Drama variations on the stage of Radnóti Theatre and Merlin

Enmity and dissociation. Here is the spirit of our time, if we take into consideration two new works of theatre.

Is it the real spirit of our time? Or they are just projections of it, of which we can not avoid to take notice after all. It is an odious, rank world, so writers must be mean – maybe the young German writer, Marius von Mayenburg thinks so, whose play, the Fireface was put on by the Radnóti Theatre.

Fernando Pessoa, the Portuguese forms the state of dissociation into poetry. The play, which was put on in the Merlin Theatre, approached to his work with the idea of total theatre.

Ninety-one scenes in one part, this is the definition of the sequence of Fireface, which adapts the eternal topic of the contrast between children and parents from the point of view of the “mean ones”. The initial state of the play is clear and easy: the teenager siblings hate their parents, who are thought to be empty-headed, detest their life, their lifestyle, everything, which could be value once for the mother and the father, are strange for them. They try to stay down in their closed world, only two of them alone, to live through unwillingly their own drama of growing up by looking and bursting out from there, to look at the world which they are unable to accept and which will not accept them too.

They form their own separate world, and then they find the only acceptable, murderous possibility of the final denial.

The fire can destroy everything. The present, the past and of course the future too. For von Mayenburg’s heroes there may not be future. They were not born for it, they did not live their strange, modest life with bated sigh for it. They do not simply deny the parents’ life, behaviour but their own too.

Marius von Mayenburg’s scene sequence is a tough drama, which was presented in the Radnóti Theatre with Erzsébet Rácz’s accurately sensitive translation. The surrounding of the cruel, bitter game, which comes from the wallpapers of the apparent family idyll, the scenery of the changing scenes, were designed by Maria Ambrus, the characteristic wears were made by Mari Benedek. The director, Sándor Zsótér, creates the order of the game, true to himself. The importance of it is the hate, the aversion, the exact performance of murder, and to push back the performance to its simple level, which is free from affectation and frills, in that way the play can show objectively and thoroughly all of those that were illustrated in the drama by the writer. Zsótér builds his actor leading on simplicity and bare mediation. There are no unnecessary feelings, overacting; only those that can be shown of people, the passion which is Mayerburg’s heroes’ essence.

The actors of Fireface – Tibor Szervét, the dad, Andrea Moldvai Kiss, the mother, Gabi Gubás and the college student, Dániel Dobó the siblings and Gábor Kocsó in the role of Paul- follow precisely their director, who shows the empire of ugliness freely and authentically.

The college student, Zoltán Balázs’s screenplay, which was born from the Portuguese poet’s, Fernando Pessoa’s works, titled: The ancient anxiety, guides us to the world of soul. The stage adapter invites us for an imaginary journey to the broken sense. With his game as he indicates it, he tries, and thanks to his talent, he can fulfil his concept too, to present this barely known, said to be schizophrenic poet’s thoughts, ideas, mood, images about soul and people. To tell all he wants performed with the dramatic language of “comprehensive artwork”.

In the small studio of Merlin Theatre, which accepts the performance, fine arts and music, dance, movement and poetry are expressed simultaneously. All of them are given the same stress, their unity and coexistence give the completeness of the game, in which there are the flow of life, the fear of death, the agitation and the peace, unsettling passion and the calm clarity, the man on his own, on his thoughts, soul.

There is the man as he is watching himself in the mirror, as the light is shining back on his glasses, and on it himself too, as he glimpses himself in his strange shred, thinks that recognises his face, his shape as all those memories are emerging that define his road, his fate.

Following Pessoa, the performance shows the group of the Fire (István Kelemen), of the Sky (Angela Császár), of the Earth (Eszter Vörös),of the Water (Tamás Presits) as the determining elements of the Ego. He words his poetry, the desires, the wishes, the fear of passing away, and the recognition that the end is unavoidable, returning back to the Eternal mother (Katalin Hegedűs Gönczy). Judit Gombár’s set and costumes which are fulfilled in colours and characterised by the expressiveness of nuances, create the enchanting, artistic surrounding and lyrical grotesque mood of the game. András Szőllősi’s choreography with the usage of dance and moving helps to demonstrate on stage the drama of anxiety.

“Everything is theatre” – says Fernando Pessoa and Zoltán Balázs’s hero. He also adds to it: “This is theatre too.” That is true.

Katalin Róna, Magyar Nemzet,1999

(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)

Zoltán Balázs’s play, titled: This Ancient Anxiety, which was written after the schizophrenic Portuguese poet’s, Fernando Pessoa’s works, was shown in the studio of Merlin Theatre, yesterday evening.

What would have been, if...? – we ask this useless question many times from ourselves, because we feel, if we can turn back time till the questioned moment, we could have decided differently too. Zoltán Balázs through Fernando Pessoa’s quasi-personality gives words to the diversity and eventuality of decisions and thoughts of our identity and different roots with pirrandelic logic and consistency. The most dominated element of the poet’s identity – maybe of all of us – the Fire (István Kelemen) as the right of final wish asks for shelter in the silence of the family house. Before his death he would like to live once again the life which he has always questioned to himself, brought inside thanks for his three other personalities, the Air (Angéla Császár), the Water (Tamás Presists)and the Earth (Eszter Vörös), but he has never lived it through. As the Fire is returning back to his roots, to the Foremother (Katalin Hegedűs Gönczy) meeting the other three identities of his consciousness to form a unit with them and defeat the impossible, the passing away.

All the dreamt and half-dreamt moments of Pessoa’s past before the Fire run down on the stage to prove that the identities living inside him form a perfect unit, as for example the four seasons. The subconscious instincts with different will and strength become a conscious thought in that way to rule the people’s ancient, innate anguish.

Passions, repressed desires, angers, temperance appear on stage; the common sense and feelings fight with each other, while the performance hits us right on the head; we can decide anyway, passion or common sense can rule inside us, we cannot run away of death. The whole is just a symbol. A mirror, “the creator of which poisoned the human soul”- as the play sums it up.

Zoltán Balázs’s energetic, fresh play and direction too combines entertainingly the languages of fine art, music and dance. Judit Gombár’s set and costumes, András Szőllősi’s choreography, music by Chopin, Piazzola, Kabalevszky and Amadinda with Katalin Hegedűs Gönczy’s interpretation form organic unit, as the four elements do it, they serve the play as the performance serves Pessoa – the Fire’s unable but fulfilled desire.

Tímea Farkas, Napi Magyarország, 1999

(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)

On metal frames with sharp risen auditorium, which is similar to the one Judit Gombár designed into the middle of the Bárka Theatre, they keep cockfights in Dominica and here they perform Jean Genet’s clown joke-like play, The Blacks. The play is 40 years old, the juvenile delinquent, the pick pocketer, pederast prostitute, jailbird author wrote it at the age of 50. They started playing it at midnight. Genet marked his play as a clown joke. Zoltán Balázs with double meaning refers to it as a black mass. The original premier was in Paris and acted by black skinned actors of the Les Griots troupe. In the Bárka Theatre now the Gypsy actors of Maladype have become the blacks.

The play is not about the question of the blacks. “We are those you want to see us to be, and in an absurd way we will remain the same till the end.” In the lace net of the text the obscenities are the knots. Besides the suffers of the outcasts and stigmatized the dialectic of attraction and push, love and revenge, the desire of act and sexuality is much more emphasized, where the pollution is the creating and the creation is the sexual fulfilment. And the death too. The scenery is very ornamented. It is the theatre of a poet. It does not fight for acceptance. It is provocative. It is rough. It is brave and wild. The wild men speak sophisticatedly. The Black is the death like a clown joke in a circus. It is brutality with Racine’s sophistication. It is a Pirandello-like drama with restrictions: it is like the Midsummer Night’s Dream or together with “play within play” by Corneille in Illusion comique. Everything is different from what it seems to be. But the illusions are real. Stench is mixed with taint. In 1967 Károly Kazimir asked for the performing rights of The Blacks. Genet denied it. He insisted to black actors. Fortunately.

Zoltán Balázs changed the reflector in Genet’s mirror game. Here the Gypsies play as the whites put on themselves Gypsy masks. In Genet’s outrageous theatre which centre is the penis, the audience can meet the prejudices against the Gypsies. The dialect of hate and love works. The Gypsies in the performance stand in for the Blacks. Everything is doubled, tripled and multiplied in the arena.

Éva Bakos (Snowflake) mouth her lines with the mannered gestures of the success oriented soprano opera singer, with plastic excitement, while her voice is given by the singer, by Beatrix Fodor in black cowl. The charmed enchanting magician, Lázsló Sáry composed an independent opera from Genet instead of a background music. It is a ceremonial mass with rich musical jokes. The one-man orchestra is Kornél Mogyoró with well-known and unrecognisable percussion instruments. Kamilla Fátyol’s Queen with mouldy eyelashes gets her voice from Zoltán Gavodi’s contra tenor. Gavodi gives voice at the same time to Bobo by Judit Réka Kiss.

Erzsébet Soltész (Felicitas) is a great actor and her silence is very meaningful. She looks from above to the earth like an Empress. From her face we can read the passions which are inside. When the gitana in her black lace sounds on Szabolcs Hámori’s flexible bass, that instead of Gyula Tellér’s perfectly working Hungarian text, gives sound to the Gypsy translation by Gyula Vámosi: the stage insanity that cheats our eyes, ears and senses is ready.

The bon vivant by Balázs Dévai (the Village) and László Böröcz’ tenor voice merge. He sings with voiceless movements of his mouth. Böröcz like the cooing one of the Japanese theatre gives the actor’s speaking soul in black, invisibly. The beautiful Nóra Parti (Virtue) gets her alto voice from Apollónia Szolnoki. She sings the text of the comedic, grotesque Missionary, who is performed by János Balog. The Valet by Kristóf Horváth can be heard on Beatrix Fodor’s soprano voice. The Governor, Zoltán Oláh with his strong personality uses Szabolcs Hámori’s bass voice. Rodrigó Balog’s missed Judge gets László Böröcz’s tenor. (The coaches of the singers and the silent prose actors are Bánk Sáry and Dániel Dinyés. They have formed the ear-cheating soundings.)

There are fans in hands. Their nuanced flutter, closure tell us processes and describe. Hermina Fátyol reflects eroticism like optical lens that focused the desires. In the two opposite gates of the auditorium Nóra Csizmadia and Dávid Csányi run during the two and quarter of an hour in the same rhythm, in the same place, dynamically into the unreachable infinite. The over composed systems of movements were composed by András Szőllősi to his assistant, with Ildikó Lavro-Gyenes’ the training. The singing merge together with the rattle, spittle and movements and with Gombár’s rococo, wigged, transparent, suit-like, cheeky dresses, which mix the Spanish, French, tribe-like and Haiti culture.

Artúr Kálid (as the town of Saint Nazare) has magic power. He is walking around on the overhead podium as a shaman planet. Kálid has a magical solo scene, when the masculine actor with the French ballet-like pose of his right wrist turns into a female victim. Then covered with red clothes, with many skirts on him he is turning around on the top of the coffin like a shaman. Here the different elements of the performance are changing one another. The music is dancing, the dance is making rhythms, the actors are the sets, and the giant construction of the set plays that it is identical with the universe.

In the dome the hanged Nóra Parti is flying. Is she a vision or reality? The audience can watch the final like a dream caused by drugs, where the ceremony gets a logical, modern political sign: the subordinates and tyrants change their costumes. They change their places. The changing of power does not bring anything new. The tyrants are interchangeable. The anguish of human remains forever.

The two hours long performance in Bárka Theatre gets wild, it is an adult infantilism. Nobody can understand the performance, but it is a theatrical wonder. Do we have to understand the theatre when it cannot be? Trying to get closer to the unexplainable with thoughts: we do not know why some are keen on something, which makes the others run away. We would like to understand art forcedly. Because of the attacks towards us we try to keep our common sense, because we are coward to face up with it. We send the unsettled confusion to the sense to check it.

"Poetry is the only place where we can do what we want” – Archibald Absolon Wellington the master of ceremony tells it in the play (who is signed with three stars on the program, but who is performed by the director who is sitting between the viewers). "We play so that we have something to be reflected in, then we can see as our water surface absorbs us, like a big black daffodil."

Péter Gál Molnár, Népszabadság, 2004

(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)

The “black” fierce instincts, wild desires, brutal sexuality, dark religious thoughts, frightening superstitions. The “black” isolation, loss and humiliation. The “black” – overwhelming power, the “black” is also the fear of the suppressed ones and the servants’ sneaky bended heads too. On Jean Genet’s „black mass” the „blacks” during a bizarre ceremony kill the emblematic heroes of the “pale” civilization – the Queen, the Governor, the Judge, the Missionary, and the Valet. They demolish the earlier colonizers’ empty imperium with an analogical magic, so they remove the leftover debris of the white people’s culture. Before they would kill symbolically the “saints” of colonization, the black actors perform a strange rite in front of the “Court”. They replay the killing of the white woman. The victim is laying in the middle of the stage in a closed coffin. Meanwhile the “Court” is “black” too – the “black” actors hidden behind their pale masks play their warders with mischievous irony. “In Genet’s plays all characters have to play the roles of those characters, who are playing roles too” - Jean-Paul Sartre wrote it. On a third level, in the background the “real” happening is going on. The coffin is empty, the execution of the “Court” is a stylised act – claps – the real aim of the troupe’s play is to take the audience’s attention of the “black” rebellion’s court case. Behind the scenes they sentence to death and execute the traitor leader. Meanwhile the descendant has arrived, who carries on the actions and brings to win the uncompromising troop. This would be the realistic scene but it is not more than another surface of a mirror, the mirror of the anaemic theatre of illusions. „The theatre can become into the comedy of its own one, into the reflection of the reflection of its own, the performance of which can become a very special ceremony” – Jean Genet wrote it. The writer wrote his play to a black troupe, because he did not see any sense of it, he forbids its performance by white actors. In 1959 in the year of the premier the Algerian war was going on, some years later, in 1962 many former French colonies in Africa became independent. Can The Blacks be valid without any “blacks”? Can Genet’s cruel artistry be exciting, if the involvement and environment of the social history do not fire up the Mannerist riot?

Zoltán Balázs’ theatrical vision is as deeply philosophical, stunningly created, beautifully artificial, and cruelly true as Genet’s pathological ceremonial theatre. The director with the complicated actions of adequacies, differences, fine movements, radical turnings created a coherent, authentic Genet performance. In the Bárka Theatre Gypsy – or painted Gypsy – actors form the “Court”. The darkness of their mask-like painted skin is highlighted by the blinding wig, the shining snow-white lipstick on their mouth and the wonderful milk-white silk costume: they want to be similar to “white people”. Non-Gypsy actors play the “blacks” in similarly luxurious and frilly, but night-black costumes, in similarly ornamented, decorated, but dark wigs. (Judit Gombár designed the set and costumes.) „Black” („Gypsy”) and „white” actors play „black” and „white” people, everybody plays the others. They are barely different they are just the opposites. “To be Gypsy” sign is a metaphor, the “white skin” sign is a metaphor. In Genet’s theatre the individualities are complicatedly created system of signs. The cast makes clear one of the most important sentences of Genet’s world: The personality is nothing else just a mask, which the thoughts of world, prejudices put on people’s faces. The personality is a definition. It makes somebody “white” or “black, killer or judge, courtesan or missionary, African magician or power-sick governor.

One great invention of the performance indicates the connection of the opposite-like role-pairs. The antagonists have the same voices. Against the symbolic heroes of the “Court” there is the black pantheon. The Village, the killer who does the sacrifice is played by Balázs Dévai, his voice is László Böröcz’ tenor, and he is the white “Judge”, Rodrigó Balog’s voice too. Nóra Parti plays the Virtue, the “black killer”, courtesan muse of the Village, and we can hear her on Apollónia Szolnoki’s alto voice, as well as János Balog, who is the Missionary. Bobo, the bitter old lady, the monk sister of the hate, is Judit Réka Kiss, her voice is Zoltán Gavodi’s contra tenor, who also sings the role of the thin, decent Queen too. The womanish Snowflake, Éva Bakos sounds on Beatrix Fodor’s soprano, as well as the strongly feminine, maybe homosexual Valet does too. Finally, Erzsébet Soltész, the witch lady of the “tribe”, Felicitas, the ancestress uses Szabolcs Hámori’s bass voice, which belongs to the “black eater” Governor too. The correspondence of some sounds makes the abstract thoughts into strong sensual experience: these life-roles are essentially the same. Felicitas, the quack woman’s influence and endless hate have the same root with the Governor’s military power and disgust. The different phenomenon merge into each other, the male and female principium turn into each other, the boundaries of personality get into the fog – Genet’s theatrical alchemy has got an equivalent theatrical form.

The actors mouth László Sáry’s a capella opera, the sounds of it is sung by singers, who are hidden in monk dresses. It is a genius idea – the melismatic recitatives, the Gregorian like singing speech can bring obviously that elevated style, which the play-writer thought to find in the century old playing style of the Comédie Française. Genet thought to state his discursively wild, roughly outspoken and ordinary, but elevated poetic lines with the help of this timeless, outdated, declaiming style. Instead of the Comédie-style, it is an opera. In László Sáry’s work the understanding of the text is the most important one, that is why he composed simple, perfectly prosodic, very expressive tunes. All words can be understood. The bluster of the lava of words, which comes up from the deep lines of subconscious, the weariness of the most created form can slow down. The cruel anger that breaks taboos can be seen only when it gets against the cold form. This explosive balance is very typical for the performance of Maladype. The devastating chaos of the world of instincts shows itself in a grandiose cold form.

The actors and singers’ self-control is impressive, as they adjust their very punctually fixed gestures to the singing voices and back. The singers do not act – they live their roles. What a wonderful paradox! Their presence is much more direct, “natural”, than case of the actors. It is very exciting, as all actions, emotions, states appear through the actors’ very stylised acts and the singers’ modest, mostly involuntary gestures. They have set a new mirror into Genet’s endless system of mirror.

Mostly in one place, with fixed legs “the whites” and “the blacks” are standing opposite to each other. There are fans in their hands, their movements are the perfectly formed conventional signs of a never existed traditional theatre. The white fan, which the Governor spins as a revolver, and the Virtue, courtesan’s black fan, which is turning with greatness, are drawing the perfect garlands of an ancient theatrical culture into the air. The action is not the demonstration of the small flutters or the small unique tricks of individuality as it is usually in European theatres. They represent the role concentrates of Genet’s fantasy world, of a poetic mythology that widens into a universe. In this extreme holding out we can realise the real nature of phenomenon. We can hardly watch a more sensual theatre, where bodies mean themselves. Bobo elderly body climbs on the young man, the Missionary’s graceful-sad femininity, the Virtue’s womanish charm, the Village’s flexible male-beauty can stand in for themselves without any fear – they can become their own symbols. The sensuality of the old and the young, the robust and the graceful, the ugly and the beautiful can be reached only that way, leaving the individual accidentally things behind. It is an imposing contradiction – it is a sensual stylization, it is a lush elevation!

The Village has to experience it again, he has to play the killing again, to let the sacrificial rite bring the community together, to let the new religion give power to the “blacks”. The turn of victorious wickedness and invulnerable indifference to be able to get rid of the empty myth that proclaims the cruelty of their captors. The image of goodness can weaken the rebellions; the pity can unsettle the priests of destruction. The Virtue courtesan is on the bier, over the imagined dead body – later the coffin turns out to be empty – she has sex with the Village, to give power to the man. The act is similar to an exorcism – the Virtue can chase out the demon of goodness of the coward Village. I have hardly ever seen a more widely erotic scene than this strictly choreographed dark wedding, however the sounds of the two actors are sitting there in hoodies next to them on the bier.

The sacrifice of Diuf / the Town of Saint-Nazaire, the white woman is a pansexual ceremony. Two actors play the combined role. The characters of Diuf, who proclaims the rule of love, so she is against the killing and of the Town of Saint-Nazaire, who is the radical rebellion, and he is the one who talks about the killing of the traitor, are combined into one. Saint-Nazaire Artúr Kálid is shaved bald, in his long grey coat he is similar to a noble dervish, Hermina Fátyol in her grey dress, with her tiny bones is similar to a fragile nun. The principle of a man and a woman are melt together, turn into each other. Anyway, Hermina Fátyol does not indicate the killed white woman. Diuf’s turn into a woman is a perfect metamorphosis. The muscular, actor in loincloth is a royal vision, the “black ladies” put red clothes on him, like a skirt, and they humble him to a woman. Meanwhile they are singing the most expressive song of the opera: the coral, that curses the “pale skin tone”. There are red clothes on his face and red shoes on his foot. During the flamenco the shoes are knocking on ear-slitting way. The pace is getting faster, the dance is more and more reckless. (Choreography by: András Szőllősi). In front of us Diuf turns into a woman and a victim, to make the Village possible to humiliate and stab her while she is similar to a dancing toreador in her ecstasy. The Spanish dance, the bullfighting and the “black” incantation (Felicitas, the quack lady’s texts are translated into Gypsy) bring into the performance the very erotic, loosening and blossoming, foamingly baroque and frighteningly atavistic atmosphere of the colonial South-America. The visual solutions of the performance is similar to the laud and orgiastic religious ceremonies on the Spanish colonies, where the local superstitious can recognise themselves in the Catholic rites. The theatrical orgy follows the orgy of thoughts and believes.

The ecstatic pulsation of the primitive rites – they have always impressed Genet – and the “cannibalistic” catholic liturgy are connected. (The opera is followed by Kornél Mogyoró, who plays percussion instruments.) The monks do not sing by accident, who get into the high formation of the rite. They sometimes sit among us, sometimes stand on the upper floor of the arena in a circle, and sometimes follow their master like shadows. They imitate the frightening atmosphere of the monastery of this bizarre order by their racing steps and modesty. Diuf lets his drops of sweat from his forehead into the mouth of the communicants – here is his blood. The black wafer of the new religion – the brown chocolate is the snow-white wafer of the “whites” – it is white chocolate. They take communion that way that they get it. They present the extraordinary blasphemous humour with gloomy dignity. The theatre is about the changing of characters, it is the area of transformation as the quoted ceremonies too. The final ceremony is the performance itself. The master of the ceremony is the director. Zoltán Balázs is sitting in his civil clothes on the auditorium, and says his commands into a microphone. He keeps order: he brings up, suppresses and guides mad energies. He calls consequently with pride the performance as a “ceremony”. His determination is reflected in all moments, this whole captivating construction. His concentration is multiplied by the actors.

The continuation of the performance becomes unnecessary, as the traitor has already been killed. There is real blood – “black blood”. Meanwhile the mass has to be finished. The over-fined – “paleness” – the Queen and the “black” magician woman get against each other, the two cultures fight. They get naked. On the bier the Queen who states the superiority of European culture and the old lady who tells Gypsy magic words, change their colours. They turn out their dresses, they change their colour that way – the black turns into white, and the white turns into black. The colour of black could not win: with its victory it turns into white. According to Genet’s pessimistic vision of world, the victory is a stormy transformation into the hated oppressor. The battle of cultures is a circulation; it is the beginning of a new cycle. Now it is the turn of the “white”: exile, loss and humiliation.

Balázs Perényi, Színház, 2004

(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)

Who watches the performance, The Blacks can get into the most complicated and most mysterious maze of the theatrical season. We can take place in the ceremonial remembering of the killing of a white woman together with the troupe, the purification that happens there is grandiose experience even if we get lost in the layers of the chaotical role-identities of the actors.

The premiere of The Blacks by Genet in Hungary was directed by Zoltán Balázs, and he asked László Sáry to compose an opera from it. He left the college two years ago, where he was called as Little-Zsótér, and he has got the award of the best European young director. He is a suggestive man, he is crouching all through the performance at the edge of the circular stage which is surrounded by the auditorium and he commands from there this complex ceremony.

„Black mass” is written on the program but what does it mean? Is it a parody of mass or an orgy? There will be both of them and even more: it is a ceremonial theatre which comes from a trivial rite, philosophical, extraordinary artistic, and sensual too and it is a modern opera. I have not got enough place to write down all the turns, layers of the performance, so I just try to follow the layers of the role-identities which are acted by the characters. Zoltán Balázs forms the identities of the characters with the help of a complicated costume putting on them, which has many layers. As we are trying to peal these layers of them we are getting more and more uncertain: who is that one, who is standing in front of us finally.

Genet, the writer of the play got inspiration from a rite of Ghanaian sect, who mocked the white imperialists, and they imitated one of their ceremony, then on the peak of it they killed a dog. In Genet’s play everybody is black, only some of them play the white conquerors: the Queen, the Judge, the Valet, the Missionary and the Governor. On the stage the blacks and the blacks who imitate the whites are standing against each other. Their ceremony is based on the tale in which the blacks kill a white woman, and because of it the whites kill a black one. The Village (Balázs Dévai) acts the killer again and again, and with his act he tries to connect the community and distracts the attention of an executed black revolutionist in the background.

They are standing opposite to one another: the blacks and the blacks who act the whites. Meanwhile only the blacks’ dresses are black, those blacks who are painted white, in their white wigs, in white dresses are Gypsies in reality or (under the white painting) they are masked to them. Even their voices are not real, they mouth silently. Opera singers give their voices, who are sitting around them in black monk’s robes. That makes the actors’ mimics and gestures grandiose, affected and overstressed, it comes from the forced situation of their silence and they have to live up to the full performances by the opera singers.

Follow me on reader, the road is still long. The opera singers always give their voices not to one but two actors. To a „white” and a „black” one: to connect those two, which have been separated by the world. The ritual killer of the „blacks” the Village (Balázs Dévai) has a tenor voice which belongs to László Böröcz to the Judge of the „whites” (Rodrigó Balog) too. The Virtue (Nóra Parti) is a „black” prostitute, she uses Apollónia Szolnoki’s alto as the „white” Missionary (János Balog) does too. A man and a woman use the same voice. The costumes of the „blacks” are Spanish flamenco dresses, the dresses of the „whites” are different only because of their colour, while the two actors who play the killed white woman the Town of Saint Nazare (Artúr Kálid) and the gentle Diuf (Hermina Fátyol) are in grey.

In the whirl of roles Artúr Kálid’s strong male body turns into the killed white woman with the help of many layers of red scarves. His seven veils dance on the glorious zenith of the performance is graceful and concentrated, lush, wild and noble, impressive and fragile. In his Flamenco-shoes, he demonstrates ecstatically, that the soul cannot be defined by colours, it is not a man or a woman, but it is limitless and blindingly colourful.

Hédi Helmeczi, Kontextus.hu, 2004

(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)

In multiple voices Jean Genet: The Blacks, Bárka Theatre, Black and White puzzle

Zoltán Balázs has created a gigantic puzzle into the middle of the Fencing Hall of Bárka Theatre. The organically connected elements of the puzzle of arts are the text, the sight, the movements and the music – they are all punctually designed and thought over by sharp logic. There are not any accidents, coincidences, empty places. Instead of them there are mental constructions which are hard to understand for the first time and amazing theatrical experience for those who are willing to immerse into those which are around during this evening, they can get into that “beautiful and new world”,, which is created by the director and his partners.

The music is not a parasite ornament on the text: László Sáry has rewritten the shortened outlines of

the text, which has remained from Gyula Tellér’s translation into an opera which has many musical

jokes in it. (dramaturg: Judit Góczán). The “new” Blacks – it gives the base and supports the vision of the director – is thinner, thicker and more direct than the original one was. The one-man orchestra that uses percussion instruments consists of Kornél Mogyoró and he is the conductor too. Between the actors and the “orchestra” the director puts another filter: the group of perfect young opera singers, who (László Böröcz, Beatrix Fodor, Zoltán Gavodi, Szabolcs Hámori, Apollónia Szolnoki) give sound to the actors’ mouthed majestic and vulgar, sometimes Hungarian, sometimes Gypsy texts. The singers first glide as shadows from one character to the other one, covered with black cowls, than later they become active members of the play. From these we can see, that it is not a usual performance at all: The Blacks in Bárka Theatre is a vision of arts, and an exceptional immersion and concentration are needed to perform and accept it. The sight which is made by impressive effects sometimes takes attention away from the message which is not superficial at all. It cannot be said to be a mistake, as the continuity, consistency and the concentration which are there in every moments of the performance, help our attention to get back again and again to the sight and the text.

The area has multiple meaning and works with a few sign. Judit Gombár’s set resembles the arena of

Rome and the circus stage of nowadays. The slippery auditorium is a circular metal installation which can connect and collect necessarily the viewers and the actors. The Fencing Hall of the Bárka Theatre was “the world of emptiness” during Zoltán Balázs’ previous direction here, in the Theomachia. There the scene rhymed with the cosmical emptiness of the play – now the director concentrates all energy into the middle of the area. He takes care not to break the magical circle too: both entrances of the occasional auditorium are closed by “in place” runner actors, by the Runner Virtue (Nóra Csizmadia) and the Runner Village (Dávid Csányi), when everybody takes their places. Wherever we sit we can sense by our peripherical view their presence: their two hours long marathon give beat and rhythm to the performance, they follow by their steps each other and the actions on the stage too and according to the actions they are getting slower and faster like the heartbeat. The area helps the concentration and understanding too. The viewers are sitting on planks on the three floors of the circular metal scaffold. In front of them there is the bier which holds (does not) the killed women’s body, above our heads “on its Earth Orbit” Artúr Kálid, as the Town of Saint Nazaire is moving for a long time.

On the opposite points of the circle the black platforms of the auditorium is going on in white, here are standing mostly the main characters of the performance. Their places are given by their skin tone, so by their black and white dresses, which are Spanish and Caribbean like, nicely chiselled and half translucent, designed by Judit Gombár. Zoltán Balázs leaves the traditional western directional act, which puts the whites above in the area so into a privileged position from the beginning, and keeps the blacks on the level of the earth, like subordinated ones. In his direction the blacks and the whites are on the same level (above the viewers!) and they are each other’s negative reflections. They are identical with themselves and with each other too – and they are not. Ahead of each group there is a woman: opposite the active Queen (Kamilla Fátyol) there is the silent woman, Felicitas (Erzsébet Soltész). On the side of the blacks except the Village (Balázs Dévai) there are only women, on the other side there are only men, so the genders reflect each other. (During the performance the man power of the Village gets emphasized and active role many times. His reflection is the Queen’s valet [Kristóf Horváth], who is a man, but feminine-like and dandy – his singing voice is soprano too.)

One of the buttress of the directorial conception is the three dimensional creation of the hierarchical relations of the text by Genet, to make it concrete. The lessons which come from this solution are valid all over the performance. Among these the most important one the viewers cannot accept the scenes as in the case of the traditional performances (All these are in connection with the given genre by the writer [clownerie, so clown joke, fooling]: as in the case of Zoltán Balázs’ “black mass”, here the appearance of the viewers and their more or less active participations are important part of the performance.) The whole alienation is impossible, when the ringmaster is played by the director, Archibald talks to us many times, gets us into the play and comments on our situations now and in general. (“You are white. And viewers”). With his remarks, which are told on middle voice, makes us – and the actors! – accept that everything we see they are “just games”. Many times tells us that what is the right behaviour in connection with the things we can see (other times he does not let us lean back peacefully and enjoy the actions; he intervenes impatiently the “Litany of the pales”, the scene which is performed as an obscene dance by Bobo [Réka Judit Kiss] and Snowflakes [Éva Bakos], he thanks the contributors’ efforts, and turns us from this interaction back to the original topic of the performance. However, we would like to be keen on the “silly exotic things”, the director does not let us indulge in this illusion.)

Besides these well-known gestures he leads us to a “more emotional” interpretation; I think about the relationship of the Village and the Virtue which becomes very important in the final too. The details of their relation are not told by their staccato, restless, circularly built words, during their scenes we can feel that the performance “let us closer” (especially in the case of the end: when the actors taking off their wigs, sitting around the bier. The Running Village and the Running Virtue finally reach each other, their goal. Genet himself “offers” in his author guidelines to the future director that the Village and the Virtue would leave their reserved and polite behaviour during the rite and in the end of the performance “show themselves human like beings, who honestly love each other.”) So in spite of our first impression we do not watch a sterile, for us ununderstandable ritual theatre which works with symbols, but an extremely powerful, total theatre which effects our senses, thoughts and feelings too.

To be able to understand the basic message of the hardly accepted performance, we should remember one of the leading members of the anti-colonial movement, the half-breed psychoanalyst who got away from Martinique, Frantz Fanon’s patient’s story. In the Peau noire, masques blancs (Black skin, white masks) which was published in 1952, Fanon talked about the reasons of colonization and the process how the conqueror whites cancelled the subject of the subordinate blacks, depraving them into objects and pushing them into nothing. He tells us that he has known a black medical student, who believes deeply that he has not been handled on his own right – he referred not to his studies but to his human values. This idea became his obsession and he became more and more sure that neither his European patients nor his colleagues would take him seriously. When he became paramedic in the army he had one wish: he did not want to work on the colonies. His biggest dream was to have some whites who were working under him: he wanted to be their commander, who they honoured and they were afraid of him. According to the explanation of Fanon the doctor wanted to take revenge on those who “created” the imago which always tortured him, the image of the intimidated and trembling black person who had to come to heel in front of his white commander.

The story has more than mental lessons. It reveals that the black and the white, the other way: I and the other one cannot exist without each other, the two suppose and complete one another. If it is that way than the edges of their role become transparent, the irreconcilable-like opposition get eased by the changing (it is like the facts about the reflections). Zoltán Balázs’ vision of Genet carries this idea up until the end. In his circus the blacks imitate as they would be according to the stereotypes of the whites, the embodied blacks. On the other side those whites are standing, who has the same stereotyped idea about the blacks, as the later ones would think about it. Among the two sides the interdependence is hardly fateful like, but the real understanding and trust is missing, so that way any of them get into a leader position his aim will be the sudden subjection and destruction of the other one. It is proved by the scene when the two sides change places during the performance: the sudden incomprehension from the whites’ faces disappear soon when they realise that nothing has changed. The possibilities of the mirrors and reflections which have begun in Genet’s text are used perfectly by the performance, and that way it makes us impossible create an obvious value judgement, and separates itself from any didactic final conclusion of the topic.

What kind of prejudices are we talking about? The Court (and the Judgement who is searching for the responsible of the killing of a white woman) is played by the whites – they have all the power and all the legal and illegal tools of suppression. Not only their movements are similar to the movements of marionettes, but their mentality is without any individuality. We cannot take them too seriously: they could not get their present position by their brain and competence, the aristocratic position is because of their skin tone. Their petty and selfish plays are well symbolised by the opening scene, where their argument resembles the seven elves in connection with the missing “tiny chair” and “tiny bed”. The over active and always interrupting Queen cannot understand the actions around her, so she has to rely on the other members of the Court, on the Judge (Rodrigó Balog), on the Valet, the Missionary (János Balog) and on the Governor (Zoltán Oláh). The later ones are the protectors of the interests not only of the Queen, but of course of the whole Court and of the Empire too. According to them the blacks are not human beings, they are some kind of weird insects, who besides the sudden fulfilment of their biological and sexual interests cannot do any clever actions. The courtiers are trying to force the action, but they are the biggest barrier of the progress; they many times stop and slow down the actions with their incompetent interrupts. (Must be added that in those literary texts which were written from the point of view of the colonizers the blacks are handled like a black mass without face, name, to emphasize that way too their wide, uncivilized, non-individual existence. In Genet’s play it turns upside down; the blacks get – symbolical-allegorical-magical but at least individual – names, and the whites form a group of uniform, hardly separable members.) The picture of the blacks is not better anyway. According to the whites’ words and the blacks’ own acts their figures are rude, impolite, instinctive beings. Nobody was surprised by the fact that the white woman was killed by a black man; the motives of the action are less obvious. According to the black Bobo, the Village was in love with the woman (the instincts again!), according to the whites he hated because of her colour (would it be the reflection of their own desires?). When the black women retch because of the smell of the dead white woman (“it is very different of ours’”), and they start smoking because of it, the whites are immediately thinking about some kind of tribal rite, and they accuse them with cannibalism.

The peak and most memorable scene of the performance is the repetition of the killing. In Theomachia Zoltán Balázs put the most variable and distant elements of the cultural inheritance of mankind next to each other from the Hungarian folk songs, through the baroque contra tenor arias to the Eastern martial and theatrical arts. The different, well-known signs with their overall effect were astonishing and thought provoking: the constellations offered new possibilities of interpretation. In case of The Blacks the idea of concentration, which can be understood from the formation of the area, can be found during the interpretation of the play too: the costumes, which have been mentioned, the almost combative makeups, the “solo plays” which are performed by the fans, the Village and the others’ reactions which are full of emotions and followed by angry gestures, are pointing towards the same direction, towards a group with Mediterranean atmosphere, and southern mentality. During the reconstruction of the killing the podium of the circus turns into suddenly the arena of bullfighting. Diuf because of Felicitas, has to play the role of the deputy victim. The black women tight a skirt from red scarves on Diuf (who is acted by Artúr Kálid that time) who dances a fiery flamenco on his own bier. Diuf with her lecherous dance teases the Village who is breathing and stomping like a bull, and when he almost jumps on his “victim” the story stops again. It is similar to be frozen in case of photo taking, at the moment of exposure, and we can think it over again, whether we would like to see these and that way on the photo, as we have expected it. After the intermezzo at the moment of killing we get into total darkness, during it, happens the changing of place between the Court and the blacks as we have mentioned it. The “dead” Diuf (who is played by Hermina Fátyol that time) is talking to us from heaven after it. The characters accept confused everything that try to move their view of world, which was built on exclusive polarities. From the celestial sphere we can her Diuf’ sentences that cancel harmful Manichaean logic: “First of all I must tell you: they whether lie or do not know it right. Because they are not white, at all, but they are pinkish...”

It is hard to emphasize any actor in case of a performance where the most important element is the continuous interdependency between the characters, the absolute trust in the other, and the attention of one another which cannot get lower. Meanwhile we cannot leave without any words the most outstanding performances. The Village by Balázs Dévai is the wild, restrained ancient power itself, who can demolish the whole stage with the power of a tornado and then can be unforgettable sensitive and sensual in one of the most beautiful theatrical love scenes of the past few years. During the second one the fragile Nóra Parti, the embodied femininity herself, who acts the Virtue is his perfect partner (“her Hungarian voice” is Apollónia Szolnoki’ wonderful alto). Artúr Kálid as the Town of Saint Nazaire or as the victim, Diuf performs an outstanding suggestive act; hardly anyone can forget who has seen the fire in his eyes. Erzsébet Soltész as lady Felicitas with her authoritative silence that forms an atmosphere all through the performance one of the bests of the night (she can surpass it when on Szabolcs Hámori’s beautiful bass voice starts “singing” a Gypsy text). – she is the perfect counterpoint to Kamilla Fátyol’ non-aristocratic Queen. Éva Bakos and Réka Judit Kiss are perfect couple, but the male members of the Court have memorable moments too. (Kristóf Horváth is excellent again).

Janet Suzman chose a black actor to play the leading role of Othello by Shakespeare in 1987. The director with this decision overwrote the interpretation of the play of more centuries – the interpretations were about the man’s jealousy and the woman’s vulnerability and self-sacrifice, but Suzman instead of these and besides these turned the attention to the racial problems which are in the play. Zoltán Balázs performs the play, which was originally written to black actors, by mostly Gypsy actors, by the member of the Maladype Theatre. The Hungarian audience maybe less sensitive to the existed or once existed problems between the black slaves and white oppressors which can be hurtful to the western viewers. The director can connect interestingly with this idea two topics which are seemingly far away from each other and cease the boarding line between them. He does it with the help of that ritual theatre which has been becoming his brand, which is based on fine arts mostly and musical effects, using the divine and trivial elements at the same time. It is not an ordinary performance and not with ordinary actors and with non-ordinary attention and acceptance, which are required from the viewers.

Tamás Jászay, Criticai Lapok, 2005

(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)

At the beginning we just try to understand it. We lose the safety of our senses. The mouth is moving somewhere else than where the sound is coming from. Somewhere above us, black hooded people are singing. The “blacks” and the “whites” – who are standing opposite to each other on the stairs of a circular arena and measuring each other hostilely – are just mouthing. A black and white silent movie is in front of me from the last decade – I think –, while the area is filled with wonderful singing. My head is buzzing, and I am amazed by the fragmentation of the sound and vision.

The colours of the characters’ clothes and wavy wigs are different, but in reality, all of them are “black” and comedians. The actors of Maladype, the Gypsy theatre - independently from their origin and identity - are blacks in this performance. The production in the Bárka Theatre is a Hungarian premiere: when in 1967 Károly Kazimir asked for the rights of performance Genet did not give it to him. He insisted on performing it by black people. Maybe this solution would satisfy the author too.

"Ladies and gentlemen! You are whites. And you are viewers. Today we are performing for you...” Archibald who is sitting between the viewers introduces the performance – on his own voice - he is performed by Zoltán Balázs, the director of the performance. He speaks to the audience, - to us - and to the community - to the black comedians, who are dressed in white, as they are viewers too, as we are; that is their role tonight.

Archibald introduces the actors. The leader of the ceremony is the director. I remember the School for Fools and Theomachia (previous directions by Zoltán Balázs); the basic problem of both of them was: the relation between the dictator and the community. After Kronos, the cruel ruler of gods and the Curates, and Folial the terrifying master of the fools, Archibald comes, the leader of arts and theatre. Is he a dictator? Priest? Helper? How big is his power? Can he prevent that a new element gets into the ceremony? Many similar moments can be found in the performance – infinite movements, geometry... As we can see the same world forever, but from a different point of view.

It is said that if people are standing on their heads, or looking through the obscure of the camera which can turn the world upside down with the help of a small hole, the brain can get used to it very fast and turns the picture back. I also accept this new situation fast, I can see the actor, and hear the singer, the system is ready.

A dark-haired boy and a blonde girl are opposite to each other, and they are running in place. They move very slowly, synchronised, they do not stop for a moment. Apparently, they do not care about the actions around them – there is a long way in front of them.

The blacks introduce a sacrificial ritual and they replay the killing of a white woman (they put her dead body into the oval, wooden altar-coffin in the middle of the arena), to convince the white viewers, the judge about what they have known so far. That the blacks are: scar-faced, smelly, gluttonous, piggy, white eater and hater of all other colours too, lousy, sweating, burping, spitting, goat lovers, greedy, farting, shining of fat, dripping of sweat...and we can go on with it. They are watching a performance to prove what they have already decided, and to get the rightful, white sentence. That whole comedy is for it. And for what else? Why do they accept it, why do the blacks try to recite to the rights of the whites? “We are those, who they want to see us, and in an absurd way we remain it till the end.”

They hate and provoke each other to hate. Their ceremony is an anticredo. They try to make the dark walls of the night to stiffen, to strengthen their opposition, to give evidence of their cruelty. They are excluded but they want to be hundred and thousand times more excluded.

Felicitas (Erzsébet Soltész), the black queen, she is the dignified representative of an ancient, instinctive, barbarian world. Like an engrossed bird god, she is chewing seeds and after a long, long time she speaks Gypsy language. On Szabolcs Hámori’s bass sound. Snowflake, the grey black woman pushes the ceremony thirsty. Éva Bakos’ restlessness is connected to Beatrix Fodor’s soprano voice. Bodo by Judit Réka Kiss is chubby and greedy, the flapping of her black fan indicates her intensity and determination. The marked place of their ceremony is far away, they have to push their partners that their turn can come, and they can do their obscene-grotesque cancan, that mocks the pale ones.

The Village: Balázs Dévai. He is a flexible, explosive and irritable black “hunter”. Like a furious bull he is beating and blowing. His voice is given by László Böröcz’s tenor. His lover, the Virtue is played by Nóra Parti, who sounds on alto voice. Their love affair is the hunting, it is started as the replaying of the white woman’s ritual killing and ends in a strange, gentle lovemaking through a breakout attempt from the rigid, regulated world, leading by hate. Balázs Dévai’s Village starts running in a place, he rises his knees high up, for moments he shows his unit with his alter ego, with the Village, that running through the performance. He rebels, throws down his “mask”: the beautifully sounding tenor voice, and uses his own. As he leaves at once the order that stiffen the rebellion into hate and the world of the performance too. But the “real world” outside the performance is just an illusion. There is not entrance of the area of the performance. Here everything is just relative. If we go backwards it gives the illusion of the fact that we get others far away.

The world of the performance is closed, geometrical. The characters are bounded by they are reflected into one another. It can be seen well in the scene of the dream play in the heaven. We can see the tripled variation of the Village and the Virtue’s love affair in the same time on the stage. The hooded singers (László Böröcz and Apollónia Szolnoki), who have given voices to the Village and Virtue start playing like freed shadows, they follow like shadows the actors during the bigger part of the performance, but now “they get into life”, they appear in their body – however they have not been hidden so far – that get emphasized here. They get into contact with their counterpart of the “other dimension”: with the body of the Village and Virtue, with the actors who give movements; they variate their movements while they are arguing, The singers and actors are presented together like Village and Virtue. The girl and the boy on the opposite “edges” of the circular stage are running on silently, towards each other, in one place. I know, but I can understand it well in this scene (while they do not change, just run), that they are the possibilities of the Village and Virtue too. They represent the energy and determination with which the two lovers are coming towards each other.

The poetry of love enchants Virtue and Village and together with them the snoring, sleepy white queen too, who together with the Virtue replies to the Village’s love words. But this idyllic unit that turns into itself – which is counterpointed well by the white audience’s mocking malevolence and their parodistic despair – can last only for a moment. The lovers get back their “voices”. The queen wakes up too and shouts for help, as her voice has been stolen.

The whites are grotesque and posing. They are painted, delicately lacy, decorated. Their queen, Kamilla Fátyol grimaces by batting her long eyelashes. Her servant, Kristóf Horváth is erotic and cheeky: he is watching the black performance with exotic interest. The missionary, who uses János Balog’s alto singing voice and Rodrigó Balogh’s tenor judge are more interested in the prices of oil and rubber than any performances by the blacks.

In the gulf that is unbridgeable between the two groups, around the altar-coffin (or above the actors on the highest floor of the arena) Hermina Fátyol’s Diuf and Artúr Kálid’s Saint Nazaire, as the representative of the city of Nazaire are walking around. They are opposites and parallel, they are each other’s “masks”, they talk on the other one’ prose voice. Their gender and identity are uncertain. “And if one part was white and the other was black?”

On the peak of the ceremony Artúr Kálid plays the white woman’s victim character. With red scarf around his waist, he provokes the Village with graceful dancing movements of a woman, who dances wild flamenco, like a roaring bull gets closer to his “loot”. I get confused: do I see an imitation or the replaying is “real killing” too? The moment of fulfilment is covered by blackness. When it gets light again, Hermina Fátyol, the leader of Diuf appears again, like Buddha, floating between the sky and earth – and she reports now as a white, sorry as a pink – woman, in colourful dress about her new (after death?) perspective.

The world of dreams, theatre, visions, games and all moving “reality” go on and on. The action is full of unexpected, imagined turns, while we are watching a ruled, static, closed into arena with metal frame ceremony-performance. The ceremony-like world of theatre which is performed in a stylized area has strict, rigid rules, but they have got away from the logical order of reality. In this absurd, visionary world, which is far away of the reality, why we would look for cause-and-effect relationship? Which was once true and stated could lose its meaning the other moment. The altar-coffin get revealed, there is not any dead body in it, and the box itself does not exist.

Diuf the killer, got pregnant during the ceremony by the Village’s longing, gives birth to a child, they are similar to the characters of the performance, the actors go around the non-existent box in an ancient, wild dance, and they come up like their own counterparts “reborn” from the cradle-altar-coffin thing, and that way they paraphrase and question the story of salvation. The “last” judgement is kept without death and the dead one too. “The black skin tone is not irregular any more. It turns into a crime...”

The roles, because of the geometric, reflection-variation editing method, are exchanged. The two queens stand for the ancient oppositions, the truth of the oppressed and oppressors, and that way they fight their combatant, creepy, heavy dancing-battle. They change their masks, voices on the altar-coffin but it does not change anything, everything remains the same.

Many times it is close to end, then the vision of rite is going on in front of us. It is hard to get out of this enclosed world. The city of Saint Nazaire announces that the sentence has been done, the case is ready, and the fact turns out, that the actors entertain the viewers just not to realise any actions in “reality”. The traitor has been executed. But the new saviour is on his way. His voice will be deep, his colour will be, his colour...

Then the “mountains moves”, the runners in a place is getting closer to one another, and they meet divided from the two parts of the altar-coffin. Panting in an idyllic happiness.

Meanwhile a new Babel is built from the empty phrases of the black and white culture, from the hate, the prejudices, the bodies, the voices. Everybody has worked on it together, it has turned into a stone and has not collapsed yet. The blacks and the whites are singing a weird, canon which text turns the basis of our culture upside down and which has a beautiful sounding on the highest floor of the arena. The beginning humming and dizziness are coming back.

Borbála Sebők, Criticai Lapok, 2005

(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)

With deep sadness we announce that tragically suddenly an opera was born from Jean Genet’ drama, The Blacks. For this occasion, the group of Maladype celebrate a funeral service in the Fencing hall of the Bárka Theatre. During the ceremony, which starts at midnight, they reconstruct a white woman’s ritual abuse and murder in front of the court of the Blacks and Whites.

"If some had decided to watch their own wonderful death, then the funeral symbols have to be selected and arranged strictly carefully. Or they can decide to live it over and investigate the Enemy.” (Jean Genet)

I was afraid of the starting time of the premier at midnight but then saw happily that the further performances are written to 9pm. The only problem was that the performance started 40 minutes later so at the beginning I could tell sensitive goodbye to the idea of the last metro.

Then at 9:40 pm I got into the fencing hall of the Bárka Theatre, which was like an amphitheatre then, where the audience could watch the fight of the blacks and whites.

That way it is not too punctual. There are not blacks and whites here. There are whites on black base, blacks on white base, blackish whites, some are changing colours, some have double colours, so all variations, combinations and permutations of black and white can be seen in the performance.

At the beginning the audience take their seats in the amphitheatre, while the two, opponent groups are about to fight. Their weapon is their fan, which is a shield, a knife, an orchestra and to my biggest surprise it is a fan too. Zoltán Balázs takes care to form the perfect opposites: one side can be seen with black skin tone in white dresses, the other one is just the opposite. Then instead of all their opposites suddenly they use the same sound. So they do not really tell anything.

They are just mouthing as their sounds are given by the group of young singers, who take their seats at the beginning above the actors, in black cowls on the upper floor of the circular construction, to the members of the two sides. Later they connect actively to the actors. This mouthing solution makes us remember the technology of the old Hungarian opera films, but the mimics and the singer-actor harmony are worked out better now. With this trick the common base of the opponents sides is shown better than any other way, which is used well mostly by the changing of roles, actors, colours and genders.

People can hardly follow the symbolic scales of actions, the two hours require strong concentration and I think it is impossible to understand everything for the first sight / hearing. It can be seen that the performance is well overthought and worked out well, the actors are in the work with the hearth and soul. László Sáry’s music employs besides the voices just a choir of fans and a contributor who gives the effects of the percussion instruments. The composition is minimalist and very effective for the first hearing too, it creates perfectly the tensed, symbolic atmosphere of the performance, which is increased by the actors’ play.

All the five singers sing two characters, they are performing all through the two hours. They deserve all our appreciation: they do their exercise perfectly. I have never heard Beatrix Fodor or Zoltán Gavodi singing so powerfully and beautifully.

What the story is about? Maybe it is not the most important one. The group of white aristocrats force the black servants to show a ritual victim on the basis of ideas that the whites have about the blacks: so they have to kill a white woman deliberately and brutally. But be careful: the colours can be changed easily! The scenes flow inevitably into each other, and it seems to be an aim too. After two hours the performance, which is not simply about the nonsense of racism, as we would think after the program, but it is much more than that.

At the end I do not mind that the last metro has left the station for a while. This evening is worth it for sure.

Á.L., Café Momus, 2004

(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)

That carefulness with which Zoltán Balázs, the director shows us to our seat is conspicuous and he does it one by one in the narrow amphitheatre of the Bárka Theatre. The writer as a white one, wrote his play-ceremony to the whites, which, according to the original instructions, has to be played by black actors.

The ceremony in reality is a grotesque, distracting operation: while we, the viewers are watching the replayed ritual of a white woman’s killing by the fake white ones (in reality they are just wearing white masks), by the court, then the fake lawsuit, by the sentence of the killer, besides the set the real revolution has started. Until we get there the world has turned a lot with us. In Genet’s glass maze we can never be sure that who is the real victim, whether we see the ancient original story or the invoking rite. While we are listening to the writer baroque-like prolific poetic text we can suddenly lose all the Archimedean points, which can be some help to us: as in front of the two mirrors opposite to each other, the only thing which would be missing is the subject of reflection, everything is affected, everything is played and everything is virtual.

Balázs has composed a classical, precise score: the geometrical system which follows all elements of the play can perfectly counterbalance the poetic “overreaches” of the text. On this rich scale which the chronicler cannot express the actors can play easily. Which is the most conspicuous for the first sight is that: in the holes of the amphitheatre we can see the picture of members of the “white” and “black” group opposite to each other. (The whites: Kamilla Fátyol, Rodrigó Balog, Kristóf Horváth, János Balog, Zoltán Oláh; the blacks: Balázs Dévai, Nóra Parti, Judit Réka Kiss, Erzsébet Soltész, Éva Bakos), their identity is signed only by the colour of their clothes (the fashion of the clothes, the fan in their hand, the movements from flamenco, especially on the side of the blacks raise Spanish allusion).

Opposite to the original instructions given by writer, here in the non-homogeneous Maladype group the Gypsies play the whites, while in the black dresses are the non-Gypsy members of the group. Meanwhile it is not enough too: all actors of each group are synchronized by opera singers, who are presented in the area and dressed like monks (the music which can be called a capella opera was composed by László Sáry who is Zoltán Balázs’ permanent partner). Their number is the half of the actors’ that is why a singer of a sound can give singing voice for two characters at the same time. (Beatrix Fodor, soprano, Apollónia Szolnoki, alto, Zoltán Gavodi, countertenor, László Böröcz, tenor, Szabolcs Hámori, bass).

The tools for the actors are their punctually created movements and the mute but even more expressive articulation of the text. People feel that the sounds given by the singers would become the acoustic masks (“roles”?) of the moving characters. That is why the sentences, which the actors tell in prose on their own voices, become so strong: through these the real personalities losing their masks can “be sounded” from time to time. (It is very characteristic that Balázs Dévai, who plays the Village and tends to do the killing, confesses his love to Nóra Parti, who plays the Virtue, and gets naked physically. It is even more painful when turns out that it is only a cheat, so that the audience can find out the appearing real feelings of future fulfiller.)

The fact that the actors and singers tell the text as others’ mirror images – we do not know for sure who are the leaders – gives us the opportunity for a real new interpretation: between the two opponent groups music is like a mediator (for the same sounding the characters are connected in pairs): and the appearance, the vision can cheat us, as the white and black figures, at least, acoustically are mixed. This mixture is widened as the director gives the role of Archibald, of the Master of Ceremonies to himself: he tells leanly the instructions into a microphone to the players, while he is sitting there between us in his ordinary clothes. His presence with his pure voice connects him to the acoustic part, but to the players too, but his appearance makes him similar to us: his figure has double meaning, (mediator and shaman) with his help the stage and the auditorium can form a world together (in a circular area where the players and viewers can melt into each other on the level of vision too).

Balázs merges the role of the sacrificing and victim which is a braver action than it is, so he gives meaning to the mixture on the level of the dramaturgy too: Hermina Fátyol and Artúr Kálid are changing the roles of the city of Saint Nazare and the role of Diuf, and their positions in the area. In the middle of the arena, on the top of the box of the victim we can see the girl for a long time, while the man is going around on the highest floor of the amphitheatre, above us. Then at the peak of the performance, during the rite of the victim, we can see Artúr Kálid in the middle, he is dancing like a female victim dressed in red (his dancing, movements, red dress quote the bullfighter and the bull at the same time), than the girl in concerto is rising up into the air and looks down to us from the point of view of the gods. Sándor Weöres’ lines from the Third symphony come into my mind: “You are the hunter and you are the wild one...”.

There we can understand that Balázs thinks over and makes universal Genet’s message: in the two scales of the balance there are not the whites and the blacks, the oppressors and the oppressed – the performance (as in the case of the director’s earlier work, in the Theomachia) reveals the manipulation which keeps itself by tricky takeovers, which laugh behind the empty duality of our days. They are measured and found to be too light according to the scale, from the point of view of the divine optic. And we are measured too: “you are all pink”, said Diuf, Hermina Fátyol on her naïve, childish voice in the clothes of a nun. Another question again: what is going to remain at the end of the two hours long insanity of virtualities that put out each other. Who are going to remain?

The running pair of the more than two hours long performance, the teenager Village and the Virtue have reached their destination, above the victim they push their foreheads to one another and confess pantingly their love to each other. The blonde girl and the Gypsy boy. Maybe they will step out of the constant whirl of the mix(tures). They give meaning to the mirrors too.

Gábor Pap, Kritika, 2005

(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)

(Jean Genet: The Blacks; Maurice Maeterlinck: Pelléas and Mélisande – Bárka Theatre)

Two characteristics of Zoltán Balázs’ performances appear at the first time. One is that they show more and more similarity with the modern opera. It has its undeniable history of course, as with Balázs Kovalik and Sándor Zsótér’s directions the operas can become theatrical experiences in Hungary too. Somehow similarly as Wagner thought about it, when he wrote about Gesamtkunstwerk – the ensemble of the text, music, the presence of actors and the world of vision can form a totally new language and word. However those performances which I am talking about are not definitely operas, Zoltán Balázs has created the fusion of theatre and opera – we can say that he uses many elements of opera, the language of opera according to the needs of his theatrical visions. The unit of ration, design and the emotional power of music melt into each other inseparably.

Another Speciality of the performance is that the creators with the help of symbols and rites build a net of meaning which works consistently as a sacral language all through the performance. For it the punctual use of the text is necessary, which Judit Góczán knows well and a vison is needed which can raise the place over reality – with the help of Judit Gombár’s designs of set and costume. The actors learn again every time with all their movements and words the language of the actual performance. The words, accents, movements of vision and melodies form together that world full of meanings in which the mostly pragmatic story can go on slowly.

Without our common sacraments and rites these are artificial words – their construction can be written down with the help of mathematics - , but the highness of music and the ceremonies release the foreseeable logic.

Jean Genet: The Blacks

Jean Genet’s play The Blacks is said to be clown act – of course it is not, meanwhile it is tragic as well; mainly because it would like to reach the catharsis with the help of repeated ritual actions. The definition of the genre of the performance goes on: black mass. If we like, it is a pun (a mass celebrated by the blacks, it is the mass of the blacks, it is a mass for the blacks), if we like it can be what it is literally: a ceremony that brings death and decay, which approaches the sanctity from the side of the Evil.

The audience arrives to an area similar to a stadium. The rows of the auditorium are going up sharply: the arena in the middle is just some steps wide. Our look falls back here all the time: there is something like a coffin there, and a white girl and a black boy in the beginning. Because of the small size of the “arena” and the steepness of the auditorium suddenly we realise that we, the viewers have become the part of it, the players of the game. It is supported well by the fact that the white and the black clan are standing on the upper part of the arena in front of each other: they simply close us into this magic circle. Perpendicularly to the white-black bi-pole, where we entered the area before, a boy and a girl are running in nude dresses, their faces are motionless, they schedule their power up until the end of the performance. They are the Running Village and the Running Virtue – so the pandans of the characters who will play the role of doers of the sacrifice (or murder) and the victims. Their colourlessness and physical effort seem to be the abstraction of the two characters – they are those figures who go into fight with their own body, being, power, and finality.

Of course, the two confronting groups take the main part of the action. Some of them from time to time gets into the arena, the others are similar to two opponent groups, they abuse each other and support the fighters like the supporters of a bullfighting or gladiator competitions. One of them is dressed in black: they are showing off on their side with black, tightened to their head, curly hair, with black lipstick, in black dresses – they are mostly similar to flamenco dancers as they are playing with their fans, with energetic movements. In front of them the whites are shining. Their dress has mannered baroque style, as well as their white wig and lips, the flying of their fans. The difference seems to be enormous, but if we have a second look the two sides are differed mostly by the black and white.

We are part of a ceremony: it is the ceremony of conflict, where victims are searched again and again, in a ritual way, with the hope of getting rid of loathing that way. It is a multi-complex, a play in the play, the game master – according to the play Archibald Absalon Wellington – gets an interesting role during the performance: the director himself sits there between the audience, in his civil clothes, with a microphone in his hand and he complicates and moves on the actions according to the supposed system of the ceremony. The game, which puts him inside and outside the performance at the same time, is similar to Tadeusz Kantor’s theatrical presence, to the role of conductor or ceremony master which is accepted by the director during the performance. Now he is working only with the help of words.

If the skin tone becomes an attribute which can be put on and taken off, then the genders and voices can be changed too, they can move freely in the area. The Sounds have their places in the highest part of the stadium (I gave them this name by myself), who come down at the beginning of the performance and sit down into the first row of the auditorium. The actors get the characters’ body, movements, gestures, all movements of their faces – and the movements of their mouth. The singing voices are given by the opera singers – László Sáry has written the score with the needs of an opera.

All elements of the performance are connected to this thought-provoking deconstruction. The sounds in the area – many times counter tenor or bass is connected to a female character and soprano to a male one. There are whites and blacks in the area – their roles can be changed, they can play each other’s role. The victims and doers are in the area – where the one who has to kill can become the prisoner of his victim. At the peak of the performance the Village who wants to kill, stops before the killing of the Virtue. Instead of killing the hated “white” girl, he confesses his love. He gets help to fulfil the ceremony: Artúr Kálid, who plays the ruler of the city of Saint Nazare in red shoes, red skirts, tries to make the desperate boy kill. Every circumstances are there to support the murder: the transvestite shining in red, the side who encourages the Village, and the dance between the flamenco and bullfighting. During these Nóra Parti who plays the role of the victim – Virtue – are hanging from above, swinging. It is a visionary, broken up world. Before the moment of stab suddenly complete darkness covers us.

Then the closing scene of the performance: the opponents change costumes, colour and role. And the chasing the ceremony of loathing starts again. It is unimportant whether the whites chase the blacks or the other way around. The sample is the same. Sounds, genders and roles are wondering in the area. The rite mostly automatically repeats itself circularly, changing up the roles and killing endlessly.

Maurice Maeterlinck: Pelléas and Mélisande

I cannot avoid to compare the two: the French daredevil, Genet, the hero of thieves, who combines the steam of brothels in his cruel but somehow raised, symbolic stories, was one year old, a pitiful one who had been already in orphanage when Maeterlinck the francophone, sophisticated, who was favoured by gods and grew up in a catholic family, got the Nobel Prize. But the dreamy world – interpretations which are coded in mostly mystical sign-system – whether because of the fury of exile or the fragility of over sophistication – in both cases have a very similar result.

The story goes in circle in the case of Pelléas and Mélisande by Maeterlinck too. The performance starts and ends with act of killing of Mélisande because of love. The other archetype is the repeated gesture, which is the girl’s saving from the lake, on the sticks of which Mélisande gets hung up by her long and blue hair. In the performance it is not obvious that who saves who, Golaud or Pelléas, and which one of them kills her – as both of them love the strange girl from another world. Both of them do it: they save and kill her. It is not obvious too if Mélisande wants to be saved and finally she is afraid of death. The only thing which is sure, that the weird girl brings love and jealousy into this palace. She brings to life fainted falling and power beyond (or under) humankind.

It is an easy, mystical tale; a soft system of symbols, which are grown up under a glass shade. The set can entrap cleverly our sight, senses: from one side it quotes the orthodox iconostasis in two dimension – which do not show things realistically, but they can sign, send message of saints here, in to the three dimension of everyday life. From the other side the flat motifs of arch are there on three levels – so it creates a playing area of three layers - , and they are connected by stairs in a way that we can see it on the drawing by Escher. In that way it opens secretly the two dimensions, even connects the ups and downs, makes it circular. And there is another invisible one, a secret downstairs: the bottom of the lake, from where the girl has risen.

I do not have to tell that the characters are moving as an icon comes to life: they know only two dimensions, they can only move in this flappable eternal legend, in this sacral area, which is alien for their everyday life but deep in their feelings and thoughts it is familiar – sometimes they are similar to the Egyptian grave drawings which can be naïve, but made by punctual observation, to its two-dimensional style. Nothing can happen which is not significant. The tremor of the sword, the throwing of the giant ring, the blue hair which appears in the window – all of them have existential weight, have effects on the characters’ fate.

Now the singing and the spoken language are divided strongly. On the program those three bass singers are signed as servants, who are walking on the floors as a Slavic polyphonic choir from time to time (if I remember well they will not appear on the highest floor). This small choir is the background of mood and feelings for the performance in reality: for us it is strange, but its attractive and harmonic sounding suggests that world, which is far from reality, as the set does, and the playing method and the costumes which are similar to caftans. Their song and slow movement put the story into this undefinable, mythical place and time, into this exaggerated and more swirling emotional trap, which can surprize the characters too. From the point of view of intensity the speech is not behind the songs: pictures and unconscious repetitions are there with the help of words – it seems like the characters are talking on the same register where the elevated choir is singing. Mélisande’s manner of speaking is brought up to the extremes: she answers to the others with the click of her tongue, as she would be too weak, too outsider, too abstract to speak the others’ language. She speaks articulated only when declares her love to Pelléas, to the half – brother and rival of her husband – and of course Pelléas is shocked by the speech itself not by the declaration as well as the audience is shocked by it. It could not be a light burden to compose the music after Debussy and Sibelius, who composed the opera version of the play. Látszló Sáry can compose melodies again, which are perfect for this performance; they do not cover aggressively the world of the performance which is divided into prose and songs according to the decision of the director, but they are strong and characteristic enough to overgrow the frames of theatrical background music and become live characters.

The set has its own role too, and the gestures of actors, which project like shadows the actors’ movements: constant power of concentration which never lower can be felt on the stage. The audience gets the feeling that priests are celebrating: life, love, death, with such physical and emotional punctuality as all of their moves would affect the whole world permanently.

They treat the dream carefully; the place where all of us can find something saint.

Rita Sebestyén, Ellenfény, 2005

(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)