Zoltán Balázs’ and the Maladype new performance will be the King Ubu by Jarry. The performance is making in an unusual way: in front of the audience. Because of it I would not leave the possibility to be the part of it.
We are coming together at 5:45 in the Pál Gönczy Street. It is really the base of Krétakör, but they have been so kind that they have “lent” it to Zoli Balázs, until Maladype do not find their own place for the performance. Of course, the fact that we are coming together, needs some exclamation. What do twenty strangers do on a reading rehearsal? The answer is – thinking together with Zoli Balázs’ head – very easy: they are watching, commenting on, taking part in. There it is. The aim is: to be vivid, possible to experience, to be a knowable process of performing. The tool is: the open rehearsals.
We are sitting around, like in a séance, like on a group therapy, the actors (Kamilla Fátyol, Zoltán Lendváczky, Ákos Orosz, Zsolt Páll) are next to Zoli Balázs. Ádám Tompa is a little bit late – there is a problem with the bike. Zoli tells some sentences about what we can expect here. There will not be big analysis, interpretation now, only what is needed. He does not give a small lecture about Jarry, he does not show parts of the Ubu, he does not want to give a lesson of drama history. What is important to him now, is that everybody would sit here with open ears and hearts, and become the part of the procedure of the rehearsal. We can go home any time, nothing is compulsory.
We have started it, we get copies (Zoltán Jékely’s translation with Béla Kondor’s illustrations), the director reads up the performers. We are thinking about the names, who can be what kind of character. We spend more time with the members of the orchestra, we try to find out what “csimpolya”, trial “búgósíp” or the “bombard” are. What we cannot find out, will be our homework. (Later I can see on the webpage of Maladype that the question of “csimpolya” gets on the blog too.) The first scene, Zoli gives out the roles. Kamilla would be Mama Ubu, and Zsolt would be Papa Ubu. At the end of the scene we discuss about it. Who can remember similar characters? Where can we meet similar situations, either in films or in theatres? Why the candelabra is green exactly? What kind can the space be, where they live? All his questions mean as many versions, our own experiences, anecdote and experience arrive as an answer. At the beginning the actors are bolder – of course, as for the “guests” it is not so easy to open suddenly – then the situation becomes obvious. We become equal partners, we are not sitting in a circle as viewers and silent readers. Zoli helps us and get us involved in the reading too. Independently from our age and gender, we can read Mama Ubu, Papa Ubu, Captain Bordure, King Wenceslas, Queen Rosemond, princesses, nobles, guards, peasants, rebels... In case of every scene the cast is different. After a while he tries out, how the actors and viewers can function together. Now it is going well.
We are practising on with our association skill. Almost all scenes have a scene from a Shakespeare drama, which rhymes on them, we have mentioned III. Richard, Hamlet, Macbeth, but we come up with Les Misérables, William Tell, Robin Hood, Mel Gibson because of the Braveheart, and the absurdity of the situations make me remember Brian’s Life too. And what is all of it for? If it is only a game, it is not a problem. But Zoli has other aims too. On one hand, he would like, if his actors treated the viewers as partners, if the rehearsals broke out from their very closed and very intimate surrounding. On the other hand he is interested in, who the viewers would inspire the actors in different phases of the creation.
He has thrown the ball into the crowd, and then it can be given on. The result of the game will turn out on the premiere on 20th December. So far, I will report the actual stage every week.

Zsófi Rick, Fidelio

(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)

John Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi is that kind of performance of the National Theatre, about which the journals would tell: it has divided the viewers. So, some of the viewers are shaken by disgust, the other part admires it and tells that is forms a new era. The question is: more people admire or hate it?

According to the theatrical agreement is that it is boring, sensual telling of nothing, long lasting cliché. There are well-known forms and repeated ideas, those flavours slip down more easily, which we have tasted many times. The brave new things in it, its ideas, which are to think them over, and hard to consume them can upset some of the viewers. They would ask angry: should we connect our school leaving exam or our degree, when we buy theatre tickets? The theatre can be enjoyed only by previous training?

Of course I do not want to get anyone’s right to hate any theatrical performances, which they have watched, and they can tell their comments with rude phrases, I know anyway, that Zoltán Balázs is a very originally thinking and working theatrical person, his previous performances are in organic unity with each other. His cleverly free performances and more shadowed ideas are connected to one another logically. Under theatrical gardens they are whispering about, that his theatrical writing style can be connected to the effects of the performances by Bob Wilson, Anatolij Vasziljev or Zsótér. It is for sure, that he has visited all the three of them. I have tried to find Wilson’s and the orthodox genius’ sings with my careful eyes. It is for nothing. Instead of the listening of the circulating headphones it is better to watch the stage. Instead of repeating gossips, we should accept the facts, which can be seen in Balázs’ performances as aims or direct hits. According to me it is a more acceptable sin (if the charge, which we have put on him, would be appropriate) than shuffling on the road of comfortably copies of lazy, worn-out clichés. His performances are renewing trials in his fore-heading theatrical and artistic reforms. Balázs’ theatre instead of the flat reproduction of the text, makes experiments with the polyphonic theatre. He tries to transplant the toolbar of those foreign theatrical culture into the Hungarian wasteland, in which the singing, music, the dancing elements, the pantomime, the circus-like tricks, the artists’ tools and equilibristic can be found at the same time together with the active artistic work.

The lazy epigonism is changed by the theatre of rich imagination. Balázs’ trials and results offer a new theatre. It is a break from the post-naturalistic performance.

Jules Lemaitre, who is the killer of the witty impressionism, wrote a study about the snobs, he stated that those, who respect those, who may not understand the new ones, they have grown the primeurs, they help the support of the new ones, and they spread the new ones.

When the curtain raises up in the National Theatre at the beginning of the tragedy by the great bloody writer of stage from the Elizabethan era, then remains one more sheer curtain. The crowd, which is covered with vestments, works behind them with dream-like blurriness. They are higher than in reality. As they would have two heads. And it is the truth: on their everyday heads they wear a spare head, which is similar to barbaric white statue. One of them is flesh and blood, the other one a ghost head, which moves towards the sky of ghosts. Their hands are giant. They seem to be wearing foundry gloves, or they would be the white handed Mickey Mouse of Wald Disney and they are marching between the sacral, mice-grey, unbreakable walls of canvas. The cumbrous, huge hands, made of canvas intensify the vision of matched hands for praying. These are sacral hands of blessing. These are hands of robbers, who grab eagerly the gold. The space, which is divided by the beam of light, coming shiningly from above, refers to a cathedral, as we see it, we have that delusion that the freemason group of The Magic Flute celebrate on the stage.

They rise up the sheer curtain with black frames. Judit Gombár’s vision of stage becomes clear.

Webster’s thriller dramas, which are rich in spilled blood can connect the representation of horror between Seneca who has risen Nero up, the man destroying cruel things by the Maniacal Hercules’ tragedy, its ironic sentences and Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill. The characters kill each other with cold blooded insensitivity. They kill each other without any emotional involvement with objectivity, witty brutality. The antique tragedies have effect on London from the Jacob’s era, and the English thriller dramas have effect on the independent film makers of Hollywood. The educated antique, the educated modern and the ones of today, when they talk about the cold world, the hopeless hopelessness they return to the brutality, which catches the viewers too. They satisfy the aggressivity, which is caused by their helplessness, that they relieve the satisfaction of revenge by the characters’ murderous instinct instead of by the viewers’. “The dark truth thrives on the lack of actions” – the Duchess of Malfi declaims it on István Vas’ sounds. Seneca’s “dramas of revenge” with Webster’s hands make the stage a similar self-serving shamble. On the stage, which is impregnated by blood, the murderous answer is unjustified psychologically too. As the writing of the processes is missing, the poet concentrated on the cruel episodes. His characters are talking loose-tongued. They step over the dramaturgical rules. They act according to their whim.

Balázs’ staging covers the passions. He does not let his actors tell these and those by wondering hands. He does not serve dramatic nature with increasing level of sounds, but in their inner intensity. He does not handle frantic theatrical performance. His characters are working with cold blood. Their passions warm up inside. He puts into the too wide space of stage the close pictures of his chamber performance. They are too far from the viewers’ eyes and ears.

Balázs’ performances fight determinedly against the traditional national naturalistic clichés. He creates sacral plays to the stage. The School for Fools, Theomachia, The Blacks, The Mikado, Leonce and Lena, The Egg(s) Hell, Faust or Marschner’s opera. The Vampire is a celebrated play, which can find its artistic home in the ancient layers of performances, in the puppet plays. The transparency between the puppets and human beings, and their interchangeability is not that kind of artistic whim, which is ordered by taste. His people act like puppets. His puppets are anthropomorphic. The characters are ruled by the automatism instead of their hearth. It would refer to: that the world is a puppet theatre, and all men and women are controlled from outside in it.

Bori Péterfy is the graceful innocence in the main role. She suffers her undeserving fate without any complaints. She decides her new marriage according to her free will, and against her brothers’ will she is married to her steward, and give birth to three children from him. She accepts the killing with straight back, and she flies as a ghost in flying clothes above the stage. It is an orange silk dress, without body, flying in the air. It is a transition between reality and nightmare.

Bosola becomes the assassin of court from a galley slave. He is a pigeon-like white villain. Sinkó resounding sound, which raises pleasure, fill reassuringly the stage. It emits power, steadfastness, and worried conscience. He does not have any outside intrigue characteristics. He does not use the toolbar of the intriguing villains of the theatre history. He shows himself to be Witty Sarastro, while mixing his bloody cards. He is elegant like a politician. He does calmly and with clear face his despicable works. With so seemingly innocent ideas, as Shakespeare’s Iago has done it. He “carpals” cruelly the women too, as Othello’s mate has done it with Desdemona.

Kulka as the Cardinal (after Bosola’s statement, that he has come to kill), says very silently, disciplined, almost towards inside, or as he is calling his mother, he almost exhales: “Help!” It is excellent. He repeats the calling for help, but on the voice of a theatrical papier mache. He recitals steadily until the end of the performance, when for two sentences he has become again intimate, ironic and moving. In his new theatre, Zalán Makranczi, the secret husband, finds himself with noble diction finally with an important exercise, after a long time. The lighting up Zsolt László is the other murderer brother, Frigyes Hollósi has a strong character, he is the doctor with husky voice. Andrea Söptei’s Carola is humble, next to Eszter Bánfalvi’s maid of court with her shining gaze from her covered head, Attila László, Bence Mátyássy, Róbert Marton, Péter Orth and Ádám Földi the new youngsters of the theatre are the victims of the distance from the viewers. The actors’ composition in Balázs’ directions can be strong because of the inner composition, which he makes move. It should be put in closed space. On the stage of a chamber. As the natural breathing of the performance would be averse to the wideness of the National Theatre. The characters have over human like sizes. They have two heads one above the other. They are statue-like above their necks. Because of it they move more rigidly, however the staging would indicate exercises with easy steps.

Their roles are choreographed and it is composed by music. (The violinists play very beautifully in the orchestra pit.) The actors, who are moved with the formality of the far-eastern theatres, perform their ceremonious movements on the polished benches and between them. There are too many exercises to do at the same time. Sometimes their silk robes get stuck in the edges of the benches, and these moments move the performers out of their required cold perfection.

The error of cast is because of the place of the performance and not of the actors.

Péter Gál Molnár, Mozgó Világ, 2009

(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)

In the centre of the performance of the National Theatre together with Zoltán Balázs we cannot find the main character but Bosola, the man of tools.

We do not know a lot about John Webster’s life, even the date of his birth and death are uncertain. Only some of the plays by the drama writer, who was Shakespeare’s peer, are known today, between them The Duchess of Malfi is the one, which is played the most for sure.

In this bloody thriller drama, Ferdinand the duke and his brother, the cardinal forbid that their widow sister would get married once more, but she seduces one of her subjects, Antonio, and she got married to him secretly in front of God. They have three children, but when the siblings find out their sister’s secret, they kill her and her two twin children too. Finally, both Antonio and the two Aragona brothers become victims of violent death. The one who performs the terrible acts, is Bosola, with undefinable status, who usually follows orders, but either willingly steps over his defined authority or acts in good faith, but the result of his acts is fatal. He is the only really active character, who continuously comments the happenings and himself too. He seems to be the only one, who has conscience, which he has to suppress again and again, he always searches and finds reasons for his acts, he talks about goodness and then kills. He is the most complex character of the play, it is not surprising that he rises Zoltán Balázs’ interest.

Webster’s play according to the fashion of this era, it is full of murders, madness, poisoning, listening, hiding in fake costumes, tortures, love between siblings and other forbidden partners. The performance of the complex actions is a serious challenge for the director, he has to decide: if the staging was realistic, naturalistic or stylized, Zoltán Balázs – according to his previous staging – has chosen the latest one, he has increased the abstraction and stylization till the end.

First of all, with Judit Góczán, the dramaturg they almost cut the half of the text; he has left those episodes, which are irrelevant from the point of view of main actions, the colouring elements, the side stories and side lines, and he concentrates first of all on Bosola’s personality and role, and the opening of that unhealthy relationship between the three siblings. Some roles fall out because of it, others become weaker, and less important. Mostly the female characters lose their importance, mainly the main character, who is as a strong one in the play, even in the prison as her twin brother, Ferdinand is or the former of cruel ideas, the Cardinal, but in the performance of the National Theatre there is hardly any possibilities for her to control her fate, she mostly suffers from the things, happening to her.

Judit Gombár forms an abstract space, there are four long benches behind each other in two lines, in the background there is a black podium, which shows mostly a picture of a church, metal-like, grey walls surrounding the stage, they can be open to a door size on both sides, the background surface can be divided not only into two but into four quarters too, so a cross form is made there. In one of the most beautiful pictures of the performance, the dead Duchess falls down as Madonna till the intersection of the cross, and the church-scene happens under her, in which the escaping Antonio decides when he hears his wife’s voice: he returns to the palace to meet the Cardinal.

The costumes set the visuality of the performance. The actors – like priests – are wearing robes over their shirts, which go on in long barges, at the edges of which we can find the hems with their characteristic colours. Their hands are covered with giant, stuffed gloves; the Duke keeps his index finger frighteningly up, the Cardinal’s two closed fingers indicate the well-known sign of communion, some of them keep their fingers like claws, his other palm is there to pet someone. The characters are wearing huge caps, which end in heads, the faces of these heads form ancient idols or medieval face performances. At the edge of the hat the colours of their clothes are repeated. Bosola is the only one, who does not wear gloves or cap, the director emphasizes him that way too the central character of the performance.

In the tragedy we learn most of the happenings by the different characters’ speech. Balázs gives this dramaturgical function to the four membered choir that comments too, sometimes he over organises the stage, and most of all they are the emotionless and cruel fulfiller of fate. The four of them do the murders, so they pull of the gloves and take off the caps from whom, who has to stop their lives. They talk in songs and singing speech. One of the unalienable components of the performance in László Sáry’s music on stage, which he composes to a string quartet, which sometimes strengthens the visual and oral statements by some sounds or turns, or the choir’s following. The members of the choir can partly sing those solos, which require serious vocal abilities.

The statue-like nature, which appears in their costumes, orders the main style of performance. Zoltán Balázs creates that kind of world here too, as in his controversial Faust performance in the Puppet Theatre of Budapest. In the almost two hours long performance, which is played in one act, there are hardly any outside actions, everything is told by picture, music and text. The actors are moving as Craig’s über-marionettes or as they would be the ideal actor-machines or puppets of Bauhaus. The movements are intermittent and pregnant, not the bodies are moving, but the hands, which impetus is followed by the body. The dialects are neutral, emotionless, their main aim is to tell their thoughts. There is not any possibility for the colouring by actors, for small realism, but the strictly composed form of the outside must be glowed by passion.

The actors can solve this very hard exercise on different levels. The clear articulation means the biggest problem. The acceptability of the performance, which requires a great concentration form the viewers too – as in the case of already mentioned Faust – depends on the fact if they get the information. Here and there it is partly understandable, what is told on stage. In it the well-known bad acoustic nature of the theatre is sinful too of course, but we cannot connect everything to it. This way of speaking does not let that after the first stressed syllable the rest of the sentences fall down, as we can usually hear it on our stages. Frigyes Hollósi (in three roles), László Sinkó (Bosola), Zsolt László (Ferdinand), Andrea Söptei’s (Cariola, the Duchess’ close partner) all words get to the viewers. Zalán Makranczi (Antonio) and János Kulka’s (the Cardinal) sentences need more attention, while only fragments of Bori Péterfy’s, who plays the main character, text can be heard and understood.

Zsolt László presents the director’s ideas the most punctually. His body, if it is needed, is like a marionette, then sometimes he is similar to a clock machine. I experience not for the first time, that even his back is “speaking”: in the depth of the stage he shows perfectly the symptoms of lycanthropy with a few gestures. László Sinkó performs the main character. In the beginning picture all the characters are in the space, when the orchestra is in the foreground, then Sinkó rises up from the deep. His white hair is smoothed tightly to his head, he performs a strange neither a male nor a female figure. He does reluctantly what they order to, but meanwhile he is growling, thinking over, combining or reading a little book. He seems to hold a prayer book in his hands, to which there is not any blood connected. He is a murderer and a moralist, he accepts his acts and denies them too. Sinkó performs perfectly the doubtful tragedy of the man of tools.

The following and acceptance of the performance, which has moderate tempo, wonderful visual world, which is rich in punctual artistic performances, and musical structure, is not an easy exercise for the viewers.

István Nánay, szinhaz.net, 2009

(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)

The Duchess of Malfi is a typical thriller drama of John Webster’s (?1570-?1630) era. Its story brings the whole props of this genre: siblings’ love affair, vendetta, intrigue, haunting dead people and so on; but the over-thinking of the play by one of Shakespeare’s peer from the director’s point of view is quite different, he deals with questions, which are actual even today – silently.

The real expressive power of the performance, which was performed in the National Theatre on 15th May, is the costumes. Those, who are sitting in the first lines – between them myself too – can accept the vison, which appears in front of us, with smaller amazement. The stage is divided into six-eight parts by parallel lines of benches, the actors perform sitting on them, in front of them, behind them or standing on them: everybody is in two-coloured robes (white and an individual colour according to the role), on their head there are giant plaster caps, on the top of these an expressionless white face stare at the viewers. Their hands are replaced by giant plaster gloves, which reach out from the long leaves of their robes with an individual rigid hand positions. The whole play moves in this inseparable visual world, and expresses head to head (in our case above head instead) the problems of an almost four hundred years old drama and of our everyday life.

The Duchess of Malfi (Bori Péterfy), who became a widow at a very young age is searching for a new husband for herself, and in spite of the fact, that her two brothers follow all of her footsteps, she has managed to get married to her chamberlain, who is under her level. From this secret marriage three children were born. When the spy, Bosola (László Sinkó) tells about it to the two brothers (the cardinal is János Kulka, Ferdinánd is Zsolt László), the duchess - recognising the danger – acts immediately: she hides her children at her maid (Cariola is Andrea Söptei), and sends her husband (Antonio is Zalán Makranczi) abroad – while she was closed into a dark tower, on her own by her siblings. The first act of the play would stop somewhere here – if there were, but there was not any – the drama is going on anyway, and the characters are getting fewer and fewer – in the end only the spy remains alive.

Anyway, the play is not so easy. The communication between the actors are confusing – the recitative, monotonous, or even in Gregorian style, too graceful, or even too theatrical, unstressed dialogues cannot refer to any kind of human connection between the characters. The giant gloves with their rigid hand positions cannot provide space at all for nonverbal formation of connections: the gestures are limited to that one movement, in which that hand has remained. The huge caps and the plaster masks on them, and the weight of the giant robes hinder the free moving – the characters’ frozen position, the robot-like limitation of their actions divide them not only from each other, but from us too.
This division is there, we cannot avoid it all through the performance, as this is the main lesson of the play too, the costumes, the sets and the music are all serving its representation.

While we are listening to the Duchess and Antonio’s dialogue of love, we cannot forget the expressionless masks above the longing faces. What do they feel? Nothing? They awkwardly hug each other with their giant hands, the gesture is cold and distant, but the text, which they tell is full of feelings. The murderous rage inside the brothers, their fears, the pity and confused feelings are ridiculous, and the actors also work on it, so that we cannot take them seriously: for example, János Kulka’s cry: Help, help! cannot be more monotonous and lifeless. We can just feel the love towards their sibling, when we can see Ferdinand’s palm resting on the Duchess’ inner thigh, we have a kind of uncertain suspicion. The music does not even help to get closer to the characters’ mental world; the compositions, which are similar to Kraftwerk and Balanescu’s music world cannot form a whole something: these are violin solos, which are playing on our nerve fibres – trapping drums of horror parodies and crying strings – then in love symphonies and almost passionate dialogues of the cello and violin it still remains strange for us.

The play itself is a symbol, all characters’ aim is the self-identity, which they can gain only in death – when they can get rid of their mask of their caps, and the unhealthy position of their huge hands. Only one character does not need it, he is Bosola, the spy, who can kill anybody, but he just smiles on death: as he does not wear neither cap, nor mask, or rigid hand, he cannot be killed, because he has already been dead in his betrayals back and forth, in his life without any connections.

The big experiment: what will happen if a costume fanatic director has over thought a not so popular drama of the XVI. century in futuristic conception, with grey sets and grey people? Unfortunately nothing great. However we can understand the lesson, the director’s conception, the symbols of costumes, and the ideas it would like to express, but we cannot tell that the performance is enjoyable. The already mentioned keeping of distance and affectation have reached their aims: the whole drama, together with all of its characters remain totally strange. Hopefully the performers aimfully, and not because of their faults remain forgettable (except for Bosola, the only human character). The futuristic visual world, the grey walls and the black benches, and their monotonous characters all help not to feel ourselves at home in the performance, we are moving without any kind of empathy on our seats, and the performance, which we get almost for two hours, leave unpleasant and tiring experience in us. Otherwise, it can rise up some interesting questions: Is our life so humdrum? Are we wearing so permanent masks in all our human relationships? What is this mask anyway? Our mask, which we show out is really connected to us so much, can only death mean some kind of relief? The performance deals with many similar questions, which can become a thriller drama now, not because of the mass death according to this new kind of interpretation...

Zsófia Tillinger, Kultúra&Kritika, 2009

(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)

According to the folk wisdom only the Japanese can write haiku. The folk wisdom also says that an European haiku can be written too, but it will not be a real one. According to another wisdom statement we should leave wisdom ones, everything can be done, if they work properly. But what is the situation the other way around? What happens, if something European is put into far-eastern costume?

John Webster is English renaissance, he is very English and very renaissance, he is juicy, full-blooded, gesticulating tragedy of fate-like, fatal, hot-tempered, quick-tempered. When he is gentle, he is full, so: when he is just a little bit, then he is very much like that. For example he is very poetic, of course, we can hear from him Shakespeare, who was older even than him: if he speaks, he almost always uses metaphors, parallels and paraphrases. Of course, he has great translator, István Vas’ translation is as rampant and resourceful as the twisting story is in its own. Judit Góczán, dramaturg, has simplified the story for the performance of the National Theatre, but it requires concentrated attention that way too.

Two of her brothers, convict from another marriage the Duchess of Malfi, who becomes widow early. Fernando and the Cardinal would like to save the inheritance and the family’s social status. But the duchess gets married secretly to Antonio, and however they can keep in secret their marriage successfully for a while, the husbands has to escape anyway: Bosola, the soldier with sinful past, exposes the marriage. The two brothers hold the Duchess as a hostage, who they make suffer first mentally, then make her killed together with her maid and children. The Hamlet-like dramaturgy destroys here: a murder is followed by another one and then finally Antonio and the Cardinal die too.

In the story the randomness pulsates, which makes the weight of human decisions bigger, and it can relativize in a paradox way. Webster’s world is still the shop of human heroism: ideas with capital letters are sold here (Misfortune, Intrigue, Morality, and so on), and of course it cannot be easy for the director, if he wants to bargain genuinely – here and now – on these on the stage.

Zoltán Balázs’ sublimates into a vision The Duchess of Malfi, according to his aim, he grows the dramatic text into an expressive vision. We can almost see only one static picture all through it, Judit Gombár’s sets are changed just a little during the two hours long, slow scale of scenes. The space is narrowing backwards, here is a classical proscenium stage: cool, metallic walls are opening and closing slowly, when a character steps on stage. The background wall opens soon, and the perpendicular of vertical and horizontal trail of light rules the picture: here is a lack, which forms a cross.

The director moves his actors in this yellowish-greyish pastel and the moving must be meant by words here, all gestures are counted out, we can feel punctually composed aim, and planed effects. Obviously the director does not want to serve the viewers’ passive attitude. Zoltán Balázs instead of the sensual based and emotional theatre of experience – let’s suppose it – makes the viewers work. According to it even the marking of space is unclear: the dialogues, which are full of intrigues, can be heard in those people’s scenes, who are entrapped in them, and the locations are put together that way.

Anyway, the viewers’ work mostly means to get over the practical obstacles. Still in the opening scene, the slow changing of places are in contrast with the rhythm of the inner action of the play: the viewers can hardly follow the fast exposure of actions, even if they lean towards the stage with all their senses. The diction is simply incomprehensible, not only because of the chamber orchestra, which is put between the viewers and the actors, but because we do not have ears to see with them: during the first ten minutes, the actors are speaking with their backs towards the stalls.

More basic question is, that the aim, which is served by the already mentioned vision of stage can point beyond itself. So is it more than an original idea (so it is functional, effective, fertile, inspiring, so it is a good idea) which is about a trial to put The Duchess of Malfi into an eastern theatrical form.

The actors are covered by white, sometimes veil like, loose dresses, who are differentiated only by some colourful lines from each other. And of course by the hats and gloves, which give grotesque, figural attributes to the characters. More properly: the puppet-like head and hands can be there to make longer their personality, they are snapshots stiffened into gestures. The Cardinal’s (János Kulka) fingers, for example, mark a swearing, they give permanent devoutness to his sentences. Fernando’s (Zsolt László) frighteningly erected index finger can be associated with fury and anger. Julia’s (Eszter Bánfalvi) gloves is characterized by erotic female principle, they reject and get into themselves at the same time, as they would get the holding of hands from the sitting Buddha statues.

There is an important difference compared to the antique masks, that during the performance in the National Theatre we can see the actors’ face too. Not the mimic, as we can hardly speak about it: the actors almost become puppets, themselves too, they are frozen into their statue-like roles. Their reserved body positions, their rigid tribes: the costumes – the figurative elements of which would make difference between the characters – make their personalities mostly uniform.

The staging minimalize as much as possible the actors’ toolbar. The most important element of it that we cannot talk about intonation too: we can listen to monotonous text telling of the already mentioned language parade by István Vas during two hours – by the end almost with paradoxically indifferent diction.

The theatrical language, which is doubled that way, (the parallel of actors and puppets) can cancel each other. We can tell, that The Duchess of Malfi in the National Theatre is about the fact, that what a good and excellent puppet performance would be made of The Duchess of Malfi. In Zoltán Balázs’ complex vision the puppet-like nature and the actors’ presence are against each other anyway, as the elements, which refer to the Japanese no-theatre are just there to get the performance together as some kind of eastern taste after all. The dreamt vision eliminates itself: the form, which is built on the basic idea gets in front of those questions and problems, about which it should speak.

About those kind of tiny and concrete symbols, for example, why the puppet misses exactly from Bosola’s (László Sinkó) head. Who is that person is anyway, why he can see the good and do the bad one. Why the Duchess of Malfi (Bori Péterfy) can see bad and do the good one, (if it is bad and if it is good) and according to what kind of moral and immoral examples we behave. That if the whole of it has any meaning, if according to Bosola’s resigned definition of people, “we are the tennis balls of stars, and we fly where they hit us”.

After all, we will be laid out anyway.

Szabolcs Székely, Ellenfény, 2009

(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)

This last phrase can make things a little bit simpler, as at the beginning of the performance we can see a religious ceremony, in the middle of which the Cardinal is standing, who will turn soon to Bosola, who has done the scale of terrible sins. This is a strong picture, which marks the coordinates properly: it is a sacral space, on its axles with the characters, who have done the vilest sins, if you like it, with the pure evil. The Duchess of Malfi, which is directed by Zoltán Balázs, uses symbolic, mystic elements too, and it is characterised with the thinking, which can be associated with them.

This time the director does not follow the way of interpretation in its traditional meaning; the strongly styled, autonomous stage language is not connected strongly to the turns of Webster’s drama, and it does not have any connection with the atmosphere and mechanism of effects of the play. The play by the writer of Shakespeare-era, gives a creepy picture of the dark side of human nature. Between the aberrant, half-mad figures, exclusive revenge mission, cumulative wave mountains, and episode characters, who are painted with strong contours, there are two really fascinating main characters: the Duchess of Malfi, who tempts the fate, with the consistent acceptance of her feelings. Bosola as well, who starts a really logical and at the same time irrational massacre, after he has thought over the consequences of his acts and he is sympathetic with them. It is a shockingly modern psycho-horror, with counted strong effective elements, perfect dramaturgy and witty dialogues. The ambivalent roles and actions offer more possibility of interpretation, which can characterise the tone, colours and stress of the performance.

However Zoltán Balázs creates a special world on stage without opening the text but parallel to it. In the focus of it there is not the individual inner hell, but instead the hell of the (each) world, which is created by people. Judit Gombár’s spectacular, costumes, which define the play stylistically, turns the accepting attention towards eastern philosophy and attitude of life. The fossilized, statue-like head points towards the sky and reaches over the characters’ long dresses, and two giant and emphasized puppet-like hands. Because of it, in their movements there is something puppet- and statue-like; as they would be some kind of captives of worlds, which is similar to the hell on earth, and which has lost its sacral content. Only death can change it; at that moment, they lose their statue-like heads and puppet-like limbs. (Bosola’s character is emphasized – it is understandable, it is too obvious – from the group of the characters, as he does not wear these.)

The other styled elements are connected to the reserved tempo of movement: the music, the singing of some parts of the text and that somewhat strongly reduced performing style, which avoids usage of all visual tools. That way the turns of action become irrelevant too; the killer gets his victims unstoppably, the stops, the drives, the role of randomness can be negligible. The characters’ psyches are not so important, but what they can express. Because of it all the main characters – László Sinkó (Bosola), Bori Péterfy (Duchess of Malfi), János Kulka (Cardinal), Zsolt László (Ferdinand) – as the episode characters too (between them maybe Zalán Makranczi as Antonio and Eszter Bánfalvi as Julia get the greatest part from the performance) can work with their presence and build from it. They do it with not the same intensity, but on the important points usually strongly, they can show their personalities and subjectivities too.

Anyway the richness of form and the commendable professional performance are for nothing; the performance can hardly fascinate me, the acts on stage have predictable effect after a while. Zoltán Balázs now cannot create a system of signs on the stage, which can overwrite the play, and which is not only valid on its own, but interesting too, which can stand in for everything, which is deliberately missing from the performance, so the essence of the original play, its extreme effective elements, and its stressed and changing situations. The text is too reduced to remain meaningful, and the created visual world and the thoughts, which are expressed through it, cannot fill simply the performance. The performance seems to be rather flat – not only from the point of view of the basic play, but of its own possibilities, of the richness of the used tools. The same gestures, situations, scales of scenes are repeated almost ritually after a while, the banality of some parts of the text gets ironic light (I cannot always decide if it is deliberate or not). Not all of these can form a real tension on stage, the actions do not have real current and power. The artistically built world is getting further, leaves us indifferent. The vision effects our eyes for a while, its meaning reaches me spiritually sometimes, but the performance cannot make us fell emotionally the hells of puppet-like life nor for a moment.

Balázs Urbán, Kultúra.hu, 2009

(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)

John Webster wrote at a very young age The Duchess of Malfi at a very young age (according to the habits of that time – for example Shakespeare – it was adapted from different sources) and I think he did not think that he could compose one of the super popular opuses of the stage of the century. From the point of view of staging, it was many times more popular than Shakespeare was (if we do not count in the repertoire of Globe). It is a real thriller drama; first one, then another family die in it, and an informer-like character of an informer is at variance with himself. There are rebellion, self-awareness, glorification in it meanwhile; there are passions, elevated ambitions, conspiracy and cruel vendetta; there are great and petty death: there is everything here, if we are able to watch all, which is possible.

And there are national antecedents too: on one hand the guest performance of Cheek by Jowl, The Duchess of Malfi, directed by Declan Donnellan - there was a wonderful performance by the troupe and wonderful performance of the Duchess on a giant chessboard. Then Tim Carroll put the play on stage in Bárka Theatre – from the disturbing and thin performance Dorottya Udvaros shined out with her complicated and excellent performance of the main character; then Gábor M. Koltai on his – that time – usual geometrical place directed a sensitive performance in Nyíregyháza.

And now it is put on stage by Zoltán Balázs in the National Theatre – it is not surprising at all that mostly the vison, the form, the style can catch our interest. After Faust in the Puppet Theatre here the alive actors get a puppet-like look: there are huge hats on their heads, on the top of them a huge mask is the “crown”. Huge puppet-like rigid hands are connected to them, which are moving on a fixed choreography, that way they follow the text. Both of them can be seen Julia Taymor’s famous staging in the Oedipus Rex; the Stravinsky opera was put on stage in Japan in 1992, on the Saito Kinen Festival it got many awards, then it travelled through the world on DVD. The size and nature of similarity indicate that here is at least a “narrowing down” (It is Péter Esterházy’s rich word for the situation); maybe it would be great if they had referred to it on the programme, but as you can see again in case of Esterházy, that it is not obvious at all.

The two brothers of the Duchess of Malfi want to prevent the widow duchess’ second marriage for different reasons. Her elder brother, the Cardinal because of pure heartlessness and immorality (the character, whose pontifical ambition has fallen, keeps a secret lower, and with a poisonous Bible has killed her cruelly too), her twin brother, Ferdinand does it because of passionate love of a brother (which is not very clear in the performance), anyway they also mention some financial advances. But the duchess gets married very fast with her own steward, with Antonio (who is very surprised by the decision, but because of fast acts he does not have many to think it over, not even his own feelings: it is a forced path on its own), and she has given birth to three kids, by the time her secret has revelled, and made her brothers angry.

The secret is found out by Bosola, who is a man, employed as an informer, who has his own separate drama – in Zoltán Balázs’ performance he is the only character without hat and gloves, and he is performed by László Sinkó, who is the most vivid and the most dynamic one too. Between its motifs the cruelty, the greed, the suppressed ambitions, the pity, the rising sense of justice and the anger are mixed – and all of them followed by actions. He killed – according to his commission – Antonio, who has known before his death, that his wife, the Duchess of Malfi and one of his sons are dead. He is the one who killed also the Cardinal, who is dispassionately and cynically evil, because he has “got the scales of Justice”, as Bosola said it; then he is the one, who kills the totally mad Ferdinand, who is “the main reason of his fall”.

Judit Gombár’s big grey walls (on which sliding elements opens a door-like hole and play for the lighting) as they would border a church; low lines of benches are one after another, then a deep well is built of them, which swallows dead bodies. In the big space the actors perform mostly with their physical existences (however we can hear or understand them, as the director does not care about the bad acoustic, as he has given it a main role again), it seems like puppets are moving on a huge puppet stage. There is a slight possibility to the nuanced formation of characters, and sensitive performances – anyway the short cut performance mostly cares about the act as the play tries to get above the form. In this fight László Sáry’s music gives a great help anyway, which has a great role in creating the atmosphere, but we have a chance only during the last half an hour to understand and feel at the same time, what is going on. The acts of death are beautiful for example: they get the hat from the characters’ heads, pull the huge gloves of them; and the appearing hair and pure hands can show the people, who have already been dead.

The actors’ professionalism can be seen in their disciplined performance: Bori Péterfy as The Duchess of Malfi, János Kulka as the Cardinal, Zsolt László as Ferdinand and Zalán Makranczi as Antonio can bring emblematically those emblems of the figures, which the director has imagined. Frigyes Hollósi has been able to do a little bit more, who plays more roles, Eszter Bánfalvi, who performs Julia, the Cardinal’s lover, has a strong scene too – obviously László Sinkó performs the drama mostly, as Bosola, he can brings it to those, who get themselves through the boring beauty of the form.

Vit Lukás, Magyar Narancs, 2009

(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)

They swing completely on the same string. Who would have thought? I was already surprised that the director of Maladype Theatre, an alternative, independent company, and the popular diva of the Budapest Operetta Theatre met on the same stage. The musical Nine interpreted from Fellini's 8 and 1⁄2 was a wonderful journey for both of them. I talked with the two artists a few weeks after the premiere.

- From where are you running in such a haste?

- Zoltán Balázs: I arrived from Kosovo this morning and will continue to travel to Israel tomorrow, I have just arrived in Budapest. My company and I have been touring around the world for many years, including America, Asia and Africa. We are lucky because the whole company and thus our entire repertoire travels with us, so we always get the performance that the theme of the current festival requires.

- Kata, you're coming from a rehearsal. Are you ready for your next premiere?

- Kata Janza: Yes, the day after tomorrow The fiddler on the roof will have its premiere. I play Golde, the milkman's wife. The parents are usually depicted as old, but we, Zsolt Homonnay and Yvette Bozsik, came up with the idea of forming a youthful couple. A couple for whom not only the future of their daughters is at stake, but also their own relationship. In real life, we have children of the same ages while our lives are still in full swing. A beautiful moment happened during the first rehearsal. Tevje turned to me and we both knew what was going on in the other’s soul. I felt that Zsolt thought that if Janka was about getting married, he would be there. In response, I said with my gaze: if Zsombor gets married, I will be there too! Our tears started to fall. Zsolt and I got married at the same time, divorced and raised our children at the same time. It’s a huge gift to be able to live on stage in advance, what if Janka stands in front of me one day: mom, I’m getting married. It can happen at any minute.

- Z. B.: I really like listening to Kata! She is an extraordinary artist who not only lives an intense inner life, but can also put her emotions and thoughts into words. One can immediately relate to a sentence. I also love the way she looks at her partner. She sees into his soul, almost melts into him, as when a child stares at the sparks of fire and does not even notice it, through concentration he slowly slips into a more elevated dimension. Kata's giving nature also energizes her partners. The way they looked at each other with Zsolt in the Fiddler, was the same as with Gyuri Szomor at the rehearsal of the musical Nine - he plays Guido Contini, Fellini's alter ego - and then sang their duet with intimate naturalness. Then the air freezed for a moment... I think a director needs to notice these unique manifestations and special personality traits.

- I'm surprised you, the daredevil of theatre, who loves to push clichés aside, have now tried himself in a popular genre. It's not like the end result isn't impressive.

- Z. B.: I am an adventurous creator, I was excited about the challenge. Plus, I’m a big Fellini fan, and Nine was born out of the master’s self-confessed work. It was a huge innovation in 1963 that through Mastroianni’s person, he testified about his own creative crisis in his film 8 and 1⁄2. I think it’s a huge gift for a director to come into contact with Fellini’s intellectual heritage in some form. We almost met once in person, in Rome. I worked there with the set and costume designer Judit Gombár, who knew Fellini and his wife, Masina. One day she took me to their apartment, which is a completely average two-story house in the center of Rome, but unfortunately they did not open the door because they were just in Paris. I will never forget the way Judit pressed her face to their nameplate with endless love and stroked it. Returning to Nine, the musical was born twenty years later, in 1982, and was a huge success in New York. It was awarded twelve Tony Awards. I wouldn’t even call it a musical, but rather a kaleidoscopic piece of music with a thousand layers, colors and patterns, which is why it’s a great opportunity for a director seeking complexity.

- Weren’t you afraid they'll eat you for breakfast at the Operetta Theater? Because everyone is used to the rivalry light there, and there are huge personalities on the stage.

- Z. B.: Many people were scared by this, but I met a humble artist with a childlike spirit, open to novelty. What was amazing about this trip - and to be more accurate, still is, as the performances will continue in February - was that the actors, the dance troupe and the technical staff also believed in my concept from the beginning. The performers in Nine are indeed predators of great appetite one by one, but their desire to innovate and their healthy maximalism have served the production very well.

- K. J.: It was a great experience to work with Zoli! When we sat around during the first rehearsal, he had a sentence that shocked me. He told me, “I have been following your life, the work you have done so far. You have the ability to care about others. About in which state of life they are, what they are feeling, and if you get next to each other after a while, you will continue from where you last left off. And they can always count on that ... ”Well, here I felt like I was going to cry. It’s been so long ago, I’ve experienced that a director is genuinely curious about me, he knows who I am, and I don’t have to start from scratch. It felt very good. And Zoli said something else: he is not curious about what the world around us is already delighted with. We should get on stage with so much more because he came to us with more. He managed to free my playfulness so that I forgot all my routines and tiredness of the last twenty-five years. And that’s not just me, the other actresses, the “predators with huge appetite,” all told that. Under Zoli’s control, we became rascals again, serious clowns playing till death on the stage.

- Is that how you always do it, Zoli?

- Z. B.: Yes. I think I can be credible if I take my playmates with whom fate brings me seriously. It is very important to map out the nature of the actor, to get to know one's life path before we start rehearsing. I try to stay in touch with the changes in the world, I try to pay attention to what is happening with who from a distance, because if we work together, this knowledge will help us to build trust between us... In these nine months - because of the quarantines, it took us that much to finally carry out the premiere of Nine - in fact, we spent very little time together, yet significant, close ties have developed between us. That's why it matters to me now what's going on and how their careers are going, sometimes I call or send encouraging sms to the actors. And I'm sure there will be a continuation.

- The musical features several women, wives, lovers, producers and prostitutes. Kata plays Fellini’s muse, Claudia Nardi. Did you feel the figure close?

- K. J.: Absolutely. Claudia is the actress, the idol, the star who wants to be both a woman and a mother. This duality is present in my life as well. I take my child to school in the morning, I rush for him in the afternoon, I cook, I wash, but in the evenings I can finally stand there on the stage that represents the world, and that’s my own time. By then, my nervous system has to be adjusted. It’s not easy, but I’m used to this variety of operations. What this role has given me is that I realize I don’t want much anymore. That these few sentences are enough for me to condense into all that Claudia carries within her. The point is to be able to say those five sentences so that her whole destiny will shine in it. Of course, there are many years of work involved in making everything that simple.

- Thirsty for love, the protagonist commutes between his wife, his lover, and his muse, noticing he deceives them all. If I am right, you know a lot about men like that.

- K. J.: Hajaj...! In the meantime, I know they’re not bad, they’re just like that. In a way, in addition to my theatrical partners, I have played the role of the second wife all my life. Where are they messing it up...? Zoli once said that something happens to a person as a child and stays there. He told me then - I don't know if I should say this - that when he was twelve, his family moved from Transylvania to Hungary, and that little boy has been sitting on the bench of the train station ever since... Maybe the men should go back for that lost child and talk to him.

- Z. B.: Guido does the exact same thing. You can only awaken the inner strength needed for creation and creative work on your own by arranging your divisive relationships. To do this, however, you must return to your childhood, the creative world of cognitions and receptivity. It is a cruel confrontation, but it cannot be missed out. If Guido is unable to rebuild himself from his current life, he will be stuck in the world of memories, dreams and desires forever... As for my story, as a little boy I lost a country, my first love, my friends, and then I felt that I had nothing left to lose. I tried to let go of the associated innervations. I hitchhiked all over Europe, some took me for ten kilometers, others were getting me farther and closer to the city of my dreams, Paris. Then I founded the Maladype Theatre in 2001, and we soon became international. It doesn’t matter if I’m directing in Warsaw or Chicago, I’ll take this irregular guy who is manic of freedom with me everywhere.

- I saw an amazing glistening on stage, that many styles, dazzling clutter evoked the circus for me.

- Z. B.: Not by accident. Like Fellini, I am crazy for the circus. At the age of six, I decided to become an acrobat clown and hung out with a traveling circus. But unfortunately my grandfather brought me back with the police the next morning. Then I felt like they had taken my dream away from me. I didn't talk to my family for a month. I still don't think I've managed to come out of that trauma. The profession of theater-making was then an almost natural choice.

- In the performance there are all kinds of music played from Mozart to swing. How do you bear it with voice, Kata?

- K. J.: I sing from feelings. My colleagues always ask: Kató, what is the sound like here or there? But I never deal with that. It’s not the trill that matters, for me, these are inspired moments in which emotions filter through. It is also a misunderstanding that
the songs separate from the scenes. On the contrary, they flow into each other.

- Christmas is coming. I think you will rest a little.

- K. J.: I will perform with Attila Dolhai during the holidays, but since we do this every year and he is a playful puppy like me, we have learned how to celebrate with the audience. I decorate the tree at home in the morning and also bake a cake because my kids teased me so many times until I started baking during the quarantine and I’m trying to reproduce that now. Anyway, we will play board games a lot. I invite my friends and we will play Activity. I'll be the game master. I love it!

- Z. B.: I will fall under the tree. This year, for the first time in many years, I am having Christmas at home with my family. I roast an orange duck and then just watch out of my head. Next year, four mega-productions like Nine are waiting for me, so I probably won’t be able to stop my thoughts even at Christmas, but of course I’ll try to relax as well. Really looking forward to it!

Lilla Koronczay, Nők Lapja, 2021

translated by Zsuzsanna Juraszek

“The most depressing thing is that we have to live our profession in a very divided theatrical world. This is almost a task for Don Quixote” - said actor and director Zoltán Balázs, founder and director of the Maladype Theatre, with whom we also talked about aristocratic ancestry, childhood pranks and theatrical perceptions.

- When I saw Hamlet with you in the starring role, Maia Morgenstern was sitting next to me. She was just as impressed by what she saw of you as any of us, average spectators. It’s been over ten years, but looking through your career, I still haven’t been able to figure out who this amazingly versatile young man is and what he’s up to in this world. Do you usually think about this?

- I prefer to focus on the present. Anyway, I’m so glad you’re starting our conversation with your Hamlet experience at the Bárka, because almost every week someone stops me on the street to tell how decisive my Hamlet was in Tim Carroll’s legendary directing. The truth, of course, is that I met the then chief director of the Globe Theatre in London at a good time, in a good place and, above all, in very good condition. The success of the “board game”, which is unusual in all respects, was also significantly influenced by my great partners. During the performance, which was based on improvisations, the biggest challenge was that as a Hamlet I had to exist at that moment at the same time and plan ten to fifteen minutes in advance. It was only after the many performances that the human and artistic power of the diversity of the interplay based on different acting solutions became clear to me. Because of the energies released by my self-burning acting presence

It also happened that I got tired, so I stopped and asked the viewers for a few minutes of silence. After the “public shock”, I reassembled Hamlet’s thoughts word by word, restoring the spontaneous and personal nature of the role-playing problem. I knew it was “not appropriate” to do this in a classic theater performance, but an inner voice tempted me at times...

- I wouldn’t call that Hamlet a classic performance.

- It was novel in every way. Anyone who was able to break with the instincts of traditional Hamlet adaptations could experience amazing theatrical adventures both as an actor and as a spectator. Through the performers ’unique and unrepeatable suggestions for role and text interpretation, situation management, creative contexts of thought and action, the audience also became part of new insights every night. This ever-changing game required a stable nervous system, special acting condition, and widespread attention on everyone’s part.

- You said at the beginning of our conversation that you were always self- and public-dangerous.

- Birth defect. My path searches out of curiosity were also approved by my current environment, so I always went head to head against the wall as a “crash test dummy”. Everything that makes up my human, masculine, acting, and directing selves stems from my daring to risk and at times question certain canonized patterns of action.

- Who allowed you and what?

- Many, many things, in many different situations. If we go back to the beginnings, it is primarily my parents, my grandparents. I came from a generous and integrative-minded family, and their attitude toward the development of the childish soul was unparalleled. I grew up in the last period of communism, so we often experienced house searches and the black car would take my grandfather. Being a Transylvanian Hungarian in Romania was a disadvantage, but our family took on being Hungarian for granted in all circumstances. Even the most difficult moments were made livable by serenity, meaningful and sensitive explanations. Today, a great amount of people use being across the border as a shield, which I find extremely repulsive.

- Honestly, I didn't know you were Transylvanian.

- I am happy about this because for me this kind of a timidly imbued inner belonging and self-identity which is a natural legacy of my family. My childhood was not defined by ideological guidelines and images of enemies, my upbringing was not infected by scapegoating and nationalism. I learned from them that truth is always a good Plan B, and the point is worth looking for is in the silenced word.

I was interested in all kinds of adventures, so I often got myself and my narrower and wider environment into impossible situations. I am a descendant of a noble family, dog skin was also associated with obligations and rules, so my willingness to cross all kinds of borders was clearly coded in my renitent behavior.

- Give an example!

- Although we knew it was forbidden, me and my childhood friend once ventured into an abandoned mansion waiting to be renovated. But at that moment, the floor tore under us and we ended up in a deep stack. An hour, two hours, five hours, ten hours passed, then it became dark and no one came.

We guessed they were already looking for us, but we didn’t know when and how they would find us. While we waited, we came to the conclusion that now at least it will be clear how much they love us and whether our prank will have a relationship-rejuvenating power. We pondered on this until dawn and then they found us. It was an age of intact discoveries in pure intentions and clear actions. It lasted until I was twelve years old.

- And then what happened?

- We left home because my mother saw our situation as hopeless. Then I didn't understand why. My friends, my first love, remained on Maramures Island. We went to many places in Europe and America, but in the end we ended up in Hungary, and I continued my studies here. My mother and I have experienced “seven-pound” situations many times, yet we have laughed a lot. My mother’s energies to this day shame my dynamism, watched in amazement by many. I inherited this kind of vitality, the love of life from her. I don’t know and don’t want to live my life with a bitter taste in the mouth, although there’s a lot of it that I’m not happy about, either humanly or professionally.

- What do you mean?

- The most depressing thing is that we have to live our profession in a very divided theatrical world. This is almost a task for Don Quixote. Cultural policy identification processes are taking place that do not allow young career starters or professionally driven artists to do their job as members of a more caring theatrical society. Neither I nor the theater I have been running for twenty years are willing to take part in this. We do everything we can to preserve the origins of our thoughts about theater and our creative intentions in order to remain literally independent.

We have one point of alignment, the exponentially changing theater itself. Although many used to want me for themselves, they also offered theaters and positions, I preferred to follow my own path, which always led back to the diverse complex possibilities of doing theater; I chose to be the creator of the avant-garde, Maladype - which still has a name on the international stage today -, and the special lifestyle that comes with it.

- What do you mean by the Maladype lifestyle?

- Soaring freely. We never had to compromise on artistic issues, and our specific experiments in content and form also found a high degree of understanding and recognition in different theatrical cultures around the world. This is one of the reasons why we were able to survive at home for twenty years, because they know what Maladype is from Vietnam to America, from Iran to France. This theatrical thinking, nourished by many cultures, is the reason that Hungarian theatrical traditions, theatrical and dramatic foreshadowing did not project a shadow over my personality and method. I could be objective in my own subjectivity.

I didn’t undertake and do anything that would make me remorse, and there’s nothing I would regret because I missed it. When I started running a company, I had to learn to take responsibility for others, not just for myself. Since then, I have had to walk ten steps ahead of the members of the company, and it doesn’t matter what development path I set for them, the morally, ethically, professionally atmosphere I have created for their daily work. Everything behind us - and, I hope, even before us - stems from this dynamism and passionate conscious, risky thinking. With all of our performances, we strive to ensure that neither content nor form impulses repeat themselves.

Therefore, it is not easy to put Maladype into a box. By the time our theater was proclaimed by critics as ritual or physical theater, we were already searching in another creative universe for a style to fit that particular work and director’s concept. Contributing to this multipolar process was the fact that I quickly reached the international scene with my company and as an individual creator. My personal experiences at various festivals, theater workshops, and genre-specific citadels around the world have had a liberating effect on my creative approach and have given me tremendous strength to find my way daily in the spirit of freedom. We have also incorporated another core value, generosity, into our artistic strategy, our long-term operation.

- What do you mean by generosity?

- Recognizing the changing factors as part of the anatomy of creation and giving space to new impulses that will shape and recreate our worldview in the future. It will always drive me.

- That's why you're not old. Because of constant development. You didn’t tell me what Maladype’s sense of life was.

- The word maladype means encounter in Lovarian. A kind of instinctive, unexpected and joyful feeling of life that has united us all since the beginning. Our lives do not always consist of festive moments, so we need to pay more attention to ourselves in everyday life. Proper mental condition is essential for this. Maladype’s sense of life also includes artists taking pleasure in individual and collective redesign. They don’t panic if rehearsals or performances don’t go the way we planned, they perceive the momentary change and are able to turn what has happened to their advantage.

During an American tour, at an audience meeting following King Ubu, viewers said our production was a series of “happy accidents”. I find this very apt and expressive. However, only those who are in constant training and like to take risks can stay in the context of the performance after the unexpected events and react smartly and easily to the changed situation. This particularly complex attention-based acting presence is very rare among Hungarian actors and is highly sought after.

At Maladype, we have well-articulated rules of the game that, when used properly, have a liberating effect on both actors and audiences. This typically Maladype-style approach requires playmates who intend to explore the special quality of theater with exceptional commitment, who over time become key players in a particular creative era. Maladype’s current company is made up of actors who, without sparing their time and energy, use their talents to represent the thinking that characterizes our theater at home and abroad. I met them at the University of Arts in Târgu Mureş when, as an invited teacher, I directed them an exam performance based on Bruno Schulz's short stories. Looking at them at work, it immediately became clear to me that they would have great mediums for everything I wanted to define as the Maladype of the future, so I contracted the entire class.

- So you also take on pedagogical role.

- This goes hand in hand with directorial and artistic leadership roles. I also have a methodological descriptions called Golden-Bug and Five Gates, which I regularly share and consult about with the actors of the company. These aspects, of course, only work if the actors really want to meet a stripped-down stage copy of themselves and vote trust for themselves, their peers, and me. I don’t want to train theater workers who work diligently like ants, but have no idea what they’re building, so I think it’s important to share with them the causal intentions behind a given task or goal. Maladype’s artists have not yet been seen by spectators sitting on a couch with a glass of water and easily exchanging words about the banalities of life, their acting toolbox activating the complexity of polyphonic-edited games. Being able to talk, sing and move at the same time is part of this unusual stage existence.

- What is most important to you in your current stage of life?

- Friendships based on authentic, honest, lived encounters. I am more and more impressed by the intricately flexible elephant memory and unwavering loyalty of the older generation of actors I respect and love - Ilona Béres, Erzsébet Kútvölgyi, Éva Almási. None of them forgets to mention their masters and what defining encounters shaped their careers and energized their artistic development. Listening to them, I feel the triumph of the bright spirit. Concentrating their experiences from many sources into haiku-like parables fascinates and inspires me, as a person and as a creator, to look even more for the point, the minimum necessary for the exact expression of what I would like to say.

- Your talent is a great gift, but as I listen to you, it is certainly a burden because you are particularly sensitive to the world around you.

- My sensitivity is also a kind of talent. I can live with it and abuse it. That is why I consider it important that, at a company level, we should nurture and develop our qualities consistently. The artistically advanced and well-powered company attracts real talent, positive and clean-minded playmates as a magnet.

- With what do you spend your time currently?

- I’m getting ready for Merlin’s premiere in Budapest and a stage adaptation of a contemporary piece by an Israeli author, Roy Chen, with Maladype’s company. With the graduating class of the University of Arts in Târgu Mureş, I am finally about to bring under the roof their exam postponed due to Covid, the Group Portrait with Lady. At the end of the season, I will be staging La Fontaine’s Animal Tales at the Odeon Theater in Bucharest, where we will soon be holding a plan-accepting reception. In parallel, I am working on Adam Mickiewicz’s romantic work Ancestors, which I will be staging in Poland next summer. The most important task, however, is for Maladype to find its own performing venue. If we succeed, we will finally be able to play regularly at home and we will be able to welcome our audience, our domestic and foreign partners under worthy conditions. We’ve put a lot on the table over the last twenty years, our results speak for themselves, which is why we have a hard time bearing the fact that we still work under unworthy conditions.

- How do you prepare to cross the second X?

- With work. Fortunately, the festival invitations started to flow again in the spring, but due to other things that have been congested in the meantime, they are not easy to implement. If we can keep up with the current pace and a new wave of the pandemic won't strike, our situation will consolidate pretty slowly. Plans for the anniversary season include a showcase-like review of our repertoire performances, roundtable discussions related to our anniversary premieres, conferences, a tour series, and the preparation of a book.

- What is your favorite city among the many you have visited?

- Ljubljana. I directed at the Mini Theater and loved it, it’s a wonderful city. For a long time, Paris was my favorite because I lived and studied there. Today, however, everything is connected to Budapest, this is my base, my home. I love nature, I love hiking, playing sports, I am fascinated by the sea, but lately, if I manage to take some time out, I feel really good at home, in my apartment. I love people, my family, my friends are important, but the experience of finally being able to shut ourselves off, take a book off the shelf and open it is quite special. I can’t wait to be retired and just read in a rocking chair for days.

Gáti Katalin Teodóra, Kultúra.hu, 2021

translated by Zsuzsanna Juraszek

He has been the founder and director of the Maladype Theatre since 2001, and regularly undertakes guest directings abroad. He consciously seeks out for the unexpected opportunities and irregular acting solutions provided by theatrical and non-theatrical spaces. In the fall, he prepares for another heroic venture: he sets the musical Nine on stage, a stage adaptation of Federico Fellini’s film 8 and ½ with Arthur Kopit’s libretto, and Maury Yeston’s music and lyrics. The premiere of the performance will be held on September 25 at the Budapest Operetta Theater. We talked to the Jászai Mari Prize-winning director Zoltán Balázs about the unusual performance.

- You have been interested in Nine for a long time. Why?

- Because it is an ensemble-building work and provides a wide playing field for all actors. Its complexity and unique structure do not allow the director and his co-creators to build their concepts on classical musical traditions. It is also an extra challenge for performers to be constantly present on stage. In this story which is running through many threads, the questioning of the nature of reality is guaranteed by magical realism. This style organizes the game, the use of space, manages time cyclically, and merges the narrative present of situations with unusual aspects. The “stratospherical” imagination, drawn from the protagonist’s memories, desires, and dreams, here desperately needs scenic solutions and visual effects that help move specific characters and events to another dimension.

- How was your encounter with the company?

- Our creative relationship deepened during the chaotic and crisis period of the pandemic, filled with curiosity and a desire to learn. This is also due to the fact that the artists of the Operetta Theater have retained their openness, their childlike spirit. They are just as insecure and vulnerable as members of any other company who want to give the best of themselves, the most, and they desire for trust, for artistic reinforcement. They are grateful if, as an expression of respect for their sovereign creative personality, the director initiates them into the details of his concept and understands with them the causal connections that move the intentions and actions of the given roles. They appreciate the organic attention of the director, the time devoted to analytical rehearsals, the workshop-like construction, and the need for analytical thinking.

- Where did the idea for the strange floating, rhythmic space come from?

- From Fellini's works. In almost every film, the Master features variations of spaces outside the locations of specific social life: symbolic mirrors of the spaces in which real life takes place. This kind of symbolic use of space reflects the protagonist’s state of mind, the atmosphere of the whole broken world. The lack of site identification causes different action pulses to occur between ever-changing landscapes and time zones. Also, the spa in which the story in question takes place is merely an allegorical venue for the protagonist’s external and internal transformations. Therefore, with Éva Szendrényi, the set designer of the performance, we tried to create a visual world, a space composition in which the gradually coming to life images of consciousness keep the viewer's attention in constant motion, inviting them to active participation. Nine’s rhythmic space combined with Japanese minimalism also evokes the thinking of scenic innovator Adolphe Appia, Edward Gordon Craig, and Josef Svoboda.

- How would you describe Guido's figure?

- I consider him extremely talented with every losing moment of his. He’s like a “crash test dummy” who goes with its head against a wall to draw attention to himself. Guido is both a perpetrator and a victim of his neglected actions, superficial and arrogant manifestations. The world he knew is disappearing; he is left alone, and the dark forces that have accumulated in him begin to devour his creative energies. There is nothing in it that opens the gateway to recognition. From the subjective consciousness of the director struggling with inspiration, despair brings to the surface bilocation experiences that allow him to find himself in two places at once: in his childhood as a child Guido and in the abstracted present as a 43-year-old guy. Encountering yourself is inevitable. You have to break to zero to be able to thrive again. Like any artist looking for new ideas, wanting to innovate, he must let go of frills, clichés, nerves. According to Fellini, a good idea has three components: efficiency, elegance, and robustness. Guido is looking for these three components. With her nine-year-old child-self, he explores these in a clear, magical, and inspiring world of his childhood.

- As an artist, do you go back to your roots?"

- I only feed on my childhood experiences. If we want to find back to something essential, we sometimes have to bathe in the lake of childhood. We must allow the joy of accepting simplicity, the beauty of our banalities, freshness, personality and playfulness to permeate us again. We need to remind ourselves of our frivolous selves and also dare to integrate theatrical solutions to be articulated in the spirit of naive art into our works. If we give up all this because “our oeuvre obligates us” and do not encourage the provocative and mischievous parts of our personality, we are saying goodbye to the fragile moments of recognition, the nervous system awareness of the anatomy of creation.

- Do you have any desperate moments like Guido?

- A lot. For today, however, I have accepted that these weary moments are also part of my human, masculine, artistic development, without these there would be no progress. I had to learn to use them to be valuable building blocks for a creative method based on heterogeneous dimensions.

Klaudia Nagy, Pesti Műsor, 2021

translated by Zsuzsanna Juraszek