For eighteen years now, one of the country’s most unusual independent theatres, Maladype Theatre, has operated mostly from a second-floor apartment known as “the Base” at 2 Mikszáth Kálmán Square. Zoltán Balázs is its founder, artistic director, stage director, and actor — the driving force through and through. We talked about him and the company. And about everything else...

As you rushed in just now, I’m sure that, as always, you’re in the middle of something. What is it this time?
I’m preparing to go to the Odeon Theatre in Bucharest, where last year I directed Gardenia by the contemporary Polish playwright Elżbieta Chowaniec. The production was very well received by both the Romanian theatre community and audiences, so the theatre management invited me back to further develop the theatrical language that had already emerged with the actors of the ensemble. This time I’m staging For Your Own Good by the contemporary Italian playwright Pier Lorenzo Pisano.

Let’s jump way back: when and how did theatre first capture you?
It wasn’t theatre that captured me, but the circus. I was born in Cluj-Napoca, but until I was twelve we lived in northern Transylvania, in Sighetu Marmației, before relocating in 1989. I was six years old when my grandfather took me to see a travelling circus. I saw half-successful tricks, sad performers, and a tired snake lazily twisting around without enthusiasm — and yet the experience was overwhelming. I was completely enchanted. As a result, that very night I packed my things, and at dawn I showed up at the travelling troupe.

The caravan was just taking down the tent, and without even asking who I was, they took me along with them. Back home everyone was desperately searching for me, but my grandfather, remembering the look in my eyes during the previous evening’s performance, quickly figured out where I might be. They came after us with the police, stopped the caravan, and took me home. For more than a month I refused to speak to my family because I felt they had deprived me of the meaning of my life.

I longed to become an acrobatic clown who, after every blood-curdling stunt, could turn to the audience and say: “Hepp! Calm down, people, it’s only a joke and a game...” The circus became the most alluring art form for me, and the duality of sacred and profane moments captured my heart and imagination. For a long time I searched for similar impulses but couldn’t find them. After changing countries, I hitchhiked across Europe purely for pleasure, meeting Native Americans, sumo wrestlers, housewives, all sorts of people... I had an enormous appetite for life and threw myself greedily into every adventure that seemed promising.

Did you find what you were looking for?
Yes — at the drama department in Szentes. My teachers, Mihály Bácskai, Mrs. Mihály Bácskai (Erzsike), Imre Keserű, Zoltán László, and Erzsébet Dózsáné Perjés patiently and wisely guided me along a theatrical journey infused with personal experience. That was when I first encountered acting as one of the most exciting and complex forms of expression. A defining experience for me was a production based on Baudelaire’s The Flowers of Evil, which, thanks to the francophone connections of the Szentes secondary school, we were able to perform at the festival in Avignon. There I met Marcel Bozonnet, then director of the Paris Conservatoire, who, after seeing me perform as Baudelaire, invited me to continue my studies there. At the time, though, I felt I had things to do in Hungary — I had found a home there. And besides, I was in love... For three years I attended the studio of the National Theatre, and then I was admitted to the acting class of Miklós Benedek at the University of Theatre and Film Arts. A year later I was also accepted into the directing program, in the class of László Babarczy. Later, circumstances allowed me to begin studies at the Paris Conservatoire simultaneously with my training in Budapest. During the combined semesters I had the opportunity to learn from masters such as Robert Wilson, Anatoly Vasiliev, and Min Tanaka.

As a trained actor-director you worked at the Bárka Theatre while founding Maladype at the same time. How did that happen?
Coincidences organized my life. In the spring of 2001, several people drew the attention of the Serbian producer Dragan Ristić to a “strange, unruly, rebellious” character — a graduating directing student who was open to any kind of madness. That was me. Ristić wanted to create a European-level theatre production in Budapest with Roma and non-Roma actors working together. He asked me to direct Eugène Ionesco’s Jack, or the Submission in both Romani and Hungarian. “You do know this play has failed everywhere in the world?” I asked him. “I know,” he replied, “but this time it won’t.” He was right. The premiere took place at the Roma Parliament, and the troupe — assembled from different places — became a huge success with both critics and audiences. We performed at impossible hours, at night, to packed houses.

Maladype grew out of that ensemble. What does the word mean? And how did you begin?
In Lovari, it means “encounter.” That word most accurately expressed the experience that united all of us during the Jack production — the connection born between performers and audience. That is why we chose it as the name of our theatre. Our next premiere took place at the Szkéné Theatre and was based on School for Fools by Michel de Ghelderode. In the performance, the actors spoke Romani, Hungarian, and Latin. We were convinced it would be a disastrous failure, but to our surprise it became an even greater success. Our third premiere seemed an even more impossible undertaking because we chose a playwright whose works and personality had not yet been accepted by Hungarian theatrical taste: Jean Genet’s The Blacks, which we premiered in 2004 at the Bárka Theatre with music by László Sáry.

What made it seem impossible?
Because of the complete absence of traditionalism and social realism characteristic of the French author, and because of the unusual, innovative fusion of the formal and thematic features typical of my own work. The production was essentially a contemporary opera in which singing and speech appeared as “masks” within a story boldly integrating motifs from various exotic movement cultures. In the plot — built on peculiar reflections and rituals — the actors of Roma origin played the white aristocratic court, while the Hungarian actors portrayed the slaves, the Blacks; for example, Artúr Kálid played a white woman... These productions established Maladype’s reputation both in Hungary and abroad. They articulated the company’s unique conception of theatre and turned the actors into emblematic figures of a different kind of actor. That’s how we began. Everything afterward became organic chapters of a story writing itself.

You suddenly had a company, with all the joys and burdens that come with it. Let’s take them one by one.
I quickly had to learn the uncomfortable tasks of grant writing and fundraising. I had to pay attention to the kind of collaborators I surrounded myself with. I also had to make the members of the company understand that our work was defined by a competitive spirit. For example, if the development of the ensemble is endangered by a difficult-to-motivate actor who lags behind, then we have to let them go, because in the long run they hold back the “racehorses” of the theatre. In short, I had to quickly grow into the not-so-popular role of company leader and always be ready for replanning and redefinition.

As I see it, you carry all this on your shoulders. Don’t you get tired?
So far I can still handle it. Maybe my childhood circus experiences also play a role in that. Every one of my productions contains an element of risk and resistance. Maladype actors must be able to focus on many things at once; their nervous systems cannot be ordinary, and they must adapt to every unexpected situation...

...where even the audience almost becomes part of the performance because they are so immersed in it. In a large repertory theatre, the audience applauds or boos, but in your intimate performance space the fifty spectators surrounding the stage immediately laugh or shout into the play itself. How can actors adapt to that?
Through daily practice and conditioning. This kind of attention cannot be learned at university. The actors who work with me possess a certain kind of “recklessness.” During performances they must apply a special ability of flexibility and spiritual-emotional suppleness, which they acquire over time through various training sessions. Someone who lacks this may still be a good actor — just not with me.

What kind of theatre is the Odeon?
One of the world’s most respected theatrical workshops. The Romanian equivalent of Budapest’s Vígszínház. After the 1989 revolution, under the directorship of the internationally renowned Vlad Mugur, it became internationally famous. Directors such as Andrei Șerban, Mihai Măniuțiu, Alexander Hausvater, Radu Afrim, and Gianina Cărbunariu have worked there. As far as I know, I am the first foreign director to work with the Odeon ensemble. That also places a great responsibility on me.

What makes directing abroad different?
Mostly the fact that I can devote all my nerves and attention entirely to the creative process and the actors’ work. That is a huge luxury! In Hungary my everyday life is dominated mainly by organizational and managerial tasks. I’ve become accustomed to the reality that the leader of an independent theatre company, whose troupe lives from day to day, always has to redesign and rethink everything.

András Váczy, Business Class Magazine, 22 July 2019.