Stubborn facts
Profile: Born in Cluj-Napoca, the 43-year-old actor, director, and company leader Zoltán Balázs moved to Hungary with his family in 1989. He studied in the drama program of Horváth Mihály Secondary School in Szentes and, in his final year, won an award in France for a performance in French. After spending three years at the National Theatre Academy, he was accepted simultaneously to the University of Theatre and Film Arts in Budapest (SZFE) and a prestigious drama school in Paris. Due to financial constraints, he was unable to attend the latter, but he participated in summer acting courses with masters such as Bob Wilson, Anatoly Vasiliev, and József Nagy. He began his studies at SZFE in Miklós Benedek’s acting class and, from his third year onward, also studied directing in László Babarczy’s class. Between 2001 and 2008, he was a member of Bárka Theatre. One of his most memorable roles was Hamlet in 2003, a part he was invited to play by the production’s director, Tim Carroll, then artistic director of London’s Globe Theatre. While still in his final year of college, he was invited to direct a production for a newly forming Roma theatre company, Eugene Ionesco’s Jack, or the Submission. In 2001, together with former collaborators but under a new name, he founded the Maladype Theatre, an ensemble experimenting with unconventional theatrical language (the word maladype means “encounter” in the Lovari language). Within a short time, the company became a regular guest at international festivals and collaborated with invited artists such as Mari Törőcsik, Andrea Ladányi, and Sándor Zsótér. Since King Ubu in 2009, the company had maintained a permanent venue, the Maladype Base, in a bourgeois apartment on Mikszáth Square in Budapest’s 8th district, which they lost in 2019 due to a housemate’s negligence. One of their most recent successes is Yvonne, winner of the Gombrowicz Festival Award. From Bucharest’s Odeon Theatre to Chicago’s Trap Door Theatre, Zoltán Balázs has been a guest director of prestigious companies.
Known for his unconventional stage solutions, the artistic director is simultaneously preparing a futuristic production of the musical Nine and celebrating twenty years of the Maladype Theatre with the historical revue Merlin.
Did Fellini’s creative crisis and his ambivalent relationship with women inspire you to stage Nine, the musical based on the Italian director’s film 8½, at the Operetta Theatre?
Fellini’s intellectual legacy and artistic personality inspire me in many ways. There are numerous parallels between our lives: our Catholic upbringing and the lasting impact of youthful mischief. At the age of six, I too ran away from home with a traveling circus. Although I was brought back, I continue to draw heavily on the bizarre and fascinating world of the circus in my directing. I am attracted to unexpected and impulsive stimuli, risky solutions, and worlds shaped by the encounter of diverse cultures. Interaction and improvisation are natural components of Maladype’s productions. The novelty of formal and thematic relationships in our work often leads our actors to draw inspiration from the Italian master’s Satyricon, Amarcord, Orchestra Rehearsal, and Roma. As a director who experiments with many styles, I am myself searching for the essence of 8½’s original title—that “beautiful chaos.” I easily empathize with the cause-and-effect dynamics behind male reactions determined by circumstances, and I am well acquainted with the male psychology that attempts to cope with the unexpected eruptions of the extreme forces of female nature.
You have directed internationally from Chicago to Paris to Bucharest, and you studied with theatre innovators such as Bob Wilson and Anatoly Vasiliev. What would you bring from your international experiences into Hungarian theatre?
Above all, a childlike spirit free from clichés and prejudices. For a long time, Hungarian theatre has been held hostage by its own myths and trapped by its habits of psychological realism. It resembles a ghost, an emotion that has lost its shape, haunting us through airless and unartistic currents. I find it difficult to understand why our theatrical community clings so stubbornly to frozen patterns and stereotypes, to fashionable yet false impulses. If we want the walls of our theatrical system not to collapse under the weight of our internal tensions, we must use diverse building blocks and bind them together with common sense. It would also help revive stalled theatrical processes if professionally immature, small-minded creators stepped back a little and made room for those who genuinely seek to reconnect with the essence of theatre and are still capable of generosity. Most people today live in greenhouses and throw stones. Maladype and I have always represented the outsider tradition. You have called the current funding allocation system a discriminatory crime, pointing out that Maladype Theatre—one of Hungary’s most internationally recognized independent companies—has not received priority status for years. Just as professional advancement is not determined by knowledge, achievements, or shared values but rather by connections and political affiliations, the same applies to funding decisions. The amount of our operational support is not determined by curators in light of the company’s domestic and international successes. In many cases, grant calls have failed to adapt to the significantly altered theatrical reality created by the pandemic. Facts are stubborn things, and they do not cease to exist simply because we ignore them. It is also a fact that Maladype, like many other companies, cannot afford to provide streamed performances.
Could streaming provide a long-term solution for theatres?
I see it as a forced solution. When the coronavirus pandemic emerged, suddenly everyone became a poetry reciter. Terrible productions were created that set back the genuine art of poetry performance for years. At the same time, I do not want to be unfair to theatres that invested in the technical infrastructure necessary for streaming and made serious efforts to present their productions online at a high standard. There were some outstanding results.
Maladype Theatre no longer has a permanent venue. How is the company sustaining itself now that festival invitations have disappeared because of the pandemic?
It is a tremendous artistic and financial loss that we are currently unable to perform either in Hungary or abroad. At the moment the border closures were announced, we were in discussions with twenty-three festivals and were scheduled to appear at theatre events in several exotic countries. During the pandemic, we were ultimately able to honor only the invitation of the Gombrowicz Festival with our production Yvonne. At present, the rehearsal process for Merlin is what keeps our team together. I hope we will soon receive adequate support; otherwise, I will have no choice but to let our actors and staff go.
Your adaptation of Tankred Dorst’s ironic historical revue Merlin, or The Waste Land is scheduled to premiere at the Kisvárda Festival in June. Do you see the play as an opportunity to review the various creative periods and development of the twenty-year-old Maladype Theatre?
Over the past twenty years, Maladype has survived several crises and has most often been reborn by redefining itself. It was not easy, amid the games played by various systems, to endure what Ottlik called “the disgrace of vulnerability” and preserve our independence. We realized in time that it is not enough to exist outside structures; we had to create our own system. We also recognized that our plays should focus on interpreting reality rather than reproducing it exactly. We took seriously the collective and personal responsibility of those who write (theatre) history and never tried to escape difficult situations. We reflected on ideas that did not originate with us and sought to avoid didactic conclusions. Before certain theatrical truths faded, we searched with our audiences for new content and new meaning. These insights also shape the story of Merlin and its dual-consciousness dramaturgy. The play’s central question is this: How can a person live while in a constant state of falling? Will they catch on something before they hit the ground, or will their fall transform into a light, dreamlike floating?
Rita Szentgyörgyi, HVG, 2021
translated by: Zsuzsanna Juraszek
Known for his unconventional stage solutions, the artistic director is simultaneously preparing a futuristic production of the musical Nine and celebrating twenty years of the Maladype Theatre with the historical revue Merlin.
Did Fellini’s creative crisis and his ambivalent relationship with women inspire you to stage Nine, the musical based on the Italian director’s film 8½, at the Operetta Theatre?
Fellini’s intellectual legacy and artistic personality inspire me in many ways. There are numerous parallels between our lives: our Catholic upbringing and the lasting impact of youthful mischief. At the age of six, I too ran away from home with a traveling circus. Although I was brought back, I continue to draw heavily on the bizarre and fascinating world of the circus in my directing. I am attracted to unexpected and impulsive stimuli, risky solutions, and worlds shaped by the encounter of diverse cultures. Interaction and improvisation are natural components of Maladype’s productions. The novelty of formal and thematic relationships in our work often leads our actors to draw inspiration from the Italian master’s Satyricon, Amarcord, Orchestra Rehearsal, and Roma. As a director who experiments with many styles, I am myself searching for the essence of 8½’s original title—that “beautiful chaos.” I easily empathize with the cause-and-effect dynamics behind male reactions determined by circumstances, and I am well acquainted with the male psychology that attempts to cope with the unexpected eruptions of the extreme forces of female nature.
You have directed internationally from Chicago to Paris to Bucharest, and you studied with theatre innovators such as Bob Wilson and Anatoly Vasiliev. What would you bring from your international experiences into Hungarian theatre?
Above all, a childlike spirit free from clichés and prejudices. For a long time, Hungarian theatre has been held hostage by its own myths and trapped by its habits of psychological realism. It resembles a ghost, an emotion that has lost its shape, haunting us through airless and unartistic currents. I find it difficult to understand why our theatrical community clings so stubbornly to frozen patterns and stereotypes, to fashionable yet false impulses. If we want the walls of our theatrical system not to collapse under the weight of our internal tensions, we must use diverse building blocks and bind them together with common sense. It would also help revive stalled theatrical processes if professionally immature, small-minded creators stepped back a little and made room for those who genuinely seek to reconnect with the essence of theatre and are still capable of generosity. Most people today live in greenhouses and throw stones. Maladype and I have always represented the outsider tradition. You have called the current funding allocation system a discriminatory crime, pointing out that Maladype Theatre—one of Hungary’s most internationally recognized independent companies—has not received priority status for years. Just as professional advancement is not determined by knowledge, achievements, or shared values but rather by connections and political affiliations, the same applies to funding decisions. The amount of our operational support is not determined by curators in light of the company’s domestic and international successes. In many cases, grant calls have failed to adapt to the significantly altered theatrical reality created by the pandemic. Facts are stubborn things, and they do not cease to exist simply because we ignore them. It is also a fact that Maladype, like many other companies, cannot afford to provide streamed performances.
Could streaming provide a long-term solution for theatres?
I see it as a forced solution. When the coronavirus pandemic emerged, suddenly everyone became a poetry reciter. Terrible productions were created that set back the genuine art of poetry performance for years. At the same time, I do not want to be unfair to theatres that invested in the technical infrastructure necessary for streaming and made serious efforts to present their productions online at a high standard. There were some outstanding results.
Maladype Theatre no longer has a permanent venue. How is the company sustaining itself now that festival invitations have disappeared because of the pandemic?
It is a tremendous artistic and financial loss that we are currently unable to perform either in Hungary or abroad. At the moment the border closures were announced, we were in discussions with twenty-three festivals and were scheduled to appear at theatre events in several exotic countries. During the pandemic, we were ultimately able to honor only the invitation of the Gombrowicz Festival with our production Yvonne. At present, the rehearsal process for Merlin is what keeps our team together. I hope we will soon receive adequate support; otherwise, I will have no choice but to let our actors and staff go.
Your adaptation of Tankred Dorst’s ironic historical revue Merlin, or The Waste Land is scheduled to premiere at the Kisvárda Festival in June. Do you see the play as an opportunity to review the various creative periods and development of the twenty-year-old Maladype Theatre?
Over the past twenty years, Maladype has survived several crises and has most often been reborn by redefining itself. It was not easy, amid the games played by various systems, to endure what Ottlik called “the disgrace of vulnerability” and preserve our independence. We realized in time that it is not enough to exist outside structures; we had to create our own system. We also recognized that our plays should focus on interpreting reality rather than reproducing it exactly. We took seriously the collective and personal responsibility of those who write (theatre) history and never tried to escape difficult situations. We reflected on ideas that did not originate with us and sought to avoid didactic conclusions. Before certain theatrical truths faded, we searched with our audiences for new content and new meaning. These insights also shape the story of Merlin and its dual-consciousness dramaturgy. The play’s central question is this: How can a person live while in a constant state of falling? Will they catch on something before they hit the ground, or will their fall transform into a light, dreamlike floating?
Rita Szentgyörgyi, HVG, 2021
translated by: Zsuzsanna Juraszek