The Janáček Academy of Music and Performing Arts awards an honorary doctorate to actress Vlasta Chramostová. The school’s highest award was originally to be presented to her at a solemn ceremony in October 2018 during the celebrations of the founding of Czechoslovakia, but the artist’s hospitalisation made it impossible. Rector of JAMU prof. Petr Oslzlý, Dean of the Faculty of Theatre doc. Petr Francán and Vice-Dean prof. Krobot went to visit the actress in a private facility, where she was awarded an honorary doctorate. The ceremony took place in a small setting, but with all the requisites, insignia and oath of the candidate with the sceptre of the Janáček Academy of Music and Performing Arts.
Vlasta Chramostová’s art in acting belongs to the best of Czech theatre in the second half of the twentieth century and, in combination with her civic activities, makes her one of the greatest female personalities of European acting and theatre.
Chramostová made her debut in front of the camera in 1949 in the communist reconstruction propaganda piece The Great Opportunity. She portrayed more dramatically demanding characters of women who showed their moral qualities during the difficult trials of the Nazi occupation in 1950 in Frič’s The Trap and five years later in Weiss’ A Life at Stake. She blessed us with a captivating performance in 1968 in Herz’s psychological horror The Cremator.
For her non-conformist attitudes after August 1968, Chramostová was forbidden to play in film, television and radio. In 1970, Otomar Krejča hired her for the Za branou Theatre, after the termination of which in 1972 she briefly appeared in the West Bohemian Theatre in Cheb in the title character of Brecht’s play Mother Courage and Her Children.
For the next 17 years, all official stages and media remained closed to her. She became involved in dissent and samizdat, and was one of the first signatories of Charter 77. She founded a residential theatre in her home, which was monitored and persecuted by the regime. Even as late as the spring of 1989, she was convicted for opposition activities.
It was not until thirty years later she appeared on the screen in Michálek’s drama Sekal Has to Die. In 2015, she was inducted into the Hall of Fame of the National Theatre.
no images were found