Czechia mourns Sir Tom Stoppard, the world famous playwright who never forgot his roots
News of the death of award-winning British playwright Sir Tom Stoppard has touched many people in the Czech Republic deeply. Czech-born, Sir Tom, retained a close link to the country and tirelessly fought to help Czech dissidents during the communist years.
Stoppard was born as Tomáš Straussler in 1937 in the Moravian town of Zlín in what was then Czechoslovakia. The family fled the Nazis and moved to Singapore when he was just two years old.
His father died in Singapore and his mother, Marta Straussler, took Tom and his older brother Peter to India, where she married British Army Major Kenneth Stoppard and the family moved to England.
In London, Tom Stoppard started making a living as a critic and journalist; later he began writing his own plays.
His Jewish grandparents died in Nazi concentration camps. But Stoppard only learned that he was Jewish in the early 1990s. He came to Zlín in 1998, to visit his birthplace and trace his roots. “I feel incredibly fortunate that I did not have to fight for survival or die,” he wrote later.
Although he left Czechoslovakia at an early age, Tom Stoppard took an active interest in human rights in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe. In 1977 he met playwright Václav Havel in Communist Czechoslovakia and set about translating Havel’s plays into English.
He actively supported dissidents, repeatedly organized petitions for the release of Havel from prison, and in 1983 founded a prize for Czechoslovak authors whose works could not be published under the Communist regime.
In 2005 Sir Tom Stoppard was guest of honour at the 80th anniversary of the Czech PEN Club celebrated in the very room in Prague's Café Louvre where the organisation was founded by Karel Capek and other writers on February 15, 1925.
On the occasion he told Radio Prague how happy he was to be here.
"I accepted the invitation from Jiří Stránsky immediately and enthusiastically, because any reason to come to Prague is good, I have one or two people I know here. And I feel emotionally attached to Czech matters, not to mention Capek himself and his legacy. So I have lots of reasons for being here, and I'm very pleased I am here."
Stoppard wrote around thirty plays, and some were clearly inspired by his contacts with the Czech cultural scene.
His 1979 one-act play Krhút’s Macbeth was dedicated to Pavel Kohout and inspired by Vlasta Chramostová’s dissident home theatre.
His play Rock ’n’ Roll was partly set in Prague. It begins with the Soviet crushing of the Prague Spring in 1968 and ends with a Rolling Stones concert at the city's Strahov stadium in 1990.
In 2007 Sir Tom Stoppard attended its Prague premier and clearly enjoyed every minute of the performance despite the fact that he spoke no Czech.
“I was very excited by the production. The whole thing has been a real memorable evening for me personally and I'm very pleased. The audience reaction was fascinating, because they did react differently in different parts - they laughed at things which were special to the Czech experience. I found that the most fascinating thing about the evening for me.”
Former Czech foreign minister Karel Schwarzenberg presented Stoppard with the Gratias Agit award in London in October 2011 for promoting the good name of the Czech Republic abroad. The international PEN Club awarded him a lifetime achievement award in 2015.
There are many today who mourn Tom Stoppard’s passing in Czechia –with both personal friends and institutions paying tribute to his memory.
The head of the Vaclav Havel Library Tomáš Sedláček, highlighted the fact that the world famous author tirelessly drew the attention of the world to the struggle of Czechoslovak dissent for freedom and human dignity.
“The news affected me deeply - I see it as the end of a great era” Lenka Havlíková, director of Divadlo X10 and former dramaturg at the National Theatre wrote. “Tom Stoppard could perform incredible feats with language. His texts were perfectly thought-out; he played with themes and context, added enormous intellectual perspective, and was able to present everything in an entertaining way — he was exceptional.”
The Czech Ministry of Foreign Affairs mourned the playwright’s passing on its website saying
“In Sir Tom Stoppard the world loses an exceptional artist; we, moreover, lose a man who never forgot his roots. Honour to his memory”.
