Václav Vydra

Born Apr. 29, 1876, in Pilsen; died Apr. 13, 1953, in Prague. Czech actor. People’s Artist of the Czechoslovak Republic (1946). Son of a military musician.

Vydra made his debut in the troupe of E. Žolner (in the town of Mlada Boleslav) in 1893. During the years 1907-13, Vydra was an actor with the State Theater in Pilsen, in the period 1913-22, with the State Theater on the Vinogrady (Prague), and from 1922, with the National Theater in Prague (during 1946-49 he was its artistic director). Vydra’s stage characters were distinguished for mastery of psychological analysis, temperament, and acuteness of thought. Among his best roles were Othello, King Lear, and Julius Caesar (in Shakespeare’s plays), Gero and Voinar (in Jirasek’s Gero and Voinarkd), Valenta (in Tyl’s Daughter of an Incendiary), Rogozhin (in The Idiot, based on Dostoevsky’s novel), Rank (in Ibsen’s A Doll’s House), and Berest (in Korneichuk’s Platon Krechet). Vydra is the author of the books Let Me Have a Word and My Journeys in Life and Art.