István Nánay: It is not a fairy tale…
The actor is telling the story, He speaks dynamically, rapidly and in a driven way.
The book and the performance, which has been made of it, have humorous and grotesque moments too, they are shocking and moving nostalgia; the self- and public history of Eastern-Europe, which are shown here can be completed with the history, which the viewers have experienced and learnt.
Zoltán Balázs arrives some minutes before the start. He throws down his jacket, he friendly welcomes the viewers, who are sitting in the lines of chairs, which are organised in a half circle, with some of them he has some words as personal acquaintances, and he realises that the lighting does not work. He is searching for a temporary solution with his colleague, even if he cannot get any light at least the papers of the manuscript, which are on the little podium, can be enlightened. From the lines of the viewers a professional also applies for it, finally a table lamp seems to be the most useful one, which the writer main character of the evening, Victor Kravchenko can put on a column made of the books, which are placed on one another. Balázs drinks a little bit from his bottle of water, before he would sit down on the barstool, which is next to the frame of the door, and then he starts to tell the life story of a Soviet engineer, who was faithful, but then because of Stalin’s terror he gets disillusioned of his ideas and defects into the USA.
The fate that is shown here is the horror story of the twentieth century. However, the place is the Soviet Union, similar events happened regularly here, and in other Eastern-European countries, and that political mechanism of power and propaganda, which is written by the writer in his book, from the point of view of its many elements, can be similar.
Zoltán Balázs’ one-person performance is the concentration of a memory of eight hundred pages, it is an autobiography and a historical and social pattern of an era at the same time. The leader of the Maladype some years ago, in an interview, which was made with Ariane Mnouchkine, noticed the name of Victor Kravchenko, whose works the French director thought to be really important. After a long investment Balázs found the track of the writer’s first book, which was published in 1946 in English language, then long years come, until he could get the rights of translation and publishing of the I Chose Freedom. With the own publishing of the Troupe of the Maladype and with Péter Konok’s translation the thick book could be published in 2015. (In Eastern-Europe the whole text has been published in Polish and Bulgarian too, but in Russian legally only some parts, which have been published in newspapers can be known by the readers.)
Victor Kravchenko was born in 1905 in Ukraine. When his father was exiled because he was taken part in the revolution. At his grandparents’ place he could learn about the hard life of the farmers, at home about the poverty. After finishing his schools, he became the member of the Komsomol, after his army service, he entered the Communist party, he was sent to the university of engineering, his career rose steeply. Meanwhile he took part in the inhuman procedures of forcing the farmers into kolkhoz, as well as in the requisition of the crops, and in the forced improvement of the Soviet industry. He did not finish the engineering university, when he became a main engineering leader of a factory. Thanks for his position, he could experience the Soviet luxury, and at the same time he experienced that level of starvation, when by the road naked children with swollen stomach and powerless adults are waiting for the miracle, for a bite of bread. There were times, when his family could eat only soup cooked from barks, but he naturally accepted, when the dinners with caviar and champagne became regular. He did not only become the witness of the actions when farmers, then many more: educated ones, soldiers, workers and officers were taken away, they were entrained and deported, but he was also close to get killed or sent into a labour camp. They tried to make the engineer, who could hardly bear the injustice and lie, silent and get him away from his workplace with the fictious charge of the sabotage. He was between that few ones, who could get out of the procedure of the secret service alive and rehabilitated, and above all, Kravchenko could get into higher and higher positions. He could learn about the terror of the system of Stalin, all the results of the fears of “the pockmarked Georgian one”, the abuses of the oppressive system of power, the selected methods of terror and brainwashing. At the beginning he was against his father – who fought and suffered for the idea of some kind of pluralist communism – because he protected the idea and practice of the existing communism, but he got more and more disillusioned from the party and its ideology, until finally on a beautiful day he got Stalin’s picture of the wall, tore it into pieces and flushed them down into the toilet. During the war he thought about how he could use his incredibly high position to be able to live with the possibility to go for a short period of time to the United States of America, with serious assignments of course. He knew that from there he never returned to his home country. Even if he got into great trouble his mother, siblings, wife, his whole family with this step. For him it was more important than anything else, to make the world learn: what was happening in the Soviet Union. That way the book of the I Chose Freedom was born.
Because of his book, the French communist (!) put him on trial in 1949 with the charge that all of his statements were lies. However, he was cleared of the charges, the Soviet secret system also tried naturally to discredit and remove Kravchenko in other ways too. He wrote down these experiences in his next book of the I Chose Justice, he died in 1966 between strange circumstances. Did he commit suicide, was he killed? It is still a secret today.
Zoltán Balázs has not dramatized the book, not a mono drama was made of it, the genre of the performance is mostly about story telling. The actor-director is sitting on an elevated chair, there is the manuscript in front of him, he is telling the text, sometimes he “cheats”, he looks into his papers, then what he has been over, he hands them to the viewer, who is sitting the closest to him, who collects and puts in order the papers. Sometimes he summarizes with his own words some longer parts, and it becomes harder to separate, that when we can listen to the thirty-eight years old Kravchenko and when to Zoltán Balázs, who is at the same age.
The actor is telling the story. He is speaking energetically, lively and driven. We have to concentrate well to be able to come with him, to be able to follow his story. The parts, which are separated according to the chapters, are not divided from one another, the three hours long performance is one connected flow. At the same time, the performer-actor is in permanent contact with the viewers. He seemingly goes on with Kravchenko’s sentences, he tells bless you when somebody sneezes, he gives advices to those, whose chair slips down from the podium. He measures the viewers, he chooses, whom he tells the sentences (obviously he tells me those, which are about theatre), when the attention would become a little bit lower, he activates the viewers, and the mostly middle aged or older people seemingly answer and repeat some parts together with pleasure and so on. (In spite of it, these trials are the less successful moments of the performance.)
Story telling is a special dramatic genre, it is not accidental, that Brecht mentioned it as an example for the actors of epic theatres. The story teller tells the actions of the epic story, at the same time he brings to life the characters and performs some situations. He does not live it over, he animates them. Meanwhile he let the viewers use their free imagination, they can associate, let them remember their memories in connection with the text, and they can fulfil the stories with their own experiences.
I have been to Moscow many times, so when the writer takes his mother to the agricultural fair, and she is not satisfied because she can meet so many lies there, it makes me remember my first official journey as an engineer in 1972, when I had to show the products of my workplace in one of these pavilions of these towns of fairs. I remember, how disappointing was it, when I was looking around in the pavilions of different republics, who advertised special attractions but in reality these were over-decorated ones. Or when Kravchenko is sent over the Ural to Kemerovo. I remember when in 1980, in connection with the ceremony of Hungarian drama, I should have travelled to this town too to watch a Russian performance of a Hungarian play, but for some reason they did not host me there, and I was sent to the seat of the Chechen-Ingush autonomous republic, to Grozny. It became well known after 1994, in connection with the Russian inquisition against the minorities, who were fighting for their independency and destroyed the whole city.
Even closer memories have come up, which make me remember the everyday life of our country from the last half century. When Kravchenko talks about the propaganda campaign by Stalin, the flow of lies that covers everything, the nationalism, which is risen by political purposes, the hate towards strangers, the creation of the picture of enemies we cannot avoid thinking about the Hungarian appearance of all these today.
This performance can help us face up with the unclosed process, our past in a realist and rational way. More and more people – not only those, who are from the older generation – should get immersed in this clearing of the soul and mind.
István Nánay, szinhaz.net , 2015
(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)
The book and the performance, which has been made of it, have humorous and grotesque moments too, they are shocking and moving nostalgia; the self- and public history of Eastern-Europe, which are shown here can be completed with the history, which the viewers have experienced and learnt.
Zoltán Balázs arrives some minutes before the start. He throws down his jacket, he friendly welcomes the viewers, who are sitting in the lines of chairs, which are organised in a half circle, with some of them he has some words as personal acquaintances, and he realises that the lighting does not work. He is searching for a temporary solution with his colleague, even if he cannot get any light at least the papers of the manuscript, which are on the little podium, can be enlightened. From the lines of the viewers a professional also applies for it, finally a table lamp seems to be the most useful one, which the writer main character of the evening, Victor Kravchenko can put on a column made of the books, which are placed on one another. Balázs drinks a little bit from his bottle of water, before he would sit down on the barstool, which is next to the frame of the door, and then he starts to tell the life story of a Soviet engineer, who was faithful, but then because of Stalin’s terror he gets disillusioned of his ideas and defects into the USA.
The fate that is shown here is the horror story of the twentieth century. However, the place is the Soviet Union, similar events happened regularly here, and in other Eastern-European countries, and that political mechanism of power and propaganda, which is written by the writer in his book, from the point of view of its many elements, can be similar.
Zoltán Balázs’ one-person performance is the concentration of a memory of eight hundred pages, it is an autobiography and a historical and social pattern of an era at the same time. The leader of the Maladype some years ago, in an interview, which was made with Ariane Mnouchkine, noticed the name of Victor Kravchenko, whose works the French director thought to be really important. After a long investment Balázs found the track of the writer’s first book, which was published in 1946 in English language, then long years come, until he could get the rights of translation and publishing of the I Chose Freedom. With the own publishing of the Troupe of the Maladype and with Péter Konok’s translation the thick book could be published in 2015. (In Eastern-Europe the whole text has been published in Polish and Bulgarian too, but in Russian legally only some parts, which have been published in newspapers can be known by the readers.)
Victor Kravchenko was born in 1905 in Ukraine. When his father was exiled because he was taken part in the revolution. At his grandparents’ place he could learn about the hard life of the farmers, at home about the poverty. After finishing his schools, he became the member of the Komsomol, after his army service, he entered the Communist party, he was sent to the university of engineering, his career rose steeply. Meanwhile he took part in the inhuman procedures of forcing the farmers into kolkhoz, as well as in the requisition of the crops, and in the forced improvement of the Soviet industry. He did not finish the engineering university, when he became a main engineering leader of a factory. Thanks for his position, he could experience the Soviet luxury, and at the same time he experienced that level of starvation, when by the road naked children with swollen stomach and powerless adults are waiting for the miracle, for a bite of bread. There were times, when his family could eat only soup cooked from barks, but he naturally accepted, when the dinners with caviar and champagne became regular. He did not only become the witness of the actions when farmers, then many more: educated ones, soldiers, workers and officers were taken away, they were entrained and deported, but he was also close to get killed or sent into a labour camp. They tried to make the engineer, who could hardly bear the injustice and lie, silent and get him away from his workplace with the fictious charge of the sabotage. He was between that few ones, who could get out of the procedure of the secret service alive and rehabilitated, and above all, Kravchenko could get into higher and higher positions. He could learn about the terror of the system of Stalin, all the results of the fears of “the pockmarked Georgian one”, the abuses of the oppressive system of power, the selected methods of terror and brainwashing. At the beginning he was against his father – who fought and suffered for the idea of some kind of pluralist communism – because he protected the idea and practice of the existing communism, but he got more and more disillusioned from the party and its ideology, until finally on a beautiful day he got Stalin’s picture of the wall, tore it into pieces and flushed them down into the toilet. During the war he thought about how he could use his incredibly high position to be able to live with the possibility to go for a short period of time to the United States of America, with serious assignments of course. He knew that from there he never returned to his home country. Even if he got into great trouble his mother, siblings, wife, his whole family with this step. For him it was more important than anything else, to make the world learn: what was happening in the Soviet Union. That way the book of the I Chose Freedom was born.
Because of his book, the French communist (!) put him on trial in 1949 with the charge that all of his statements were lies. However, he was cleared of the charges, the Soviet secret system also tried naturally to discredit and remove Kravchenko in other ways too. He wrote down these experiences in his next book of the I Chose Justice, he died in 1966 between strange circumstances. Did he commit suicide, was he killed? It is still a secret today.
Zoltán Balázs has not dramatized the book, not a mono drama was made of it, the genre of the performance is mostly about story telling. The actor-director is sitting on an elevated chair, there is the manuscript in front of him, he is telling the text, sometimes he “cheats”, he looks into his papers, then what he has been over, he hands them to the viewer, who is sitting the closest to him, who collects and puts in order the papers. Sometimes he summarizes with his own words some longer parts, and it becomes harder to separate, that when we can listen to the thirty-eight years old Kravchenko and when to Zoltán Balázs, who is at the same age.
The actor is telling the story. He is speaking energetically, lively and driven. We have to concentrate well to be able to come with him, to be able to follow his story. The parts, which are separated according to the chapters, are not divided from one another, the three hours long performance is one connected flow. At the same time, the performer-actor is in permanent contact with the viewers. He seemingly goes on with Kravchenko’s sentences, he tells bless you when somebody sneezes, he gives advices to those, whose chair slips down from the podium. He measures the viewers, he chooses, whom he tells the sentences (obviously he tells me those, which are about theatre), when the attention would become a little bit lower, he activates the viewers, and the mostly middle aged or older people seemingly answer and repeat some parts together with pleasure and so on. (In spite of it, these trials are the less successful moments of the performance.)
Story telling is a special dramatic genre, it is not accidental, that Brecht mentioned it as an example for the actors of epic theatres. The story teller tells the actions of the epic story, at the same time he brings to life the characters and performs some situations. He does not live it over, he animates them. Meanwhile he let the viewers use their free imagination, they can associate, let them remember their memories in connection with the text, and they can fulfil the stories with their own experiences.
I have been to Moscow many times, so when the writer takes his mother to the agricultural fair, and she is not satisfied because she can meet so many lies there, it makes me remember my first official journey as an engineer in 1972, when I had to show the products of my workplace in one of these pavilions of these towns of fairs. I remember, how disappointing was it, when I was looking around in the pavilions of different republics, who advertised special attractions but in reality these were over-decorated ones. Or when Kravchenko is sent over the Ural to Kemerovo. I remember when in 1980, in connection with the ceremony of Hungarian drama, I should have travelled to this town too to watch a Russian performance of a Hungarian play, but for some reason they did not host me there, and I was sent to the seat of the Chechen-Ingush autonomous republic, to Grozny. It became well known after 1994, in connection with the Russian inquisition against the minorities, who were fighting for their independency and destroyed the whole city.
Even closer memories have come up, which make me remember the everyday life of our country from the last half century. When Kravchenko talks about the propaganda campaign by Stalin, the flow of lies that covers everything, the nationalism, which is risen by political purposes, the hate towards strangers, the creation of the picture of enemies we cannot avoid thinking about the Hungarian appearance of all these today.
This performance can help us face up with the unclosed process, our past in a realist and rational way. More and more people – not only those, who are from the older generation – should get immersed in this clearing of the soul and mind.
István Nánay, szinhaz.net , 2015
(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)