The movement theater production for adults, Fearseekers, was inspired by the tales of the Grimm brothers. Combining diverse pictorial and linguistic elements, the twisting “all-arts attraction” through personalized combinations of movement, gesture and facial expressions provides an opportunity for actor students to articulate themselves and capture the spectator’s imagination.

About the performance:

In many tales, we read about heroes who feel the need to learn to be afraid. Their stories gradually shape our psyche, fostering the development of our consciousness: in order to become a mature personality, we must end our repressions in the final phase. We have to accept that fear is necessary because it prepares us for situations and events that require higher neural activation. We’ve overcome most of our childhood anxieties by adulthood, but there are some that take root in us that we’re not really able to deal with, and we’d rather accept them than do something against them. However, one who strives for freedom and a higher level of self-realization cannot be a slave to either the instinct self or the superior self, it must mobilize its defensive capacity to ensure its survival. For this process, we need stories that provide guidance on the most important issues in our lives and also put the shadowy side of our personalities in the foreground.

Zoltán Balázs's directing is based on the brute force and extensive fantasy world inherent in Grimm's tales, focusing on the associative aspects of the unconscious. He interprets the infantile projections of fairy tales as models of human behavior that, - as Mircea Eliade puts it -, bring meaning and value to life. Inspired by fairy tale fragments, the type-game, which presents even the most amazing encounters in a relaxed, casual style, shows the process of self-integration, the symbolic rebirth of the self-image of the players. The struggle for self-realization can also be interpreted as an initiation procedure in which viewers can observe how the actors relate to their own dreams and desires, how they deal with their problems. The stage coordinates articulated in the performance place the kaleidoscope-like story not in the space and time of external reality, but in a particular state of mind, so in order for the multi-threaded action to gain its importance, the associations of the spectators are also needed. Immersed in the special atmosphere of the performance, the world of unconscious substances is revealed to the audience, the content of which is both mysterious and familiar, dark and fascinating, and at the same time arouses in us the wildest anxiety and the greatest hope.

About the director:

Zoltán Balázs was born in Cluj-Napoca and studied acting and directing at the University of Theater and Film in Budapest. The founding director of the Maladype Theatre has already worked in France, Germany, Slovakia, Slovenia, and the United States, but is also a regular guest of Romanian theater life: in 2010 he directed The return of Ulysses at the Csiky Gergely Hungarian State Theatre in Timișoara. and then in 2013, as a co-production between the Radu Stanca National Theater in Sibiu and Maladype, he directed Master and Margarita by M.A. Bulgakov, a performance that received five UNITER nominations. In 2018 and 2019 he achieved an undivided critical and audience success at the Odeon Theater in Bucharest with a special adaptation of Elzbieta Chowaniecz's contemporary work Gardenia, and Pier Lorenzo Pisano’s For your own good.

Over the years, his work has been recognized with many honors, receiving the Mari Jászai Prize, the Knight's Cross - the Order of Merit of the Republic of Hungary, and the Critics' Award for the most outstanding Hungarian theatrical achievements. He also received the Kálmán Nádasdy and Sándor Hevesi awards for making the Hungarian theatre internationally recognised.

The performance Fearseekers - adapting to ever-changing epidemiological measures - will hopefully be available to the audience in Târgu Mureş from mid-January 2022. Thanks to the festival invitations, the Hungarian and foreign audiences can see the special production from the end of March.

Fearseekers - Based on the Grimm Brothers

Players:
Zoltán Adorjáni Nagy, Gedeon András, Edina Bajkó g.a.
Barti Lehel András, Noémi Becsey-Imreh, Előd Jancsó
Kata Milla Kovács, Tamara Pascu, Boróka Vajda, Erika Vincze

Creators:
Directing, set-design: Zoltán Balázs
Musical leaders: Edina Bajkó and Erika Vincze

Színház Online, 2021