ABSTRACT
After the Swiss disaster, the Peppermill went on a Czechoslovakian tour for two months which included two weeks in Prague, the home of the famous Liberated Theater. It had been created a few years back by Jiri Voskovec and Jan Werich, two rebellious students at the University of Prague, as a satirical showcase with strong anti-fascist overtones and very much targeted against some of the professors. Voskovec and Werich immediately became the gods of the new generation of students, but they so angered the hierarchy of the university that they were told either to stop their performances or leave the institution. They left. And they started their own legitimate theater, the Osvobozeneho Divadla (The Liberated Theater), which not only became the toast of Prague and all of Czechoslovakia, but also was known all over Europe as the most exciting avant-garde theater of its time. As part of the Peppermill program in Prague, I was to dance a number called “The Artist in Person,” a satire on the vanity of a self-important and very ridiculous would-be artist. No sooner had I started the dance, than thunderous, bellowing laughter came from the auditorium, which soon became a whole orchestration of screams and yellings and guffaws. It had started with one person, but it had infected the whole house by the time I was about half through my number. This one person was Jan Werich, who was sitting with Voskovec in the center of the theater, bobbing up and down, slapping his and his partner’s thighs and snorting in agonized delight. Of course everybody now looked at Werich and not any more at the stage – and certainly not at me. And they all shrieked and laughed so loud that I could not hear my own music any longer and simply had to stop. I just stood there – helpless, before I vanished into the wings. Afterwards Werich came backstage and said, “Lottinka, you belong to us.”
