"All this came from what I was, what I thought, and what I experienced."

Zoltán Balázs’ one-man manifesto is some kinds of reflections; the concentrated appearance of the individual artistic point of view, practice of the actor-director-troupe leader, it is the oeuvre – the process of personal education and creation – it is one of his most important stages: the brilliant summary of the artistic values, theoretical and practical base of knowledge of the Maladype Theatre.

The arc of the process started from the legendary Hamlet performance of Bárka Theatre, which was performed in 2005 with Zoltán Balázs in the main role. With Tim Carroll’s staging, and János Arany’s classical old-fashioned translation it was – as the mark of the genre said it – the base of a theatrical experiment. The text and the character of the main role were the exact starting point; the cast, the place of each scenes, the properties, the music, the motifs, the systems of relationships were variable aspects from evenings to evenings, and even inside the performance too. A board(theatrical)game was played with the viewers, the colleagues, the characters, the text, the situation: with Shakespeare.

This performance required different dimensions from the actors’ presence: the rehearsing artistic creativity, playfulness, courage, sensibility, and the continuous pre- and rearrangement. These later aspects were multi-layered and important especially in case of the main role, as in the play, in the performance too, Hamlet and Zoltán Balázs too became the main character and the director of their own performance.

This multiplied play, the experiment nature of it, the special relationship between the civilian ego and personality of the character, “the staging of his own character”, the grabbing of the possibilities of the moments and the reflections, which can be connected to it, questions and answers, which were finally built in Zoltán Balázs’ actor-pedagogy, and got formed in his theory of the “human actor”, which has become of one of the basic theories of the artistic “ars poetica” of Maladype Theatre.

The master degree of the presence of this special (human)actor appears in case of the I Chose Freedom, which is performed almost ten years later. The essential of the story of the 800 pages long book is condescended in a two and half hours long “one-man manifesto”, thanks for the brilliant adaptation of it. This artistic and art pedagogical view, which is very different from the Hungarian theatrical traditions, practices, can form such a present tensed, intellectual area, in which the freedom of presence in the present and its risk can prevail.

Zoltán Balázs forms the performance continuously and sensitively according to the habitat and playful mood of the viewers of the given evening, After seeing the performance more, the changes in it – the “strikethroughs and rewritings” – on one hand the interactions with us, with the viewers, and the amount and place of the summarized (faster) parts, which are built in as a result of this; on the other hand that inner dialogue that is formed with the writer himself, which can make the performance actual and authentic by reborning again and again by the telling of the text: it is forming and changing continuously. That way a living theatre is created every evening. Victor Kravchenko becomes Zoltán Balázs’ “partner”, who is evoked by his written (and it is translated by Péter Konok) text, which the actor performs to the viewers, who take part in the common journey as his playing and thinking partners, in comparison and reflection to the actor’s own ideas, experiences, actual state.

The symbolic using of the script is the metaphor of this special and sophisticated communication, which can emphasize the performer’s role as a medium – so the role of the mediator – who by performing his story and ideas page by page gives – offers – it continuously into the hand of a member of the viewers; in order to form their own reflections and opinion. The light of the reading lamp goes in direction of the text, its presence can express the actor’s public loneliness, the light is the understanding itself, the symbol of the act of enlightening: the aim is not to express the feelings, experiences, but to understand the process, which is ensured by the tensed tempo, which is dictated by the actor: it gives the manifesto nature of the performance and also refers to the circumstances of the writing of the book, and to its urgent necessity.

Because of the fast changings, because of the lack of short time passing that can be a kind of transition, in the habitat of the viewers the main aim of “survival” can prevail too: the fast changing of the moments, the adaptation to the new situation, the mental presence of the presentation. We have not got any time to get into feelings, to get shocked, to get into the past, to think about the future: the theatrical present tense of here and now can prevail by the great amount of mental interaction. Only the two defining turning points: during the final acts of the sensitive/mental (the tearing of Stalin’s picture) and the physical defection (the leaving of the homeland) he lets the tempo slowed down and the emotive identification.

This business has lasted for six years: the finding of the original work, the getting of its rights, the translation, the publishing, the preparation of the adaptation, then the performing of the text, which brings special artistic quality and express the writer’s aim, the pedagogical program that is built on the text, the working out of it (the matter of Kravchenko) and its implementation, which is an uniquely complex cultural project, in which the one-man manifesto has a central place. The aim of the programme is to form questions and personal reflections about the inheritance, values, homeland, system, dictatorship, personal decision and responsibility of the society and family: about the freedom of personal presence in the present.

Mónika Németh, Oroszvilág.hu, 2016

(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)