The genre of jazz opera is unusual in Hungary. However, since the summer of 2026 there have been some of us, who has watched any of the theatrical performances of The Suit. It started in Bánk, then the career of this newest hope of Hungarian culture has continued in Gyula and in the Városmajor. The basic work was written by a South-African writer, the melodies with English language can be thanked for a Hungarian composer.

Let’s start from the beginning. The writer of the story was Daniel Canodoise „Can” Themba (1924–1967), the South-African short story writer, who lived in Johannesburg, the downtown of Sophiatown. He wrote most of his books here too. The town that had mixed residents, were destroyed by the apartheid regime. Because of the political oppression, Themba also had to escape. From the end of the 60s until his death he lived and taught in Swaziland. In 1966 he was said to be a “communist” in his home land, and because of this his books were banned. He died on 8th September 1967 in Manzin.

Themba’s most celebrated story is The Suit, which was first published in 1963, in a South African literary magazine. The story is about Philemon, about a middle-classed lawyer and wife, Matilda, who live in Sophiatown. One day, Philemon got a news, that his wife had a secret love affair with someone, so he goes home during the day, and finds them together. The caught man escaped through the window, but he left his suit behind. Philemon now finds out a bizarre and cruel punishment! Matilda has to treat the suit, as an honourable guest; she has had to feed, entertain and take it for a walk for months. This memento of her unfaithfulness can ruin the personality, it means total control, which gets away the total freedom and dignity. The weight of this humiliation finally chases her into death. Matilda’s tragedy also becomes the metaphor of the abusive power – apartheid.

At the end, the jealous Philemon, who is unable to forgive, becomes a victim himself, from the offender. It is a strange trick of the fate: both of them loved each other!

The stage version of The Suit started in the Market Theatre from Johannesburg, with Mothobi Mutloatse and Barney Simon’s version, then Peter Brook directed the French performance in Paris in 2004. Then it was performed in 2012 in London too. In case of the Hungarian version, Zoltán Balázs, director and set designer started from the Brook-like version, based on the text-version by Mutloatse and he formed that way the doctrine of domestic mental violence. In this situation neither the abuser can feel himself well, he also suffers, but he cannot get out of this process anyway.

Adrián Kovács has composed music to this soul-drama. He was the student of the piano course in the Béla Bartók Conservatory from 2006, in 2008 he was accepted to the jazz course of the institute, which he finished in 2011. From 2011 he studied on the applied music composition course of the Ferenc Liszt Academy of Music. He started his stage routine as a conductor in the Operetta Theatre of Budapest, but besides it so far he has composed music for more than sixteen theatrical performances.

The Suit is a chamber play with three characters, in which the songs also try to express feelings, inner happenings too, but from the characters’ songs we can learn about places of each happenings (garden party and so on). It is 40% jazz, but there are rhythms of the exact places (kwela, marabi and so on) and there are Latin-like melodies too. During the final of the performance, we can listen to the song of Malaika (Angel) which is known to be one of the most beautiful Swahili love song, in Zulu language, which has become famous worldwide, sung by Miriam Makeba - and even the group of Boney M. has adapted it.

The singers: Csilla Radnay (Matilda) and Barna Kelemen Bányai (Philemon), besides them Fehér Ferenc as a dancer, moves in the suit, which has been left behind. The set, which is concentrated into the middle of the stage, is minimalist, sometimes, it is similar to a skeleton, its smaller changes can sign the places of happenings, where the three characters are living. I think it was perfect. On the screen, above the stage, we could follow synchronously the songs in Hungarian and English language.

We cannot complain because of the follower jazz orchestra, as they have perfectly adapted to the mood of the text. From the harmony of the orchestra that members are András Szép (piano), Benedek Kárpáti (drums, percussions), Szabolcs Dörnyei (guitar), Balázs Rabóczki (saxophone), Zsolt Magda (flute) and Tamás Gyányi (bass), I like the themes of flute and the silky smooth sounding saxophone the most.

And the songs! There are not any opera-like mannerisms between the hit-like performances. I cannot even remember a true (opera-like) duo, however, there were some dialogue-like scenes. The level of quality – independently from the style of the songs – is steadily good; they always try to explain and support the emotional state of the characters. There are not any solos, which are characteristic of the jazz. But all of it has a dramatic nature, intimate – however tragic – basic mood, which can touch and move the viewers.

Besides the composer and director, Mr. Gangumzi Mattias Tsengiwe, the Hungarian ambassador of South –Africa also took part in the conversation before the performance.

And who would like to make a try with the performance after my lines, those can watch it on 14th November in Bánk!

Károly Libisch, jazz.hu, 2026

(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)

After a long time, we can see Zoltán Balázs, the leader the director of Maladype Theatre, as an actor again. It is worth waiting so much, as in the role of Victor Kravchenko he can show passionately, one of the most horrific half centuries of Russia.

Zoltán Balázs, the leader of the Maladype Theatre, has chosen an unimaginably dense text for himself when he decided to make up a “one-man manifesto” from Victor Kravchenko’s book, which is more than 800 pages long. In reality, the evening is not a mono-drama, as it must be more theatrical, and would keep the theatrical form in its characteristics. But it is neither a reading theatre, as it seemed to be for the first sight, because of the presence of the table, the chair and the script. It is something else, it is more personal, more intimate. The performer’s enthusiasm towards Kravchenko is well known, as the book was also published by the care of Maladype in November.

In the autobiography of I Chose Freedom, everything can be found, which Kravchenko experienced during the total soviet terror, it follows through and tells his road from starvation until the peak point of wealth, it shows detailed the structure of the system of informers, a paralyzed society, where everybody is afraid of statements. The material is interesting and exciting enough but a dramaturg would have been useful for its adaptation. The language of a book is totally different from the one of a performance. We get many names of towns, abbreviations, complicated sentences, which we are unable to remember or pronounce, while the actions are going on, and Zoltán Balázs dictates a very fast tempo for it all. He throws us into deep water, but himself too with us. In his artistic disposition it is always impressive: he does not just push the borders of his viewers, but his own ones too. Some can handle it and they are not swallowed by the flow of text – some are less receptive, if they find themselves at once in the deep water.

The tempo is frightening only for the first time. The text is very dense and concentrated, but the artistic playfulness can balance the scale. Zoli Balázs is Zoltán Balázs and Victor Kravchenko at the same time. In the totally narrowed place of theatre we can sit very close to him, he sits all through the performance, and he makes huge gestures, speaks fast, asks questions from us, he is in continuous contact with the viewers. He stops the text many times, and asks if it is understandable, can we follow it, or he should sum it up shortly, if our heads are totally full of with the great amount of information. We can learn to swim together with him with slow, but confident movements, even if we cannot remember the names of all the towns, but the similarly complicated names of characters we can anyway, and our mind slowly get used to it. He never gets out of his character, he is presented here as Kravchenko, behind whom for some moments Zoli Balázs winks out. Anyway, this kind of duality is rare in the Hungarian theatres, when actors identifies with their characters, they perform so much. Here he can hardly perform, the place is so small, as a close-up of a camera: it denies anything which is false. All over performed gestures or mimes. Zoltán Balázs is brilliant because of it, because he can do it all without any kinds of affectation, “he does not do it as an actor”. He reacts spontaneously to the outside world, there is not any planed, found out concept in advance. He is there simply, with his own natural nature, exists, while he shows us Kravchenko’s experiences, goes through the heaven and hell. He is a patriotic teenager, and then an enthusiastic and successful member of the party, who builds the system, because of it his personal life becomes impossible. We can see the different social levels of the Soviet Union, a system, in which Stalin himself is afraid, the horrible things of the war, the interrogations, questionings, show trials. He is sent to be a spy in the United States, but then he chose freedom instead. His belief in the country, nation is shaken at all, and he leaves his homeland.

In spite of it, the first part is not lethargic and sad, there are some love stories in it too. The second part is shorter, but it has a tragic atmosphere. Zoltán Balázs says goodbye to his homeland with choking voice and welled up eyes. His closing lines he repeats together with the viewers: “Without a free democratic Russia, there can be no enduring peace on earth.”

A more effective ending could not have been found out anyway.

Cassiope, index.hu, 2015

(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)

Those, who visited Zwinger, could have an extraordinary experience, to Zoltán Balázs’ performance. He chose freedom.

Between the stone walls of the Zwinger (The Old Tower), in this puritan but anyway generous „historical closeness” this monumental life confession could have an even greater effect, than anywhere else. Zoltán Balázs, actor, director, the founder and leader of the Maladype Theatre in Budapest, accepted the invitation of IASK and took to Kőszeg his performance (with the lack of a better phrase let’s call it that way), which has been made of Victor Kravchenko’s autobiographical book, of the I Chose Freedom. The book, which was published in 1946 in English, was written by a Russian writer, who – after he had been disappointed in the soviet work of communism, as it was formed according to Stalin, and he had faced up with the horrific things, which came up under the forgery of reality – could emigrate.

Kravchenko book published with the edition of Maladype in Hungarian (they asked Péter Konok to make the translation of it), and Zoltán Balázs after many years stepped on stage again as an actor with this play. During the past two years the “matter of Kravchenko” has risen a great echo on international level too, which has not reached its end at all. And however, Zoltán Balázs takes good care to raise the performance from the ordinary theatrical circles – he does not “perform a role”, but he “interprets Kravchenko”, there is not any set, there is not any property -, first of all this dizzy, artistic-human performance that is hardly taken by words can have effect on the viewers, which is condensed in these intensive more than two hours. This unstoppable, one-man flow of words do not come alone, Zoltán Balázs/Victor Kravchenko does not lose even for a moment, the contact with the viewers. He reacts, reflects, shake hands, sits next to you, smiles, looks into your eyes. Meanwhile – by the way, but obviously because of the spiritual-physical liability too – from a teenager, who is full of illusions he is aged to be a man with broken face, as it is evoked for himself too in the text. We can turn it anyway; all autobiography can round off and “justify himself”.

The matter of Kravchenko also goes towards its aim (maybe a little bit so much). But it cannot take any of that limitless experience of freedom, which Zoltán Balázs can create with the help of it. The nagging question is always personal anyway: And what would you have done anyway? What would you do?

Lívia Ölbei, vaol.hu, 2017

(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)

"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)

“Without a free democratic Russia there can be no enduring peace on earth.” (Victor Kravchenko)

The main character of the story is comrade Kravchenko, the first cadre with Ukrainian origin from the first twenty years of the Soviet Union, who through his personal story, through the process of the birth and denial of his own belief, can show the operation of the crippling and chaotic engine of the dictatorship, which is being built up. However, without any doubts he is the main character, (people get their meanings through their relationships to him and in the end his defection is the final stage of a serious and long-lasting personal development), anyway the text is not about him. But it is about the system. The story of the individuum is just some kind of excuse, a necessary reaction on the operation of the Soviet Union, it is the inner frame of the outside world, in spite of which we can feel well that what is small and what is big.

We should not think about anything bad when we hear the expressions of “reading theatre” or “one-man manifesto”. These terms can tell nothing about the performance. Zoltán Balázs is in the place, he is the story teller, the Human being, whose words we can believe without any doubts, and who can tell the story of his life that way, that we want to listen to it till the end. In connection with the actor’s work, not only the remembering of this great amount of text is a big performance, but the fact also, that he can keep the attention for a long time with using almost nothing from his properties, with only a few effective elements, mostly with the dynamic of the text, with eye contacts and credibility, and he cuts the text and puts in more exciting, personal episodes as a present tense dramaturg in an improvised way, by reacting on the fall-off of his viewers’ attentions. In his presence on the stage his complex creative knowledge, talent, attention and routine are condescended.

During the performance the viewers can have that feeling of familiarity many times, that some events can happen the same way today too. This is of course subjectivity, which kind of crosstalk gets to our ears, anyway in a society, which is full of political issues, these associations can arrive easily, and the name of Victor that we can hear many times during the performance can unintentionally help the activization of actual political associations. There are not any concrete references to our present in the performance, but after it we do not have to think a lot about that: How can all these be connected to us, what can indicate the staging of this play today?

The closing act of the performance is rather short, strong and effective, from the point of its content, it is sacral and political, but mostly it can hold obviously understandable and thought-provoking message without connecting it to the present. And because of the fact that the gesture is in perfect harmony with the message of the whole text, it can make the performance authentic and coherent. This authentic nature can become the greatest contrast of the performance in contrast to the unreliable, propagandist, fake systems, which appear in the story and in the reality too.

Máriusz Takács, Kultifilter, 2016

(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)

The matter of Maladype, Victor Kravchenko the high-ranking soviet officer asked for political shelter in 1944 from the United States. He had been staying in New York for almost a year as a member of a Soviet purchasing committee. He had been preparing for this act for months. He chose a special way: he silently disappeared from the soviet authorities, as many of his peers had done it before, who could take part in some kinds of travelling abroad in some lucky way, but he gave to his act a great presence of the press and put himself under the protection of American public opinion. He wanted to connect his personal choice with the act of letting the great world know about the things, which were happening in the Soviet Union. On the day of his escape, he published an open letter in the press about his reasons, then in his memoir, I Chose Freedom, which was published in English in 1946, he explained over more than thousand pages, what happened to him, to his ideas, and to his homeland in the first part of the XX. century. The book became bestseller at once – the „weapon” of the cold war – it was translated into French, and it had a dramatic turn: Kravchenko was accused of lie by the newspaper of the French Communist Party (Les Lettres Françaises), mostly because of those parts, which he wrote about the labour camps, after it Kravchenko sued the newspaper because of defamation. In 1948 in Paris started (one of) the lawsuit of the century. Kravchenko and the West were on the one side, and the French Communist Party and the Soviet Union were on the other. The court agreed with Kravchenko. As well as Zoltán Balázs did, the leader, director, actor of the Maladype Theatre.

So much that in 2015 he asked Péter Konok to translate Kravchenko’s memoir and published it in Hungarian. He even went on. He made a one-man manifesto from the work, which he tells during two and half an hour with almost one breath, as he would be tied up while he is closed up with the viewers in a small place. And Zoltán Balázs has gone even further than this. He widened the Kravchenko story into a matter of the country. He has worked out together with his colleagues a year-long theatrical-educational programme on the base of Maladype, and he has been going to the disadvantaged secondary schools of the country, so with the help of Kravchenko’s fate, he could help the young ones feel: what is the weight and price of personal freedom, what does the act of decision making and facing up with oneself, taking responsibility for myself and the community mean.

There are three things here: the book, the theatrical performance and the project. This is the matter of Kravchenko, it is Zoltán Balázs’ matter. The first act is that the Hungarian text could be born. The second act is – the monodrama with extraordinary effect. With such a power, that even teenagers are listening to it without flinching, while an actor “is telling the story” in first person singular form, for more than hour, without any properties or set. And the text can have effects: from Borsod county until the VIII. district. Zoltán Balázs stands in front of the secondary school students, and gives them the roles of the judge, prosecutor and the lawyer. He tells his testimony and waits for his sentence. It is a brace act. His authenticity can touch suddenly the youngsters, who seem to be unmanageable many times, who know better many times, what is it like to be stand in front of the court than Zoltán Balázs, as they have experienced it. The third act, the last scene of the project, would be a great, stylised judicial procedure, where Zoltán Balázs in Kravchenko’s testimony would reveal those things, which have been experienced in the Soviet Union, and he would try to understand his own role and responsibility in it. The viewers would be the jury, which have to deliver a judgement. At the beginning of the 1920s in Russia this kind of genre was an everyday act: on the streets of Petrograd and Moscow amateur and professional troupes organised lawsuits together with the viewers – Vladimir Mayakovski performed in it many times. Maybe Maladype also referred to it, when they asked it in the “genre” of lawsuit: what is the responsibility of the individual one, for the formation and maintenance of the totalitarian systems? How long can be told: “mistakes happened but they were not my faults”? – as Elliot Aronson and Carol Tavris said it in their book. The matter of Kravchenko is a project, which has been worked out extraordinarily demanding and carefully. It has been built up with the stimulating cooperation of lawyers, sociologist, psychologist, historian, litterateur, teacher, dramatic teacher, experts and writer of marketing, dramaturg, translator, director, actor, which can keep many surprises in it. It is a worthy continuation of Zoltán Balázs’ previous actions.

Zsuzsanna Gyimesi, Orosz Negyed Magazin, 2016

(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)

Zoltán Balázs has come back to stage because of „The matter of Kravchenko”, who has not performed for ages, he has only put performances on stage. He has made a performance from Victor Kravchenko’s book, I Chose Freedom, he calls it not a monodrama but a „one-man manifesto”, as he does not see first of all the possibility of the artistic performance in the material, but the possibility to express those kinds of historical facts, which can have warning nature for the present too. It is Edina Mátyás writing.

Zoltán Balázs heard Viktor Kravchenko’s name (1905–1966) for the first time, when some years ago, Ariane Mnouchkine in an interview mentioned the book of I Chose Freedom between the five most important books of her life. In reality, it is a memoir, which Kravchenko wrote after that in 1944 he asked for political asylum in the United States. The book has dealt with the writer’s life with the aim of making obvious for the Western world, the real nature of the Soviet Union, which is led by Stalin. The book, which was published in 1946, became a great bestseller, only in the United States it was sold in four million copies, but in France there was a huge interest in it. Its existence has not reached Eastern Europe so much, even after the change of the system. It was published only in 2008 with Polish edition. It had anyway a huge press coverage, and generated important arguments. Besides it the book has been published in Bulgarian language, but in Russian only fragments have been published so far. Zoltán Balázs has accepted Kravchenko’s matter so much, that the members of Maladype with the stubborn work of many years, found the owner of the rights (Kravchenko’s son, who was born in America), and got the rights of edition from him. Than Péter Konok historian was made to translate the book, and the Maladype has published the book on their own. In connection with it Zoltán Balázs has made his one-man manifesto on stage. (In connection with the program, a dramatic pedagogical series have been formed, in which the students can learn about Kravchenko’s dilemmas and they can make decision in connection with them.)

Zoltán Balázs tells almost 65 pages of the book that is more than 800 pages long – he does it in two parts, during almost two hours. As we can hear almost ten percent of the book, because of it the choice and edition of the material is very important. It tells a lot about those things, which are important for the actor – director in connection with the Kravchenko material. Zoltán Balázs tells about the selection, that in reality he has a longer material to use, than that he tells during an evening, as it always depends on the momentary situation, on the viewers’ interests (and of course on the performer’s concentration too), that what we can listen to, about which he gives more details, what he leaves out, so those parts can be left out, which can be heard the other times. This openness and flexibility are characteristics of the method of performance too. Originally this evening has been advertised as reading theatre, and in the earlier reports, critics, we can read about prepared manuscripts too, but they have disappeared by today. Zoltán Balázs tells the text by heart – letting himself the right of getting stuck, thinking for a while, or jumping back to an earlier action, which he has left by accident, but he feels important anyway, from the point of view of the connections of the story. But Zoltán Balázs tries to avoid any stage-like things, any theatrical effects. A man is sitting on a raised chair and he is obviously talking to us, to the viewers. As he does not have any partners during this performance, he treats us to the ones. Sometimes he even asks us: “can you follow me? Should I be a little bit slower?” – as his speaking tempo is a little bit too dynamic. But he says, that with it he only wants to follow Kravchenko’s passion. Other times the performer holds a bottle of water to a coughing viewer, then he stops, because he has to drink to be able to speak on. Then he reacts on a falling pack, and automatically says bless you to a sneezing viewer.

This directness does not seem to be a pose at all, it is the natural result of a performing decision instead. Zoltán Balázs now emphasises that he speaks as Zoltán Balázs, he does not become Kravchenko, he does not perform a figure, he does not want to tell more about him, that what can be found in Kravchenko’s text. As first of all, he – mainly the lesson of the book – wants to express it. He identifies with it, and not with a blurry historical figure, about whom we should know more to be able to judge him. Kravchenko’s memoir – even because of the circumstances of its birth – has originally some allegorical meaning, Zoltán Balázs can connect to it too, he tells the text as some kinds of parable. Meanwhile we cannot see a history lesson at all, not the remembering of the event that have lost in the past, is the important thing. Instead of it, the personal asking of those questions are stressed, which were similarly important to Kravchenko, as to Zoltán Balázs or to the viewers of the performance. It turns out obviously from the selection of the texts too (here we have to refer to the question of editing). Zoltán Balázs has formed a script, in the centre of which we can find the problems of human freedom, the life possibilities of the individual man. He asks it as a moral question as well as a social problem. This is the leading line, which can guarantee not to get lost in the overarching story, when with strong skips – with some marking references sometimes – tells an almost (whole) life to us. Kravchenko got the desire of freedom as some kind of inheritance from his father, who was in the prison of the system of the tsar (where he was whipped almost to death). “Without freedom the life is not a life” – he said to his son, even in his childhood. “Anything can happen to me, but you have to work, study and fight with all possible tools for the freedom. We are whether pigs or humans.” And when during a family argument his other son ask his father, why he never thinks about his family, then he tells with deep belief: "Through the sacrifice of a single generation, future generations may live more happily and more civilized. Darkness reigns in Russia, people are exploited, but it can become a country where there are no more slaves. I want everyone to be able to live a life worthy of a human being." Obviously because of this inheritance from his father, Kravchenko at his young age, connected to the “minority of the Communists”, because he thinks, “that if they show the way, then it will the good direction” where he goes. It would be an interesting question, that how this minority could build a total system, but the performance does not tell anything about it. We can feel the proud sense of mission, as Kravchenko thinks that he has become the “member of that elite”, “which has been chosen by the history, to lead my country and the whole world from the darkness towards the light of Socialism”. He knows himself, that it sounds a little bit ostentatious, but that time the communist spoke and felt that way. The Communist belief meant at the beginning for Kravchenko, that he could work more and harder than the others – first as a coal miner in a mine, then after an accident as a supervisor in a machine factory. Then he was called in to be a red soldier, where his life was simplified into that basic question that he whether killed or he was killed. At the end of the 20s, at the age of twenty-three he watched the world with the eyes of a young man, who was formed to be an adult by the Komsomol and the Red Army. “My life was made up of deprivation and effort” – he said. "I was annoyed by the whining of liberals who watched things with a peevish discontent and criticized from the outside. In the eyes of committed believers in the ideas and the faith like myself, the sufferings at that time were merely the pledge of a glorious future awaiting the country and its people." And all of it was strengthened by the fact, that the newspapers were full of the new slogans of the new era.

Only his father tried to make Kravchenko face up with the reality at that time, whom the Soviet reality could not make remember at all the dreams of the young revolutionists. He warned his son about the growing social differences behind the slogan of equality. And about the fact that “the power is a dangerous thing.” That is why he asked him to stay close to people, did not measure himself with the reached positions, but with the fact, how the working people around him (maybe under his management) can live instead; could they have a better life, would they be happier, would they feel themselves freer. Only this can show, how many things are true from the slogans of newspapers and Communists’ ideas. Kravchenko, similarly to the great part of the population of the country, believed in the first show trials, that between the educated elite of the old world, there have been people, who were cooperating against the communist state, and they even admitted it without hesitation in front of the public. He could not see that these show trials were made to destroy the old elite, and to put that kind of generation on their place, which has not connected anyway to the past, they have not had any memories about a different kind of system, and that way absolute loyalty could be expected from them. As the part of this play, many young communists were sent to the university. Kravchenko got to the engineering university of Kharkov that way. While “the newspapers were reporting about the tales of the glorious results”, Kravchenko did not even think about to ask that what “was the reality, what was the illusion” from it. He only faced up with it sometimes – suddenly. For example, one of his lovers, who is the wife of a party official, told him about all these. “We are wearing masks and we are parts of a great prank” – she said. “How lucky are the honest young communist, who are similar to you” – she added. "You still have faith, and you know nothing of the filthy intrigues and the monumental, deadly duels that go on at the peaks of leadership. I get so close to it that sometimes I feel I'm suffocating." (Next to the happenings of work, politics, society, the turns of individual life are presented like flashes in Zoltán Balázs’ performance.)

When Kravchenko returned to the factory, he could not “get closed from the news of tragedies, which have happened in the countryside. The workers were talking openly about the violence, the cruelty, the famine”. But he unconsciously tried to protect himself against the erosion of the facts. The one thing, which could really open “his eyes and mind, to be able to see without blinking again”, was when the group of communists were sent to the agricultural sites, to help during the harvest period, and make the it faster. "We felt as if we had been thrown into the midst of a bloody war." The farmers were protecting their lands, properties, many of them burnt the crop, their land and houses up instead – the work of their whole life – not to let them get into the hands of communists. After the mass deportation of the farmers the remained ones “voluntary” enter the kolkhoz. "Those who experienced the horrors of collectivization first-hand became marked people; we bore the wounds. The arithmetic of the atrocities seemed senseless; we could not see any justification for the terror unfolding across the agrarian regions." – says Zoltán Balázs on behalf of Kravchenko. This feeling has been strengthened more by a later experience, when Kravchenko has to experience the horrific sight of famine in Ukraine. But meanwhile he has done strange discoveries too. For example, that during the period of famine, the international export of the butter is going on in an undisturbed way. Or which is even more shocking is, that while hundreds of men, women and children are starving to death in the villages, in the brick silos more thousand legs of crops are kept from the harvests of the previous years. "Why? Only Stalin’s Politburo could have told. And, naturally, it did not tell. Deep down, in the recesses of my consciousness, it was then that I began to break with the Party." -as we can hear it in the performance.

Another break has been caused in Kravchenko’s belief by the rise of the asserts, lawsuits, deports, executions. "In the party press, they were constantly writing articles about a 'Decembrist mood' that had to be radically uprooted. They were preparing the ground for the Great Purge within the party, which weeded out the doubters and the weak-stomached who had already grown sick of the endless blood and suffering." – he said. Later he told that in 1934, after the killing of Kirov, Stalin got into panic, and the number of the arrested ones have been rising from hours to hours. Finally, everybody can feel themselves in danger, who has ever formed any kinds of doubts against Stalin’s politics. "In Leningrad, hundreds of suspects were rounded up to be summarily executed without any trial." – he said. To all of it that fact was connected that the system of informers ensnared the whole society. Dossiers were led about everybody, and in their personal files they signed up carefully all words and acts. They kept there the charges of the secret agents, who were there in each workplace, offices, schools. They were completed with the voluntary informers, who wrote reports, because they were looking for the favour of authorities, or they were simply led by jealousy and hate. But not only the informers of the special departments were everywhere, but the party committee employed great amounts of informers. So, informers were spying against informers. This pyramid, which was built up with many covering layers, reached up to the centre of the party in Moscow, and the politburo led by Stalin was the peak of it. "Ordinary people were perhaps not aware of the scale of this system; - added Kravchenko - for the most part, they only knew that even the walls had ears. And that outspokenness was the shortest possible path to destruction." The compound system of informing was so real, that “they practically liquidated the old-styled personal life”.

Meanwhile, fewer words were said in the performance, about the way, how Kravchenko’s career rose up sharply. When he became the leader of an important factory, his father visited him. And after that he asked the statements from him, he wanted to speak with him. "You've become like an ostrich," he told him – you cannot see the reality.” The boy started apologized because of it: "Look, dad, don't think that I don't know what's happening, or that I've given in to the system. But what can I do? There are positive things too: new mines, new factories, railway lines." Then the father made his son face up with those ideas, which he had stood in for during his childhood: “When you communists speak of new factories, you say the goal is a better life for the people. Do they really live better than in tsarist times?" According to the father this comparison does not decide on behalf of the present: "At that time our life was much more economical than the life of a worker today." Then he talked about the concrete numbers very thoroughly. Today “20-25% of a worker's salary is withheld. In the old system, a worker could pay for all the healthcare and vacation they needed out of 20-25% of their salary. And they didn't have to be grateful to the government. As for the quality of healthcare, it's better not to be in need of it. If you get sick, do you go to the state clinic?" – he asked his son. And from the numbers it became clear, that the whole socialist industrial system worked unprofitably. "We risked our lives to wipe out tyranny and exploitation. But that doesn't mean we should be happy to see the same evils return under another name." – the dad said it. "To justify today's injustices with old troubles is cheap demagoguery. Today, everything is the property of the people, there are no capitalists, there are no exploiters. But the worker who remains hungry despite the fact that he and his family work intensely does not care much about who exploits him, a private individual or the state." So according to the dad, the situation was even worse. Anyway, if in the past at one capitalist they did not like the working conditions, then the workers could look for another workplace. Or they could organise protesting meetings, they could strike, they could publish the newspapers of the opposition. “Just try any of these today! You will instantly find yourself in a prison camp."

This basic nature of the system became a personal experience for Kravchenko, when in 1936 a process was started against him too. First, a party discipline was initiated against him, then the NKVD1 was on him (but for some reasons his arrest did not happen for some reasons, maybe because, he had a supporter near Stalin). Grotesque charges were stated against Kravchenko. "But in the distorted mirror of those feverish days, the absurdities had their own peculiar logic. If Trotsky himself had been a German spy when he organized the Red Army, and the giants who carried out the revolution by Lenin's side were actually mad dogs in the pay of foreign powers, then why wouldn't it be obvious that this Kravchenko down there in Nikopol wanted to ruin the Soviet system by wasting millions of dollars on completely useless pipe-manufacturing machines?" In the building of NKVD, Kravchenko’s night interrogations were going on for almost a month, while he was let out daytime to work. It was a bitter experience for him, that he asked for help from his relationships for nothing. This bitter experience was stated exactly by one of his father’s companion-in-arms: "In the Tsar’s time, if we got into political trouble, the comrades didn’t disown us. They came and made a fuss” – he said. "And now, everywhere there is only a deafening silence, keeping heads down. It is terrifying!" By the time, Kravchenko returned to his workplace from Moscow, he had been replaced, and his eviction had been ordered. Then they wanted to make him sign a testimony, which would have been equal to his capital sentence. But he did not do it, so he was beaten well.

At that time everything broke in him: at home he got Stalin’s picture from the wall, tore it into small pieces, then these pieces into tiny ones, then he threw it all into the toilet and pulled the chain. "Looking at the gurgling water, I felt that I would never feel again the same toward the party, the leader, and the cause as I had in the past. The umbilical cord was cut once and for all. I might accept assignments from the party, I might deliver speeches, but it would all be just acting and strategy. Meanwhile, I would patiently wait for the opportunity to escape." Finally, Kravchenko could make them let him stay alive for some reasons. But he had to look for another workplace. Meanwhile, he could see starving and robbed people around him in the country, "from whom even the most elementary freedoms had been taken. Looking back, I think the most terrible thing," - he says - was that people’s suffering was taken for granted, as inevitable as the Ural climate." Then suddenly his career rose upside again. In the May 1942, he formally became the member of the party. He got his assignment to America in this position. "It was not my fault that I had to leave my homeland, a corrupt, inhumane system." - he said. On the other place he even quoted his brother – who went to the battlefield with the first ones, as a soldier, to sacrifice his life – and made differences even between the homeland and the system too. According to his brother it would have been a great mistake to mix the two.

Zoltán Balázs’ performance finishes with the initial sentences of Kravchenko’s manifesto: "Those who believe that the liberation of the Russian people from the totalitarian yoke is the business of the Russians themselves are gravely mistaken. The security of civilization, the chance for a lasting peace, depends precisely on this liberation. To liberate our country from within is possible only if world public opinion gets to know and understand the Russian reality. Without a free and democratic Russia, without which there can be no enduring peace on Earth.”

Victor Kravchenko: I Chose Freedom

Maladype Theatre

Translator: Péter Konok
Compose and perform: Zoltán Balázs

Premiere: 14.11.2015.

Place: Maladype Base

Footnote:
1. People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs, short for NKVD, it was the main part of the internal affairs of the public administration in the Soviet Union between 1934 and 1946.

Edina Mátyás, Ellenfény, 2017

(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)

The horizon of our knowledge is getting slowly wider by each year. We have read Solzhenitsyn and Orwell, József Lengyel and Béla Szász. We can thank also for their works, that after a while, we can think that we have known “almost everything” about the tragedies of the yesterday. At that time, the humorous “riddle” could be connected to the documentary program of the Hungarian Radio: Who knows more about the Soviet Union? And the tricky answer was evident too: “Of course the CIA does.”

During one of the general meeting of the Hungarian Writers’ Association, which was followed by great interest of the country and tried to widen the walls and the borders of the dictatorship, Erzsébet Karr Kádár, a short story writer and journalist, who had good pen and eyes, asked a question: “How could it happen, that I was always and also this year put during the education of the party into the short course of the history of the Bolshevik Party of Soviet Union? When could I finally take part in the long course of the history of the party?”

We have not known enough then and even later about Erzsébet Karr Kádár. We have not known that even during her years in the secondary school, she was one of the organising members of the Marx Circle, during the time of the Soviet Republic, she worked on the People Commissariat of general education and in 1922 she found to be wiser to emigrate first to Paris and later to London. We only knew that sometimes in 1948, she returned to Hungary. As young titans, who we were, while sitting in the lines of the viewers, we laughed a lot on this unknown question. How can exist more variations with different lengths of our same compulsory readings? Our imagined advantage came from the fact, that the history of the party, which was covered with white clothes, could be found in many of the home libraries at that time, after it had been published in more hundred thousand copies by the Szikra Publisher. I, for example, got from the fifth edition, which had about 260-560 copies, but probably, many of those, who were sitting around me, would not have thought that the writer, who pushed into the edge of the history of literature, could be so much cleverer and more informed than we were...

The story that had calmed down to be an anecdote happened 60 years ago. During this period together with the country, we have also learnt many things. The books and the topics have changed. However, the dogmas have lived for a long time. Today we have already known that in Hungary besides the science, also the literature and theatre have had the experience, that we have started, maybe not so clearly, but at least more clearly to see the history of the labour movement and even of the soviet empire – the horrible dict. – too. We have also learnt, which the half world knew, that the mentioned book is not only short, but embarrassingly incomplete too. The political targeting of the philippics, which dealt with the lawsuits of the twentieth and thirtieth era was about to help us learn from them, and it was evident. Because of our naivety, we were not so shocked by the fact, that the victims of the show trials, the captives of Gulag were not mentioned – especially with their names – in those manuals, which were written to serve the power.

It was the surprise of this year that our well-known novel and drama writer, György Spiró knows much more, not even than we do, but even than the desperate writer of the biographies. His novel of the Diavolina, which happens in Gorky’s surrounding, with the use of authentic documents, authentic sources of the archives. It is not accidental, that Spiró’s book has become success of literature and bestseller during some weeks. There have not been any crime stories, which we would read with greater excitement, than the testimony of the writer’s servant, later his doctor’s and last lover’s. In the tiny book, there is much information about the everyday lives of the chased ones and of the privileged ones, about the thinking of the society of artists, and about the fate of the cadres, who disappear daily or weekly.

And besides each person’s fate, sufferings, the operation and mechanism of the dictatorship is slowly getting drown. The chasers and the chased ones appear by their names. However, we cannot forget even for a minute, that Diavolina is a novel, where the artistic tools, which the writer has used and chosen, have to certify the facts. But we could feel and experience that the writer, Gorky by the time, had become a double-souled one, he screened his surrounding, he talked on behalf of his heroes, and he let us know the half-hidden or half-known secrets of the history. Now we could learn the past together with Spiró with excitement and pleasure.

But this course is a long one, and we have become its volunteer students, and it has not finished with it yet. After the novel, in the November of this year, the theatre became its place. It could happen on behalf of the independent troupe of Maladype, which has captivated us with brave proposals for years. After Gorky and Diavolina, they presented Victor Kravchenko’s autobiography, who was said to be traitor for decades in the countries of ‘existing Socialism”. The manifesto – “I Chose Freedom” –of more hundred pages, which has raised big storm and argument even in the western world, is the authentic chronicle of the writer’s life, who became engineer from the worker, than stigmatized and disillusioned cadre from the enthusiastic young official.

To be able to understand his fate and book, we have to know that ordeal that he had to go on, if he tried to force open his real and virtual shackles, who after his painful trials dared to and could choose freedom. The successful dissident wrote his book in emigration, in the USA, and he disturbed the public opinion of his time. Only my undying interest as a journalist, could make me learn more about him. Victor Kravchenko’s name, who had a serious career in the party, could not be found in the index of the history of the Bolshevik party. So it is understandable, that we, the fans, who are sitting on the tiny auditorium of the Maladype Theatre, can know hardly anything about the writer of this autobiography; about the only hero of this monologue on stage, about the carefully hidden matter of Kravchenko, since the appearance of the book.

It is Zoltán Balázs’, the leader of the troupe, merit to find, to get translated by Péter Konok, then with the publishing of Maladype can make Kravchenko’s book appear, which has had a worldwide success. With his venture he must have opened another gate of secrets for many of us. But he has done much more since then, when he condensed the large book into a text – monologue – that can be presented during an evening.

According to the tiny promotion by Balázs’ group, this venture is mentioned as a reading theatre, but it is not the truth. Anyway, on the modest pulpit, which is in front of the actor, there is the folder, which kept the 65 pages long text, but we can see and follow that Zoltán Balázs resigns of the given helper and he hardly looks into it. According to my theatrical experiences I can tell, that performing with so much passion and empathy – especially without any partners – can be made only if the performer can become Kravchenko during the time of the performance in reality. If he can present his historical and political experiences and adventures of his individuality, while he is in the skin of the hero. The viewers can also feel it, when they get into almost intimate, personal contact with that dramatic hero, who could choose freedom by forcing open the bars of the dictatorship.

In spite of its success, I do not think, that from now on crowds of people will bombard the cash desk of Maladype. But I hope, that there will be always those young ones and not so young ones, who are ready and sensitive to the mental challenge, which is demanded by political theatre and who are ready to study consistently from the past and the past itself. We should do it...

Anna Földes, Népszava/Szép Szó, 2015

(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)

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)

Zoltán Balázs’ suggestive monodrama, which he has made of the novel, can concentrate on the most exciting motifs of the book with good sense, in the Maladype Theatre.

“Anyway, we are that generations, who are made to be victims and to suffer by the history.” This sentence above can be read in a memoir of 28 chapters, which can captivate our attention through not less than 800 pages. In spite of its gigantic size, this passion is incredibly exciting and it is full of twists. The book, I Chose Freedom is the personal testimony of a high ranked party official and of an engineer of heavy-industry, which was published in English with the subtitle of A Soviet official worker’s political and private life, in the United States, first in 1947, so during Stalin’s life. It was not a safe thing at that time. The deserter, Victor Kravchenko was the first, who has reported about the Soviet Union without any covering. The writer was everywhere in reality and he could see many things – in any other era it must be a statement without any meaning.

However, this time, this well-known cliché is not true, very much. Since, officer Kravchenko, the main engineer at the beginning of the 1930s, when a 20 minutes late arriving from their workplace, could cause more years in prison for the offender, and when the working families in Siberia have to live in so called zemljanky, so in holes, which were dug into the ground. Kravchenko worked as the representative of the party during the harvest time in Ukraine, when the children, who has bloated stomachs and deformed bodies because of starvation and their parents ate the horse manure and the freshly shelled barks in the hope of survival. During specialized meetings the old members of the communist party, by mentioning each other’s suspicious past and by smearing the others, try to avoid the highest levelled social protecting action, so the headshot, in a luckier case, the deportation into a village far away from everything, from where the returning has unknown possibility.

The phones were ringing during the night to check each other, then the callers did not answer into them, as if they were answered, they could decide for sure if the one had been taken away by the frightening black cars (crows) by the people of NKVD or not, and who were those, who could (still) be afraid and sweat at large for a while. In Kravchenko’s book only the family members, the father, the mother and his two brothers are the fixed characters. His colleagues, acquaintances, lovers would disappear sooner or later mostly without any marks in the depth of wet prisons and in the hell of labour camps. Kravchenko is first of all a man, and only after it he is a devout communist, this “tiny” thing can differentiate him from the others, who live in his surrounding, and it is enough to make him gradually alienated and disillusioned from the ideology of the system.

Zoltán Balázs’ suggestive mono drama, which has been of the novel, in the Maladype Theatre, can concentrate with good sense, on the most exciting motifs of the book, that way the chapter, which title is The Secret of the Present, can be painfully beautiful and the strongest part of the performance at the same time. Our hero is waiting for his lover with his beating heart in his throat, in the station, and he does not get off the next bus instead, because that way he can see the attractive and intelligent girl, about whom we later learn that she is the agent of the NKVD, who is specialized on the foreigners and tourists. In another memorable situation, Kravchenko, who lives between good financial circumstances from the point of view of general soviet situation, is made ruthlessly to face up with the barbarity of the Soviet system, which is above all ideas, by his once revolutionist father.

Zoltán Balázs is a sensitive actor, because he can self-confidently and easily keep the contact with the viewers, who are sitting around him. Once he asks if the viewers want to listen to the next part, because if the situation is that way, he can even jump in the text. We have decided, that we would like to listen to everything from the dynamic performer. Other times, he honestly admits, that he cannot get out of the already started but too long sentence, but with a short cut he can get out of this embarrassing situation. His performance, which is without any kind of extra things, can be effective, because he can make the scenes sharp with some stresses and movements of his hands. It is probably rare, that a mono drama is performed for the viewers in two parts. The exciting performance has lost some of its drive during the second part, as the first one is too detailed, probably it would not be necessary to give so much stress so long to Krachenko’s ages as a child and as a young man.

It is a long-needed try, which is taken care by the Non-Profit Organisation of Maladype Theatre. The book of I Chose Freedom has been published by Péter Konok’s translation.. We cannot talk enough about those brave people besides the historical cataclysms of the 20th century, who always stood out in for their truth between any kinds of circumstances, who during the time of the greatest terror could see in the mirror with straight back and without bigger damage of their faces.

Szabolcs Szekeres, Art 7, 2015

(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)