pause.] But what it is able to do.
Is — the statue isn't there anymore?
No, no, no. There is that, that pedestal — but not the statue.
Pravda is truth?
Yes. And rozum is rational? Rationalisation. It's thinking.
Wow. Excellent pictures.
Well, the pictures are not very good, but —
They give the idea perfectly.
Yeah, I hope. It will help you very much. It is very important.
[On Charter 77] — the headmaster and the teacher of civic sciences told us about it. They started very broadly that socialism is successful, that we need our place in life, and so on. They finished on the Charter 77 and started to be very dangerous — because they said that anybody who would sign it would be fired from the school. And that it's stupidity to risk your life and your future by signing such a stupid text.
You didn't have the opportunity.
Yes — I had, because for instance, [someone] could arrange the signing of Charter. I think that if I wanted to do it, I could. But I didn't want to risk my job and my future by this act. So I didn't act as a hero. I was more clever and realistic. And I don't know — it's not a good feature of me, but it's just to stay aside and wait how it will turn out. So probably that's why I didn't want to fight such a fight without any perspective in the future to be successful. Because the communists were very strong, and people who wanted to fight against them had no chance at that time.
You mentioned your high school and public school. What kind of political training did they give you?
Well, we had to listen to that history of the workers' movement and the history of the Communist Party — that it was the only way and that it was significant — and the communism. It depended on the teacher. Some teachers were more afraid than others. Some teachers did what they thought was OK, and some had to train us that the leading role of the Communist Party is necessary and that socialism is the best. And some teachers admitted there are some problems. But —
Did any of your teachers ever get in trouble for saying anything?
I don't know. We didn't know it. Students — we didn't know it.
What about the secret police? What kind of contact? Were they really a threat, or was it something that people took seriously?
We were too young. They weren't interested in us, I think. Well — it's not because of the age. We had no positions. But we didn't work with the dissidents or in that network. We weren't a threat for the Communist Party, and so they didn't care of us.
So it would be an interrogation.
Yeah. That might be true. Maybe if you have time, we will contact some of them, because they are better experts in secret police.
Sorry?
That we are — there are drugs there, there are some chemicals. Smelling toluene. Sniffing some chemicals.
I don't think — I don't know if you can correct me if I'm wrong — but I think most people were not, because they were worried about it, and the actual dissidents were quite few. So to get a real idea of what was happening —
Yeah. We were afraid of them, but we didn't come into close contact with them.
Like most people, I would imagine.
- Eda = Eduard — confirmed in May 2026 as the post-1989 elected principal of the same Brno gymnasium where this interviewee taught. Eduard is the same person referenced in Czech Interview 05 as the father of Edo (the gymnasium student), and is the man pictured with Vita Chrápová (the math teacher in Czech Interview 01) in the May 2026 photograph. Mark himself taught at the same Brno gymnasium — Schola Sirotkova, almost certainly Gymnázium Sirotkova in Brno-Žabovřesky — from September 1990 to February 1991. This interview, Interview 01, and Interview 05 are all from this single school where Mark was a colleague. The "friend from Britain" this interviewee mentions Eduard hosting for summer English-teaching lessons is not Mark (who is Canadian) — a separate foreign teacher whose identity is not yet established. This reframes the Czech archive substantially.
- The interviewee in Interview 03 — the Czech-and-German teacher who did underground Beckett — is a colleague of Vita Chrápová's at this same school.
- The interviewee's own name (not stated on the tape) — almost certainly a teacher Mark knew well at the Brno gymnasium
- Lucy (or Lucie) — her close collaborator on underground theatre and the November 1989 poster-making; her partner or close friend
- The photographer-boy whose Brno flat was raided; the secondary art school he attended
- The chemist friend's name (if she mentioned it; possibly different interview)
- The travel-bureau employer (still not confirmed from previous transcripts either)
- Joska Skalník — visual artist, designer, member of the Jazz Section committee (transcript renders correctly with this spelling)
- Karel Srp — chairman of the Jazz Section; imprisoned after the 1986 trial
- Vladimír Kouřil — Jazz Section secretary; co-defendant in the 1986 trial
- The "committee of three" she refers to is likely Srp + Kouřil + a third member (possibly Čestmír Huňát, Tomáš Křivánek, or Joska Skalník himself, all of whom were tried in the Jazzová sekce case in March 1987)
- E. F. Burian — Czech avant-garde composer and theatre director (1904–1959)
- Bohumil Hrabal — I Served the King of England (Obsluhoval jsem anglického krále) — published as samizdat through the Jazz Section in 1982
- The Plastic People of the Universe — the famous Czech underground rock band; the Canadian Mark mentions is likely Paul Wilson, the Canadian English teacher who was a band member 1970–72 (worth confirming with him if reachable)
- DG 307 — Czech psychedelic/avant-garde band associated with the Plastics, led by Pavel Zajíček
- Mrs Srotková — the communist deputy headmistress at her school during the Velvet Revolution; still teaching at the time of the interview
- Klement Gottwald — first Communist president of Czechoslovakia (1948–1953); statues and 100-crown banknotes bearing his image were the target of post-1989 reckoning
- T. G. Masaryk — first president of Czechoslovakia (1918–1935)
- Národní třída — the Prague street where police beat student demonstrators on 17 November 1989, the event that triggered the Velvet Revolution
- Františkánská — the Brno street where her underground theatre flat was raided
- Hnutí Brontosaurus — the Brontosaurus Movement, a Czech environmental and ecological NGO (founded under official cover but with distinctly non-conformist culture)
- Lidová Milice — People's Militia
- The Jazz Section history at the opening (Section 1) — she has remarkably specific dates and names. She may have been reading from notes she prepared for Mark, or from Jazz Section history materials she owned. Worth verifying against published sources (the standard reference is Jazzová sekce v čase a nečase by Vladimír Kouřil) before public use, but the broad facts are confirmed history.
- The State Bank hard-currency denial letters (Section 4) — she has them in her hands and reads them aloud over 8 years of denials. This is a perfect everyday-bureaucratic-absurdity scene for short-form documentary. The letters' polite tone ("In case something will change in the next several months, we will give the money for you as well") against the eight-year reality is exactly the kind of construction-vs-deconstruction moment the studio's editorial line is built around. Worth photographing the letters if she still has them — visual evidence is gold for this kind of piece.
- The Byzantine theatre permission system (Section 3) — five separate permissions (year plan, scenario, two expert reviewers, posters, posting locations) just to put on Beckett or Ionesco. "It was a small miracle that we could play theatre." This is the regime's deconstruction of free assembly through layered bureaucracy, made vivid.
- The twelve-year-old at her grandmother's village (Section 5) — Soviet soldiers hungry because nobody would sell them food; villagers painting over road signs; sitting at the radio with her mother hour after hour. "I felt it more by heart than by brain. And since that time I hated communists." Universal and specific at once; a strong candidate for an opening voiceover.
- The toluene raid (Section 11) — police inventing a drug story to discredit underground theatre actors; destroying photos and negatives; trying to get the photographer expelled from art school. The mundane texture of regime tactics — "the boys wanted to go to loo, the girls had to go out of the room" — and the regime's response "there are drugs there."
- The Srotková moment at the general strike (Section 7) — "she took me out of the canvas and she pushed the button of the radio, and she said: 'Oh, it's nothing for you — work properly.'" The single moment captures a regime functionary's last gasp of authority, against the church bells of the general strike at 11 a.m.
- The post-Revolution disillusionment with Eda's school (Section 7) — Eda became headmaster after the Velvet Revolution and led a "renaissance"; now he has left and a "typical teacher" who is "only a controller of the children" has replaced him. The democratic-dawn-to-bureaucratic-restoration pattern is the through-line of post-communist Central Europe, and this is a vivid local instance of it.
- Her self-critique on not signing Charter 77 (Section 9) — "I didn't act as a hero. I was more clever and realistic. And I don't know — it's not a good feature of me, but it's just to stay aside and wait how it will turn out." Strikingly self-aware about her own non-resistance — and pairs editorially with interview 01's defence of pragmatic Communist Party members. Together these voices argue that the binary between dissident-hero and complicit-coward was always too simple for the lives most people actually lived.
- The Rudé právo campaign about Charter 77 (Section 9) — the propaganda model of denouncing without ever revealing the content. Two-month newspaper campaign about "blood dollars from America" and CIA payments to signatories, with no information about what the Charter itself said. This is directly applicable to 2026 disinformation analysis — the technique of attacking the messenger to suppress the message hasn't changed in fifty years; only the platform has.
- The 100-crown banknotes painted over with swastikas and bloody hands (Section 8) — post-Revolution street-level reckoning made visible on currency. Excellent short-form B-roll if archival images exist; Brno archives or Czech press from late 1989 would have them.