Women's Portraits

Hana Bauerová

An eighty-year-old woman, exceptional, wise, active and optimistic. Actress, author of books on acting and fishing, recipe collector, excellent story teller, admirer of nature, people and mother tongue.

My childhood

I have beautiful memories of my childhood. I was born in Prague as an only child. My father was unemployed during the crisis; my mother went to help to “better” families and we were not wealthy. But I know to this day how good fresh heel of bread with crackling lard tastes. I admired very much my grandfather, paver foreman who created patterns of cobblestones on the pavement. He lived with grandmother, later also with us at Podskalí where rafts and rowing boats floated and excellent fish was caught. Songs were sung and theatre was played. From time to time, also my uncle had “concerts” in the pub at Vojtěšská Street; he was excellent piano player and discussed with the artists and journalists who went there. Egon Erwin Kisch and František Sarauer were among them.

I lived in an inspiring environment. I danced with the prima ballerina Zabilová when I was four already; she played in Our Big-Heads and in Nedbal’s play “From Fairy Tale to Fairy Tale” in the National Theatre. I met theatre bards there: Karel Höger and Marie Glázrová. I have particularly nice memories of Mrs. Nasková, National Artist with whom I shared the changing room. She told me fairy tales and brought chocolate, which was a big luxury because it was in the time of war.

Theatre Academy …

I have unforgettable memories of school. I was admitted to the Theatre Academy of Prague. We were five, and our acting professor was Karel Höger, National Artist. He was an extraordinary actor, teacher and high-principled man. When he found out that I was hesitating between acting and dance, he told me: “You cannot sit on two buttocks; make a decision.” I chose acting because of love and admiration to him.

A year before finishing the Academy, I acted as guest in the Realistic Theatre. That time was not favourable to good theatre and to viewer’s taste, it was raw and almost vulgarly realistic. We founded our own student studio, recited poems, prepared a series of Negro poesy translated by Karel Čapek and directed by Pavel Kohout and went for a competition with it. We were young and courageous, then in 1948! The minister of education of that time, “oldster” Zdeněk Nejedlý, liked our performance, so that nobody was surprised that we passed the competition and even won it. We got a splendid two-month holiday in Yugoslavia as a reward. And on top of that, we, nineteen-year-old “actresses”, met “party animals”, boys in pretty half-American uniforms there. I fell in love with my future husband, the actor Josef Bulík there.

To České Budějovice to play theatre

After having graduated from the Theatre Academy, I hesitated where to start my professional

career. Would I go to Liberec, or to České Budějovice? Karel Höger, my professor of acting solved it on behalf of me when he said: “Don’t go to Liberec, the winter there is long.”

My parents agreed with my choice. They took also our grandma and we moved to the south. My grandmother lived here in health to the beautiful age of ninety-nine years. She felt here well like I did. We played beautiful plays, we were young and I was engaged in a lot of performances I have been remembering with nostalgia so far. It was the most fantastic period of my work in the theatre. I have not been “Praguer” but “South Bohemian” for sixty years already. I have been in the main engagement in only one theatre for sixty years; the artistic art of the theatre was changed by each newly arriving manager and director, but also by social events and the time we lived in.

Actor’s marriage

I have an actor’s marriage. I acknowledge it is an “Italian” marriage. Both of us are hot-tempered, that’s why it is so.

“Pepa” Bulík and I love, respect and need each other. We are linked by theatre memories, family and his co-authorship of the recipe book. He eats courageously everything I cook. Believe me, he is a good and brave man.

Kateřina, our daughter, completed the graphical and ceramic school of Bechyně. She is designer of the Small Theatre of České Budějovice. The artist profession goes on. I have grandchildren and a great-granddaughter and I am glad to have them.

Building a picturesque home at Česká Street

We live in a picturesque ancient house in the historical part of the town of České Budějovice, at Česká Street, near a monastery built by Italian workers in 1265. You would bow down before the craft skill and inventiveness of the workers if you see for example our black kitchen shaped as horse head. I remember the beginnings of our building of the house. As there was danger that it would collapse, we had to brace the supporting wall over night. While I was cooking sirloin in cream sauce on the floor, the actors Klásek, Hardt, Soukup and others mixed concrete and bricked the whole night long. These are unbelievable memories. Then the year 2002 “came” and flood covered us. We had one and a half meter of water in our house. Everything that was inside had to be discarded or changed. Destruction. All savings we had were used up for the repair and restoration of our house, although we had had insurance.

When we started playing theatre in the Castle Garden

In 1959, the South Bohemian Theatre started playing in the natural amphitheatre of Český Krumlov. The revolving auditorium was a singularity of the theatre. The revolving auditorium was small at that time and it was spun by human force. Later it was made bigger and better. Most of us were young; we had small children and went to performances as we could. Actresses who just did not act were usually babysitting. We helped each other. “Today’s” actors cannot imagine that we spent two “holiday” months in Český Krumlov. Each evening in the theatre, one play in July and another in August. We had holiday only in September when our children went to school again. So we did not have any joint holiday and travelling. I loved theatre and learned a lot of skills because of it; I learned to play guitar, to ride a horse. When you ride a horse during eight theatre weeks, like in Shakespeare’s “Twelfth Night”, your body teaches you how to sit and almost sleep on horse’s back. I am writing a story book called “Ankle-deep in water” about the beginnings of theatre in Český Krumlov and about our experiences from the theatre backstage where people cannot see and from where they cannot hear anything.

Harmony with nature

Sometimes after the performances, when it was late already or when it rained, we slept at our colleague Milan Jedlička’s small old cottage on the bank of the Lipno Lake. He had fishing rods there, and that was where it all started. He fished enthusiastically, and I started fishing too. We got up early in the morning to go fishing. I will never forget my first bag. When I caught my first fish in a pool at the Witch Wood near our cottage, I was lost. It was a correctly caught pike, certainly the most beautiful fish in the world. Fishers and authors of books on fish would marvel together with me.

I have kept my enthusiasm for nature and fishing to date. We own a cottage without electricity and water under the confluence of the rivers Teplá Vltava and Studená Vltava. I am happy there, I go fishing, invent recipes and write my books. I feel splendidly at the riverside. Now when I have problems walking and when we are in České Budějovice, I go fishing to the Sokolský Island. I enjoy the view of the running river; do you know that the river is different each minute? It is a living thing. Last year my bag was, in total, twenty-two carps and three pikes. My bags of this year are weaker. But the main thing is, I hold the rod!

I love the mornings in Šumava. I get up early and I often see our two cottages floating in the blue mist rising from the river. The sun shining through creates silver sparklets in the air and the landscape below it swings slowly like in dream. I can remember lively my morning bath when the nakedness of my body was covered by the mist and “miracle occurred”. A Šumava train was approaching silently and unseen, when our dog ran across the track. I shouted “Stand!” and stopped breathing. Six carriages loaded with wood up to the edge covered the dog’s body on the track for a moment. The most terrible pictures ran through my head. I did not have the courage to run up the hill to see what had happened. But a miracle occurred! Our “petrified” dog Čenda cowered in the middle of the track without one single scrape. He lived. So don’t say that miracles don’t occur.

Memories constitute the only paradise from where nobody can expulse you. I remembered this pearl of wisdom often in my life, when I put my memories into the books “Before the curtain, behind the curtain” and “Fisher’s stories”. My memories of the theatre and the actors’ stories revived in accidental and planned meetings with actors and actresses of famous names in our “hen party” in our home or at talks give joy not only to ourselves but also to people who still have us in their memory and perhaps in their heart. It is beautiful to live and to exist also for such moments.

Life credo…

My life credo? What does a human need for life? To eat, to drink, to have a good work and fun after work, as wise Jan Werich said. I would add, also to love people. In Ancient Rome they said: bread and plays. Comedians and actors were charged with plays for which they were paid some coin to buy bread. When the first people left the Paradise, they were announced that they would gain their bread in the sweat of their faces. And also that a human must work well in order to have bread and to have something on it.

Ivanka Ruiderová