Stefan Zweig: Impatience of the Heart

There is a double compassion, Stefan Zweig writes in the prologue of his book. One, the cowardly and sentimental one, that is inherent only in the impatience of the heart, to get rid of the embarrassment of someone else's misfortune as quickly as possible, compassion, which is not compassion at all, but only an instinctive turning away of another's suffering from one's own soul. And the other one, which is the only one that makes sense - the unsentimental one, but creative compassion, who knows what he wants, and is determined to endure patiently and with participation to the end of his strength and beyond. Cast Josef Chvalina, Milan Neděla, Radovan Lukavsky, Gabriela Vránová, Miriam Kantorkova, Richard Zahorsky, Ladislav Pešek and others. From an interview with actress Gabriela Vránová: Is there any production(s) (that you have not acted in) that has stuck in your heart and brain and has become to some extent a canon for your understanding or perception of theatre? A visit to the National Theatre with Karel Höger's brother Rudolf, who was our professor of make-up at JAMU. We saw Death of a Salesman. Fantasia! Do you know what it was like when Mr Höger was my radio partner in the Noble Nest almost twenty years later? It was the same with The Rain Merchant at the Chamber Theatre - the stunning Lukavský. He was my partner much later in Impatience of the Heart. That's why I like radio so much. It can bring together actors of other generations in front of the microphone, unless the current "cast" are so myopic that they do not recognize the actor's possibilities and are guided only by their baptismal certificates.