Éri Ildikó
Farkas Tímea: Víz, föld, tűz, levegő
Mi lett volna, ha...? – tesszük fel a hiábavaló kérdést számtalanszor magunknak, mert érezzük, ha visszapörgethetnénk az időt a kérdéses pillanatig, másképp is dönthettünk volna. Balázs Zoltán pirandellói logikával és következetességgel szólaltatja meg énünk és a bennünk lévő, különböző tőről fakadó gondolatok, döntések sokféleségét, esetlegességét Fernando Pessoa kvázi személyiségén keresztül. A költő személyiségének – talán mindannyiunknak is – legdominánsabb eleme, a Tűz (Kelemen István) az utolsó kívánság jogán kér menedéket a családi ház csendjében. Halála előtt újra szeretné élni azt az életet, melyet mindig megkérdőjelezett magában, melyet másik három énjének, az Égnek (Császár Angela), a Víznek (Presits Tamás), és a Földnek (Vörös Eszter) köszönhetően hordozott magában, ám nem élt meg. A Tűz gyökereihez, az Ősanyához (Hegedűs Gönczy Katalin) visszatérve találkozik tudatának másik három énjével, hogy egységet alkotva legyőzze a lehetetlent, az elmúlást.
A színpadon lepereg Pessoa-Tűz előtt múltjának minden megálmodott és csak félig megálmodott pillanata igazolásul annak, hogy a benne élő személyiségek tökéletes egységet alkotnak, mint például a négy évszak. A különböző akaratú és erejű tudat alatti ösztönök így válnak benne tudatos gondolattá, hogy uralják az ősi, az ember eredendő szorongását.
Szenvedélyek, elfojtott vágyak, indulatok, önmegtartóztatások jelennek meg a színpadon; a józan ész, az érzelmek tusakodnak egymással, miközben a produkció telibe talál bennünket; dönthetünk bárhogyan, uralkodjék bennünk a szenvedély, avagy a józan ész, a halál elől nincs menekvés. Az egész csak jelkép. Tükör, „melynek megalkotója megmérgezte az emberi lelket” – fut ki a darab.
Balázs Zoltán lendületes, friss produkciója és egyben rendezése szórakoztatóan ötvözi a képzőművészet, a zene és a tánc nyelvét. Gombár Judit díszlete és jelmeze, Szőllősi András koreográfiája, Chopin, Piazzola, Kabalevszky és Amadinda zenéje Hegedűs Gönczy Katalin tolmácsolásában úgy alkotnak szerves egységet, akár a négy elem, úgy szolgálják az előadást, mint ahogyan az előadás Pesso-Tűz képtelen, de megvalósult vágyát.
Farkas Tímea, Napi Magyarország, 1999
Fehér Elephánt: Trisztán és Izolda
Balázs Zoltán nem felejtette el hajdani revelatív stílusát, (Theomachia, Négerek, A vámpír), legsajátabb nyelvezetével alkotta meg az archetipikus történetet. Izolda itt két alakban is megjelenik, a legszebb jelenet a szőkehajúhoz kapcsolódik. Franz Schubert Szerenádja von romantikus dallamíveket a térbe, a jobbról-balra, fel s alá futkosó primadonna mozgását fekve gördüléssel követik a mohó férfi-tekintetek. Nemcsak irányban rezonálnak a látványra, vízszintes piruettekkel könnyedén szökellnek át egymáson is.
A csoda nem szünetel, apró gesztusok, egyszerűségükben artisztikus jelzések érzékeltetik az eseményeket, híven rajzolva meg a belső történések modulációit. Nem baj, hogy ismerjük a szerelmesek legendáját, de akkor is maradéktalan az élmény, ha csak a látvány szuggesztióját éljük át. - Vagy talán még erőteljesebb!!!
A dramaturg Góczán Judit érdeme, hogy a párhuzamos szerepek, kettőződések és a tömörítések ellenére, megőrizte a cselekmény fővonalát, stiláris egységét. Sokkal jobban átélhetővé vált az eredeti történet, ellentétben a rendező utóbbi alkotásaival, melyekben a tonnányi szótömeg agyonnyomta a produkciót.
Nagyon szeretnénk, mi Vámpír-imádók, Négerek-fanek, hogy a jövőben a Maladypével, avagy más formációkkal, itt nálunk is szülessenek hasonló indíttatású művek, hiszen ezek fémjelzik leghitelesebben Balázs Zoltán kivételes alkotóképességét.
Fehér Elephánt, Kulturális Ajánló, 2013
Daniela Magiaru: Words of power
About independent company shows Maladype (which celebrated ten years in 2012) I wrote on several occasions (Leonce and Lena, King Ubu, Egg(s)Hell, Lorenzaccio). As well, about the coherent program that follows the appointed road of freedom and of the authenticity. What I find extremely legitimate in the case of any theatrical company, and particulary this company, is looking for maintained the need to always find new ways of making art. To these are added a real opening towards the spectators or as formulated Balázs Zoltán “we age together with spectators” , having reactions and especially a dialogue is essential during Maladype assumed. That’s why they developed a series of programs that come to recompletion the artistic vision. For instance, "Free Academy", which aims to bring together people with common interests that through public discussion “to find new topics and identities in the concept of reality drama”. In the current season, the themes that were proposed: the power, the formation of conscience, creative thinking, human reactions of relinquished of prejudices. At Maladype’s has place a graphic course and it works as a film club, at which besides the screenings, the participants have the chance to meet the film makers. Another project (which debuted in 2011) is called “Cross-Roads”. He aims to mirror the trends of cultural life, creating contacts between companies with different sensitivities. In the project were involved already independent theaters from various countries. From Romania, Teatrul Act was present in Budapest with ,,Amalia breathe deeply “ into a 'shift' of performances and Maladype played in Bucharest ,,King Ubu”.
One of the latest programs are the readings. Here, the text of Matei Visniec , “The story of the panda bears told by a saxophonist who has a girlfriend in Frankfurt” (in the presence of the author ) of a particular reading, from at least two reasons: the game space and the concept. In the small place – apartament type – from Maladype Theatre is always a pleasure to come back. The rooms from the “Base” have extremely cosy places that invite you to breathe the conviviality air. Furthermore, the rooms are impregnated by the air shows held in the closeness of the spectator. Recognize elements of décor, view and scenary construction who brings automatic mind other mounting. Matei Visniec’s text propose a love affair in nine nights consumed in lyricism , then borders on the dreamer, fractured between two realities. The pattern chosen by Balázs Zoltán for reading corresponds perfectly to the piece. The central place of the “Base” can be accessed in three different rooms. Three doors with their secrets, two couples, four players and nine nights. More than that, the unconventional reading from the formal point of view, a layer of colour throught the ingenuity of thought, of leaving each scene played “in the style” of another painter. They literally become moving painting. A quizz that went over again, in fact, each of the nine nights in a different key, print them over the air in time, and in the image and which restores a wide path, from Botticelli to Picaso and Fernando Botero. Each “speaking ” painting achieved new valences (sometimes comically unexpected) or additional depths by calling a type of imaginary that operates with a different instrumentation. The text is to be transformed into images extremely vivid. The doors open slowly loosen, the light opens in colourful bouquets and the eye perceives the painting made such of skillful by the actors ( in fact all the elements of stage design were created by them). The sentences recieve this way the loads and the virtue of the plastic living. Even if the performance of the play is strongly visual, the actors are away to sit “in the picture”, reading a text.
Two worlds- pictorial and textual are brought together throught the creativity of approach, but also throught acting. If the paintings are asking the attention of the view to the light and to composition, spoken words bring the noise level and complets the meaning of the story.
You can watch, as in Cubist paintings, the same topic from several perspectives simultaneously. Panda bear story can be read in any of the proposed options, having elegance, madness, lust, subtlety, humor, depths, beauty. Each scene provides a extra piece in building the mosaic story and each mosaic title enhances them to others.
The text allows and urges to multiple reading keyes and looks like the actors and the director started a game whereby trying them all. Behind the open doors- are entire worlds of powder which color wires of a beautiful story.
Daniela Magiaru, 2013
It was a great challenge and an instructive task - 2008
The author was Weber’s coeval and even co-worker, and as in The Marksman, supernatural appears in The Vampire as well. How much did this determine the directing?
We’ve put the plot in a Japanese environment. In a highly stylized, minimalist, a highly romanticized samurai world, in which everything can be found from the original mysticism and feelings, but somehow the Japanese, the Orients have a slightly different relationship with blood, death, love, murder, friendship, schizophrenia, than us, the easy-going Europeans. It’s not that a piece can’t be put on stage in Scottish boots, with misty white smoke, a Walter Scott kind of setting. But I thought that showing symbolically the inner qualities and events are what's important, not the protagonist running around in vampire fangs and robe.
And without thinking about it, you’ve put the whole story in a Japanese environment?
Yes. Definitely. The Japanese environment completely covered me the romance and its counterpoint, the cold sense, puppetry, the world of the dead, after all, vampires are halfway between the living and the dead.
Based on the relationship between mortals, immortals and the dead it could have also been an ancient Greek world...
It is interesting you mention this, because that is also there, represented by the choir, which, like in the case of the Greeks, very often have a dramaturgical role, their response is not just simple narrative. In the performance, the choir members are constantly changing, if they have to, they will be dancers or hunters. They are changing their duality just like a vampire.
Is duality, the contrasts dominating the whole directing?
Absolutely. It is a dualistic story. Alongside the vampire is his old companion, Edgar Aubry, who, according to the story, represents nothing but good, love, but contrary to his promise he reveals that Lord Ruthven is a vampire. So the struggle it’s not just between the two characters, but also in Aubry, because he has to save his lover, who is a victim on the vampire’s list, but he has to break the vow, which at that time was a very serious sin.
As for the “vampire singer”, I have to say, he is “very much from there” based on his photo.
Yes, he is a vampire without a mask on. He knows it too. He just entered the room, and everybody looked at me, they knew I’ve found my vampire. I said, let’s wait for the voice, but luckily that was good too. And he is not good only for these reasons, he also has a demonic soul besides his demonic look. He is an eastern man. Syrian. That's exactly what I’m interested in. The otherness. Being Syrian is also “otherness”, like being Hungarian, male, female, black, or a vampire. Vampirism is an isolated, very unwell, lonely state. That’s what's important in it. And he represents all of these for me.
In spite of his exclusion, the vampire is not sadly different but it’s a creature, who is a threat. Does this singer also have to make sure that his character doesn’t come off only as a negative figure on stage?
Yes. I didn't want to see a suggestive vampire with a strange look, the requirement was his presence. For example, in Nosferatu, what it’s beautiful in Kinski’s acting is not that I feel that “I am a vampire, I suck everybody's blood, and you will never get me”, but to feel the horror, that dawn is coming and he would like to stay among the living, but he must retreat into the darkness and he is heartbroken, that he can only communicate with women only as a vampire. He has no chance to sit and talk to her, to touch her, lie down beside her, there are no natural, human, life-like moments. Because he does not live but he is not dead either. This is insanity, he is trapped between the two shores. In Marschner’s opera, the vampire has an aria in which he says he killed his wife and daughter. This is also insane. I gave the singer, Nabil the instruction, that every time he will have another victim in front of him, he should always see his wife in it.
In Coppola’s Dracula movie, the count is looking for his onetime love in all of his victims. In your directing two victims are played by one singer. Did you think about this parallel?
Yes, that’s it, what the Coppola movie also formulated. The goal was the same. The mirroring. Not only did I want to depict the metamorphosis of the battle between the vampire, Ruthven and Aubry, but I also found it important that the women’s rebirth, re-killing are also continuous in this piece.
Did you get this opera as a task or did you choose it?
We’ve selected it with the director of the Opera House of Rennes together. It has been an old, cherished dream of his. Because it has never been played in France or here.
Did the director leave you with what you will get out of it?
Absolutely. He could have turned down the plan when I’ve presented it to him with drawings, mockups, how I imagine the show, but he approved, he was very happy and satisfied.
To what extent were the Rennes people used to such a symbolic staging?
Not much. But they were extremely open, attentive and committed. They are amazingly prepared. It did not happen that if I asked something they would not do it in half a second. And it was not just the performers who did so. The set is a stylized version of a Japanese courtyard, with four huge doors in a large white wall. If they would not make this the way they did, with hairline cracks, noiseless door openings, then it wouldn’t be worth it. I haven't experienced such a thing in Hungary. Here somehow there is always some dirt left, it’s always like, that is almost like that, but it will do. And then you have to fight for it, not to be “almost like that”.
Aside from the fact that you didn't have to fight in Rennes, what else was different in the working method?
In opera, you can only rehearse 5-6 hours per day. After the sixth hour, the iron curtain is pulled down. This is not new to me, because I work very accurately at home as well, but with my team, I can work on details for days. Here, this was not the case, everything had to work with the precision of a clock. And it worked, we made it how we wanted it to be, no compromise was needed. It was a great challenge and an instructive task. I think that it is every young man's dog duty to direct an opera because this is the queen of the arts. It knows everything that can be integrated theatrically, musically, in movement and fine arts. I've never been part of a musical production like this before. I am very happy that I could do it on a big stage abroad. And I hope it's not the last I got to do it.
SzJ, Café Momus
Translation by Brigitta Erőss
My freedom is the only proncipal I can work from - 2008
Many consider him a maverick director. He is currently directing a romantic opera with a lot of conventions. At the same time, the musical theater is probably not far from you, because in your directings rhythm and music are dominant. Such an example was the awards-winning Teomachia.
My main interest with Sándor Weöres’s piece was to make invisible theater visible. Weöres did not write instructions. We are wandering at the borderlands of Gods, in an incomprehensible world. A piece without a prescription can give a young director much freedom. This is why I am excited about this task. Fortunately, I have a stable team, we have learned each other's way of working and we trust each other.
Perhaps there are more conventions in directing a romantic opera because the music and libretto are given. To what extent can The Vampire turn into “balázszoli” feeling?
Although many people say that I have my world, to be honest I don’t know what this “balázszoli” feeling is. One thing is clear, whatever genre we work in, we need to be very precise. In an opera reading rehearsal, I must be fully aware of the musical-acoustics, visuals and thoughts of the piece. If I am a little insecure about anything, I cannot expect the actors to follow my lead with absolute dedication. Although many things can change during the rehearsals, I need to know where I started and where I am heading. It’s easy to create dumb performances from operas. Most of the librettos are almost offering this option.
Vampire stories in particular.
When you discover symbols, associations, depth psychology in a fairy tale, you start to be more interested in it. Like in The Vampire’s case. It can superficially be interpreted as a strong, lustful, erotic, romantic opera, but I am more interested in the underlying content. There are a lot of loose ends in the piece, a lot of incomplete thoughts. This is also a story without a prescription, which deserves further consideration. One thing is certain, the vampire won’t have long, blood-dripping fangs.
I thought so.
Everybody has a distorted and healthy part. This is a constant struggle but also a desire for harmony. The Vampire can’t find this harmony, and this is his tragedy.
At the auditions, did you want to find the most talented actor or this imagined character?
Of course, I had a vision about a figure, a personality that can represent the concept I’d imagined. The point was not Brad Pitt, Antonio Banders or a dwarf to enter the auditions.
If a “very romantic” figure would have entered, would you’ve considered changing the concept because of him?
I can think on a large scale, but believe, if we can precisely imagine that creature, which can show the deep psychological aspects of the vampire that I’m thinking of, then an adversary creature cannot destroy it. That doesn’t mean I can't “fall in love” with a different eye-color, an extravagant rock star who sings opera superbly. That character may find its place in another opera. In many cases, the competitors were switched between the directors. In the end, all the actors found their places, no one was clinging to anyone. This was because everyone had an exact idea of their characters.
As far as I know, you don’t gladly accept any jobs.
I've rejected many requests. I'm not interested in great opportunities if they divert me from my path. I believe in a sense of commitment, and I'm not inspired by its absence. So I walk my path freely. If behind any of the requests I feel like they want me to narrow my freedom, I will immediately refuse. My freedom is the only principal I can work from.
Mihály Kal Pintér, kultissimo.hu
Translation by Brigitta Erőss
The opera: dance, music and film - 2008
I spent my childhood in Sighetu Marmației, near mountains, rocks, waterfalls, rivers. Thanks to this I could hear many different types of music.
He is an actor, director, once wanted to be a clown, and he still considers the circus to be the most sacred art form.
In Fellini’s I Clowns a small child talks about how frightened he is, but also attracted to the bizarreness of clown jokes. Somehow I feel the same. The circus was that pulled me to the theater.
What were your first musical experiences?
Those who grow up in the mountains may have music in their gut. I spent my childhood in Sighetu Marmației, near mountains, rocks, waterfalls, rivers. Thanks to this I could hear many different types of music. I’ve sometimes seen a couple of opera performances when a company from Cluj-Napoca visited us. However, the decisive impacts were in Hungary and especially in France. What caught me was Bob Wilson’s directing with their incredible precision and mathematical construction. For example, I am not sure if there is a performance more beautiful than Alcestis. The way it concentrates on stillness, it deeply coincides with my thinking: fantasy soars between the mountains differently...
Are there a few performances like this?
Yes. Peter Stein’s directing, Pelléas and Mélisande, was similar to this, and Julie Taymor is trying to do something like this as well, and she gets the formalist label for it. But I don’t think the form is the enemy of the content.
It is not by chance that in your decisive experiences you do not mention authors and operas, only directors and performances. While in your directing –though you’ve chosen the prosaic stage as your calling- music seemed to play an increasingly prominent role.
Undoubtedly, I strive to make music a major determinant when I am directing a performance. Not for my own sake: I always try to find the most accurate music sheet for thought or content. Let’s take Pelléas and Mélisande for instance. I could have directed Debussy’s opera, but I opted for the prosaic version, but with Pravoslav music. Because when reading Maeterlinck’s text, the world of Parajanov appeared in front of my eyes. This is how the three bassists, who as creators and death angels, accompanied the story as an orthodox choir. This gave birth to a very special sound that determined the facade of the whole performance.
A slightly different formula is the Storm. Leoš Janáček wrote Katya Kabanova opera based on the drama of Ostrovsky. Why did you choose the drama instead of the opera, if you used Janáček’s music anyway?
This has been my first story-centric directing in years. But the concrete story served as an alibi. I’ve long been interested in the presentness of film in the theater, which I’ve first experienced in Lars von Trier’s Dogville. Beyond the motive, it takes a lot of time, work and thinking to blur the boundaries of film and theater, so I keep trying it as much as possible. In Empedocles, for example, I thought that if I couldn’t compete with the speed of a movie, I would do it in slow motion so I could see the actors moving almost frame by frame. I wanted to move forward in The Storm. There, I wanted to capture a different kind of symbolism of the storm and lightning, the urban projection. The cameras, which are reflectors here, illuminated the Kabanova's life for a second. In the transient light, there is the possibility of an escapement in the darkness. Besides the prosaic text, the music itself reveals a wonderful new dimension for me. I felt it makes it fly away, quotes it, continues it and counterpoints the story. It’s like a widescreen Hollywood movie soundtrack like Gone with the wind or Doctor Zhivago. That’s why it was very important that at the very end, at Katerina's death, the actress to sing a Russian song with her voice, in a kind of profane, sacred way.
You said earlier in an interview that nowadays there is no theater without opera, dance and film. Isn't this an exaggeration? After all, the film is a much younger genre than opera.
It is true, at the time of Puccini or Verdi, the knowledge of today's film did not exist. The possible mixing of genres is in the air. We can’t play opera with our hands clasped and by talking propping up the midriff. For example, in The Mikado, the actors are singing while they are sliding on their belly, they are singing standing on their heads. Opera is a theater where everything comes together: dance, music and film.
Many people are hesitant about a director “using” the opera, to make it his piece if you like it better this way. It is not a coincidence that Peter Brook has given his Carmen a new title. In Gianni Schicchi, directed by Silviu Purcărete, premiered at the Spring Festival, there is a figure, which does not exist in the Puccini opera.
I think if you don’t offend Puccini’s world, a director or creator has the right to reinterpret the work for his era. Otherwise, this idea, represented by the newly introduced character in Puccini’s Opera by Purcărete is very close to me. It’s about the relationship between objective and subjective time. In The Blacks, for example, a boy and a girl were running on both sides: they were measuring the time of the performance. But their running transformed into a subjective time because when they stopped at the end, you could feel: all of this happened for them to meet.
You’ve called the Genet piece, The Blacks, an opera.
It was a contemporary opera: László Sáry wrote the music. Genet creates an incredibly complex system, the mirroring of mirroring. With the help of the music, one more thing was added, because in the piece Genet prescribes masks. I didn't want to use classic masks, but I remembered, that sound can also be a mask. This is how five opera singers were added to the performance, who lent their voices to one “black” and one “white”. For the singer, this type of task required incredible attention, it was like a live playback. But the actor couldn’t use his voice. Think about it how much of a resignment is for an actor to act by not using his voice. Again, it is a typical case of a circus risk: if someone makes a mistake, the whole thing will fall and the miracle of that day won’t happen. It would have been a crime not to use this suje as an opera.
Now here’s The Vampire. It’s a richly-flowing romantic grand opera. Wagner also wanted to stage Marschner’s piece. His autobiography reveals that he appreciated it, but at the same time found it very difficult. Since its premiere in Leipzig in 1828, The Vampire has never been played in France or Hungary. Why did you choose it?
I did not choose it. Each of the five invited directors met the five opera directors, whom Ágnes Havas, the organizer of the competition found as a partner. The couples were formed based on mutual sympathy and common thinking. It is no secret that for me the French opera director, the M. Surrence from Rennes was the most likable. From the beginning, I felt, that his perception of the arts, to the world, was similar to mine. He is a very modern, yet extremely conservative man. What he did not dare to risk, put it in my hands. As if I had extended his ambitions. The Vampire was his idea. He said he’d wanted to stage it for so long, but he couldn’t find a director for it. As I searched, I found Polidori’s horror short story, The Vampire, based on which and opera was made, I’ve read about Frankenstein’s Night, I delved myself into Byron’s gothic, and I became interested in this strange, sensual, lustful, sick, yet exotic world. And, of course, the essence of vampires. As a Transylvanian, I will always live this “Kamchatka” feeling, that I have come from the end of the world and I am and will stay a mountain Yeti.
Is this a fairy tale like “the lamb is outside, the wolf is inside”?
To the greatest extent. Archetypical, weird, circular story. In a strange night before midnight, the vampire master summons the ghosts, demons, and Ruthven, who is still alive but is a vampire. He wanders the land between the living and the dead. He asks for a plus one-year extension of his mortal life, which he will get if he kills three virgins within 24 hours. Ruthven is unable to complete the task because his attention is weakened at the last minute. And this is caused by none other than his opponent Aubry. They are like yin and yang. Or like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in schizophrenic lacrosse. Like when the dwarf disappears in a Lynch movie and the giant appears. The dwarf entered, how did the giant come out? The giant disappeared behind a curtain where a woman comes out. But how could a woman come out if a giant went in? So the whole thing has something strange. I don’t know if my eyes are dazzling or this is reality?! It adds to this feeling that I replaced the melodramatic parts where, according to the period’s style, the opera singers are saying prose during the musical passages, with a much more mysterious system, because the characters are working with signs. The audience may feel that the characters on the stage understand each other very well, but he/she must be very attentive to understand them. I don’t want to give this weird, in and out story some kind of a Dracula aspect. I don’t want a vampire running around with false teeth, black robe. I know, this is how its usually done, but I’ve long considered this a fairy tale. I’m interested in vampirism. What is someone’s inner vampire? What is he/she consuming? What is blood? What is a bite? What is showing sacrifice? How does the reproduction of my personality depend on how much I can bite from the environment I am sacrificing? What’s exciting is the symbolism of everything. This is why we’ve put on stage a Japanese world instead of the XVII. Centuries Scotland, Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe’s also fantastic environment. A clear, straight, transparent world, in which touch, the victim and sacrificer role is more dominant. Vampirism, in this case, is a mask. It is not the vampire that is interesting, but the person who makes... Nem a vámpír az érdekes, hanem az, aki a létet benne vámpírrá teszi.
What’s is the opera’s music like?
Extremely flowy, romantic- I love it. But it’s difficult.
How much respect does the directing have for the music?? Does it change its length, accents?
They are bolder changes, but basically, we were not looking for a solution in reduction. The locations change quickly, which makes this whole thing very cinematic. The solution to this is particularly exciting because one of the requirements of the festival is that the playground can be prepared fast, so we could not work with large sets, complicated elements. While we have a fifty member band, a choir of thirty people and fourteen soloists. The choir is very dominant, it comes back nine times during the play and it is singing for twenty-twenty five minutes. It is not a decoration, it is not the background, it has an important dramaturgic role. The solution to all of this, the dynamics, the whole habitation of the opera is determined by the Estonian conductor, Olari Elts. He is a fantastic musician and an ideal colleague who has been extremely responsive and open to all of my suggestions so far – which are not usually classic suggestions-. Olari is an unusual phenomenon: if I was to cast the vampire to a conductor, I would choose him.
You should cast him in the play.
I will do so, he is a brilliant figure.
More than three hundred singers applied for the casting of the five opera singers- was it difficult to select?
Yes and no. My vampire, for example, was instantly found. He came in and I said, there he is: Nabil Suliman, a Syrian singer, just stunning. The girls are also great: an Irish singer, Helen Kearns with snow-white skin, a perfect victim figure. A half-German, half French boy plays Aubry and a French girl will be Malvina. The vampire is a high baritone, Aubry is thick and strong but also a soft tenor, and the girls are dramatic and lyrical sopranos. These roles are exceptionally hard, requiring special abilities, serious singing skills and presence. When the team was formed, I felt it’s the same I was dreaming about.
Judit Petrányi, szinhaz.net
Translation by Brigitta Erőss
The strormrider - 2008
Dear Reader, you are holding an edited version of a summer interview. While the topics that have been discussed between us haven’t lost their relevance, we cannot pretend that the unfortunate accident that left Zoltán Balázs caught in bed for months had not happened. Luckily he is now nearing the end of his recovery, playing Treplyov at Bárka Theater in the Seagull directed by János Szász, and in addition, he is preparing at full blast for Leonce and Lena’s premiere in spring with his own company, the Maladype Theater.
On July 3rd, director and actor Zoltán Balázs, the director of Maladype Theater, one of the most important independent companies, recently celebrated his 30th birthday. We’ve had a conversation on Margaret Island in the summer about the Ostrovsky work, the Storm, which have had its premiere at the end of the season at Bárka.
I’ve seen all your performances since the School for Fools, and after Teomachia, we’ve talked about having five or six more performances, so that we somehow get used to the special theatrical language you and your company, the Maladype represent. How conscious are your choices or the path you take?
I don’t really believe in that directorial approach that relies only on spontaneity, the art of being present. If you run a company, it is your dog's duty to lead them consciously on a path that has an essential purpose, an endpoint, to which the company is headed. Of course, there is a performance in my head that I want to get to, but in order to, I have to go through the stations that I have touched, touch or will touch. In genre, style, form, content and taste. They will –hopefully- all write the path I see. If I didn’t see it, I’d just bluff, and bluffing isn’t my genre.
Let's talk about The Blacks for example. What did the company have to learn from this?
The Blacks was a special choice. Genet belongs to the category of incomprehensible authors in Hungary. It is better to not work with it because we have no traditions of that theatrical world he represents. But I think this is a bad attitude because it is like saying that everyone can only eat goulash in the restaurant, while I think it is good for the guest to choose from a wide variety of dishes, at most he does not like one. If curry chicken is not sometimes served with goulash, we will never know what it tastes like. With Genet, I was trying to give the audience a different, spicier taste. But to answer more concrete: László Sáry, by writing a contemporary opera on this complicated text, created a situation in which the actors were at the mercy of musical piece dictated by singers. Through music, singing and this strange playback-technique they’ve learned discipline, concentration, and strengthened their individuality, and it was this teamwork that slowly led them to cope with individualized situations in The Storm.
In The Storm, you throw away the tools that have accompanied your previous performances so far. For example, live music...
I will not drop them, on the contrary: they are all integrated. The occurrent “disturbances” of our performances so far perceived by the audience and a part of the theatrical scene have taken on a new meaning in The Storm, and they have become more easily receptible. Just as the burdens on the actors which do not make sense on themselves, but in the light of the next performances. Without The Blacks, I would not have gotten to Empedocles, and without Empedocles, Acropolis would have not been born, which might be a failure outward, but inward, in a long term, would be a huge profit for the actors.
What are you winning with this?
Lots of things. The meeting with Sanyi Zsótér through a piece, that was not guaranteed to be successful, and the actors knew this. I think this is how it's worth failing, not by doing Tennessee Williams, which can more likely guarantee success. During the five-week rehearsal, the actors learned four separate acts while working with two different directors and two separate costumes and scenery. But in the same amount of time, they had to learn the very complex percussive accompaniment of the fourth act, in a way that the singer's voice depended on their accuracy.
Does an actor know how to play drums?
Is it you who is asking this, a musician?
Just consider I am a layman.
No, an actor does not need to know how to play drums, does not need to know how to playback on an opera, he doesn't need to exist like an icon, does not have to walk in „butoh”, and to live through a Hölderlin’s story in slow motion, unless the actor does not think himself that it is very good for him if he plays the drums, he works with operas and puppets. He will be empowered with a whole new kind of acting, discipline and culture through such collective work...
To have a stronger presence in a realistic style of acting?
Psychological grounding is essential, even if it hangs upside down, it still uses its soul, and this does not depend on form. But the form wraps it up, creating a unified thinking, taste, visual and acoustic world in which the actor has its place like the puppet in the puppeteer's hand. But here, he moves the threads himself. Maladype’s actors are not robots and executives of a directorial dictatorship, but co-thinkers of a system that this company has developed and is constantly developing.
The Storm seems like a new starting point in many ways, for example, this is your first performance that has a strong tradition here as well. So this new production can be compared with other performances.
I deliberately broke the tradition in which in the center of cabanovism is a sullen, black-dressed, wicked figure who walks with a cane, so that this role of a mother can be played by Olga Varjú, a hedonistic actress of a mature age. I tried to unravel the very strange eroticism of Ostrovsky’s world, which was written by the author in a melodramatic way, appropriate for this day and age.
So you think this is opportunity is in the Ostrovsky piece? So the mother won’t be a Russian Bernarda.
Yes, they usually do it as a Russian Bernarda, though in Ostrovsky’s fundamentally cynical and grotesque view, lust and sometimes sickly eroticism play an important role, serves as an elixir for women and men who are joyless and struggling in their relationships.
Do you refer to the relationship between Kabanova and her son?
Maybe. But the same kind of paralysis characterizes the other relationships as well, and the different kind of workable relationship is established between Dikoy and Kabanova, but the meeting between the two lonely people is a foregone love and early orgasm. I think, the unfolding of this shows the real darkness of Ostrovsky. Not locking ourselves into Kabanova’s house, from where neither in nor out. That’s why the storm is important as a symbol and the way the lightning illuminates something in a family’s life in this little town called Kalinov. László Németh’s Lightning or the suddenly startled horse on Delacroix's famous painting shows this moment of lightning in the same way. In the case of The Storm, this means twelve days, during which time the life of a family is ruined, a woman dies, but nothing changes. Unfortunately, Ostrovsky is bitter, because he says that nothing will change the world with the death of a non-hero predestined man. Problems remain, the lightning just pointed these out for a brief moment. Obviously, the light design, the cinematic solutions, the cranes, the camera dollies represent this kind of search, the spotty, stripy, sweeping lighting. And they can strictly get to the intimate sphere of the actors, who know exactly how to see and receive them. This way the characters are never alone. Not even Katerina, in her death. I wanted to put the actors in a position where they have to create a very lively situation in a sterile place because the whole town of Kalinov is like a studio. And they are taking themselves seriously and they are fighting against their situation, which applies to both the role-play and the actor’s meta-situation as well. The cinematic character here is a metaphor just like the opera in The Blacks.
But opera is also an important metaphor through the background music. Now, where are we, in a movie, an opera or an opera-movie?
At the time, Janáček wrote an opera from a play called Katya Kabanova. An important common feature with Ostrovsky is the musical expression of the romantic-melodramatic emotional line, which makes the opera sound very cinematic as if it was born in the Hollywood studios of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. The painted canvas behind the actors expresses the monumentality of the opera and the feeling of widescreen by seasoning the story with irony and cynicism, which between the huge sets looks exposed in front of us, while it is very tiny and micro, because of the insignificant history of an insignificant family. But I deliberately put in the performance not only the backstage scenery but also the opera marches and the in-and-out walks on the long ramps.
And beside all this, you have a main character who could even be a ballerina because of her body shape.
If I don’t see Katerina in Kátya Tompos, then it won’t work. Let’s not forget that she is half Russian. The most beautiful thing about this female protagonist is that she is not in love with a man, but with the feeling of love itself, and when that feeling ceases, the sense of existence ceases. Therefore, she can only make one decision: to commit suicide. She has no other option. If she was in love with the man, a long writhing would start, she would write letters, Like Tatyana to Onegin. That’s why Ostrovksy’s world is exciting. But in my other performances, I am always interested in the monomania of the heroes, their obsession, whether it is their commitment to black or white, whether it is the support of Empedocles or his denial.
Is this a kind of a preaching ardor?
Sure. This is how our life works: first, you vote with absolute determination for something, and then you deny it with the same determination. Because you realize that you have grown old, your attitude changed or the word has slipped out of your hands. But still: you say, this is what I think now. Very few people begin to think about why they thought about it in a way, and why are they thinking differently now... I have changed, or I have already realized, enlightened. But the good pieces work well because they formulate these problems very precisely. If this requires a family history then there you have the family history. Life of the little town Kalinov it’s just an apropos.
You were talking about changes and these changes seemed to be reaching you too: new members arrived as the founders have left the company. It is as if the character of the company is being transformed.
I think it’s quite normal for a company to change from time to time. But perhaps the biggest treasure in Maladype is that everyone says what they think, we can look into each other's eyes and not lie to each other. That sounds pretty sanctified, but it’s true. If we have a problem with each other and why not, we can always discuss it in some way. The necessity of the departures and arrivals were also been discussed.
As far as I know, members of the company are taking part in a continuous inner-training.
Indeed. From Monday to Friday every morning from 9 am to 10 am they have movement training with Ildi Gyenes and Tamás Pospischil, then from 11 am to 3 pm they have rehearsals. Several times a week, in the afternoons they have speech training with Györgyi Illés and Éva Kiss, singing lessons with Bea Berecz and in the evening another rehearsal or performance. Besides these they also have workshops held this year by Gábor Dettre, next year will be held by Árpád Schilling and Claudio Collova, one of the renowned directors of the Palermo Theater. I want our actors to keep up with the hard work and develop, maintain their basic actor toolbox and I think they do it very seriously.
So they are employed full time.
All for a very small amount of money, while many of them have families. Artúr Kálid and Balázs Dévai have families, Nóri Parti is expecting a child, to the delight of all of us.
Yes, but the three of them are members of Bárka’s Company. They get paid from there and this does not charge Maladype’s budget. Is it true?
Yes. The Bárka Theater has hosted the Maladype Theater as an independent company, here is where we create our performances. The director of Bárka, Robi Alföldi provided further assistance by offering a contract to our three most employed artists, so they all work in one place, which has made it easier for us to have an agreement, which has been extremely difficult so far. So the three of them get their salary from the Bárka Theater. The rest, however, get it from Maladype, and in addition to the ten thousand forints per performance, they receive fifty thousand forints per month which you find ridiculous, especially in the case of this type of intensive workshop.
From what source do you run the company?
Almost exclusively from the support, we receive from the Ministry of Culture, this year we had eight million forints. Out of this sum, we do two performances a year (one of our own and one co-production), we are having our older performances, we train, we pay for the scenery and costume, and we give our actors and cast their salary. Like our actors, Judit Gombár designer, László Sáry composer, Judit Góczán playwright, Andrea Demeter production director and myself, we have been working for many years for free or for a symbolic amount of money. If we did not believe so much in each other and in work, this company would have disappeared a long time ago.
I think your situation is not quite clear to the world. Many may think that you are part of a state theater, the Bárka Theater.
Then let’s clear it up: two companies operate side by side on two different budgets. The Bárka has its own budget, maintains its own company, Maladype has this eight million. Specifically, last year it was 8,4 million, but this year we did not want to apply for the minority board of trustees because we are no longer a minority theater in terms of taste and style, so instead we applied as an alternative theater. Here, our activities were recognized by being classified as top alternative theater workshops, and for this, they gave less than last year, only eight million forints. So basically we have to sustain ourselves from this. The Bárka hosts us, otherwise, we would probably not be able to operate under these circumstances, since the infrastructure, lighting and technology are provided by the Bárka. But we are saddled with the financial responsibility for our own performances, the cost of the performances, the actor’s salary, the staff salary and the co-production contribution has to be managed by Maladype. And after this year’s decision, that amount is not sufficient. Once again, Maladype is still a stand-alone company, which has been able to have its performances for three years thanks to the Bárka Theater.
Do you have other sources?
No. There are very few opportunities to raise money for alternative theaters, basically, the National Cultural Fund of Hungary and the Capital Theater Fund could still support it, but the Capital did not even launch an application in 2007. Honestly, we are in serious trouble because obviously, no one will be interested in the fate of Maladype, there is enough problem with the state theater’s structure. But being a continuously working, workshop-based company, you have to see it even with having your head in the sand because these actors really work from morning till night and try to do quality work. Of course, you should know that if it wasn’t for Maladype, I wouldn’t be here anymore.
Where would you be?
In Tibet, or in France, it doesn’t matter, anywhere. I could work in other theaters abroad as well, as an actor and director. In some ways, I've put a heavy burden on my back when I started to raise this company. But I see its bearing. I have a real curiosity for the companies development, when, how, in what time, with what energy can we achieve what we want. That’s what keeps me here. If it wasn’t, I would do it anymore.
Can you tell me the title of the piece we’ve talked about, what you consider as a “terminus”?
No. They’ve been trying to get this out of me for years. How should I say it? If this company disappears, it will only leave me with a bad feeling that I haven’t done it. I'll keep this one for myself, out of superstition. It’s enough for me and my colleagues to know it.
What are the next steps?
We will do Leonce and Lena, as our own production. Then, in spring it will be the Katie of Heilbronn, a co-production between Bárka and Maladype. This would have been a 2007 premiere, but since Nóra Parti is expecting a child, we postponed it to spring.
Is Nóra Parti coming back by that time?
Of course, her child will be six months old when we will be starting the rehearsals.
And then?
We have plans, the question is what we can manage from the amount we have. But perhaps by now, we have ridden out a storm after seven years.
Are these seven years over?
It would be good, this company had been punished for voting for a “formalist” theater director. But I think if they saw us going in the wrong direction, they could replace me at any time.
Do they have such power?
Rather! If they feel they don't make progress or they are set back by failure... but you should ask them. It is nice that we have followed the same path since the School for Fools, which was greeted with euphoric ecstasy as a great celebration of Hungarian acting. And when this compounded in later performances, some analysts plunged into this world, while others shut themselves out, they labeled our performance as aesthetic, beautiful and formalist. If it was up to me, I would just open up communication between the audience, the critics, and the theatermaker.
I deeply agree. We are slowly returning to our starting point. But let’s do a bypass. While we were walking you told me that you ride in your free time. Why did you choose this sport?
Because it means infinite freedom and happiness to me and because there are real friendships between me and the horses. In addition, I am very excited about the trick riding, which I am learning from my stunt friend Zoltán Molnár. If I could develop myself within two years, to be able to ride, not to just love it, I would take into consideration doing stunts as a part-time job without hesitation. I'm serious about this because ever since I got this experience, is it as if my childhood circus dreams had been fulfilled. Because I wanted to be an acrobatic clown, who falls down, the stunt is bizarre and risky, but he gets back on his feet, shakes himself, and everyone sees that he is fine. Somehow, I can relate to this as a stuntman. Besides, the new performance, The Storm, and the fact that I riding, somehow connect in me: I feel like I'm present as a stormrider. Sounds funny, but sometimes I find myself thinking about the theater through horses. After all, this whole acting thing, which we are doing could be a common sport. You should know, for example, that a horse is more afraid of me than I am of the horse. Those who don’t dare to get on horseback, are wrong here. I am more afraid of the theater than the theater of me.
Are you afraid of the theater?
Of course, because it’s all secrets and mysteries, and I have no idea what I can unravel from it. Whether the kind of interest or desire for a risk that I have about the theater is how much the theater will allow me to show about itself. Will it be a rummage or a real expedition. Equestrian tour. It's like riding, this performance and Maladype’s odd situations it's not by accident. And perhaps the terrible financial condition makes us even stronger, more intense and more connected, while still avoiding inwardness. That’s what I want to believe in.
How important is your 30th birthday to you?
I can't wait. It’s the prime of life. I really loved all my ages and I still consider myself a happy person. I wouldn't have thought I’d come so far... I live intensely, and obviously, the nervous system and physique fret sooner. What I know, I make up for it and compensate for it. So far I've been paying less attention to myself, but in the last five months, I've started paying attention again. Somehow the way I work or my theatrical thinking changes. I say this stormriding because it’s dangerous, but it’s really good to go back and forth from gallop to sprint race and from sprint race to close-trot, and getting to feel the rhythm of these shifts over and over again.
But then there is theater on the horses back as well? And what if you get off the horse?
The theater goes on. The horse called theater goes on. (Laughs.) But by that time I got off and I'm sorry that I had to run beside the horse and not on his back, but more likely wouldn’t run after him.
Because you would be a stuntman?
I'd be a stuntman because then everything would come all around, the circus, the theater and the stunt. And I’d make that big trick riding moment with my master Zoli Molnár. Without energy, lukewarm there is no point doing it. Be more dangerous and fall, but be something.
What other works will you have besides Maladype?
I'm now filming “1” movie directed by Pater Sparrow, in which I am Richard Lance. In August I am starting the rehearsals for the Seagull at Bárka Theater, directed by János Szász, who gave me the role of Treplyov. This will have the premiere in October. In the meantime, I am working at the Nitra festival, where I will be making a thirty-minute etude with Ádám Tompa. Then, at the end of the season, I will be Johnny Grain o'Corn from Pongrác Kacsóh’s John the Valiant. But I am not giving up riding. Because as a stuntman, or in the riding hall I am learning healthy thinking and this reflects on the theater. You can talk about anything with those there, about women, horses, politics, and meanwhile, you are learning a technique, to let go of these intrigues. For me, this is infinite happiness because I want to remain a healthy theatermaker. I'm not insulted, I have no problem with the world, the profession. I'm just angry and helpless when I feel that our work is much more complex and complicated than the extent to which I can reward my actors. That’s it.
Gábor Pap, Criticai Lapok
Translation by Brigitta Erőss
The starry sky is the limit - 2008
The director and artistic director of the Maladype Company is an interesting and distinctive figure in the “independent acting”; it is true, this sounds a bit ambivalent in his case, because the director’s “vision” which breaks with the traditional dramaturgy constricted in frameworks, floats somewhere indefinitely in the atmosphere of art. I had a conversation with Zoltán Balázs about Leonce and Lena, about choices, dramaturgy, and non-existent boundaries.
The premiere of Leonce and Lena was on May 9th. What are your feedbacks and experiences?
For me, the premiere on May 9th was not the real premiere, from the company’s point of view the official premiere will be in Thália in the fall, we just had to hold the performance at Bárka due to our prior contract, so this is the explanation. For many years, there was always a date that determined the performance, but for the last one and a half, two years I’ve decided that no external constraint can overcome work. I want to create a process and if this is a two years’ work then it’s a two years’ work, I don’t care. So this kind of closeness and pushiness of the structure cannot determine me. So I rather considered the performances at Bárka to be public rehearsals, of course in the noble sense of the word. But to answer your question, the spectators are coming back, I’ve seen familiar faces for the fifth time, and that’s a very good thing, in the end, that’s why we do it.
So then it’s well received by the audience.
Yes, I think very well.
And how much are they involved? Are they active?
Sometimes too much. At first, they might be passive, but they get into it. This changes and this is what’s good about it, that every night the audience is different, and sometimes different scenes appear, so the texture of the piece is always renewed. Our main test is when we will be going to high schools, to young people, to an unknown ground, where are no people from the theater. So it’s going to be very different, more organic, and more elaborate.
Where did this idea come from? Is this a unique initiative or are we talking about an existing genre?
I can’t say this, I don’t think that I reinvented the wheel, I’m sure there is something like this, there was a striving. What I believe is that Leonce and Lena does not turn up at different independent companies by accident. There are several reasons for this: one is that the topic is very close to the theater, so you have to be able to formulate the method of working collectively, the coexistence, our relation with the theater and ourselves. And Büchner represents this potential, the theme, and its formulation very strongly in the piece, so we have nothing else to do, but to undertake it. That’s why I have used the piece in a fragmentary way. I did not sell it as a non-unified, well-dressed story, but I've tried to assume the aspect of the scenes itself. Of course, the story is not that complicated, but the emphasis is on the solution.
Can the same thing, what you’ve done with Leonce and Lena, be done with other pieces?
There are some, but this is not suitable for all of them. There are pieces you can be sure of, but Pinocchio is not a good example.
Did you choose from several options? Why did you choose this?
I knew I wanted to do this. Our company has just been reorganized, college students and an older actor, Zsolt Páll has joined us, and to start the season with new energy and impetus, the company needs to organize its collective taste and thinking on a very strong basis. And this way of acting and the piece is perfectly suited to unite, unify, bring closer and sustain the company in the long run. And besides this, Leonce and Lena, beyond love, which is evident, is about exciting topics.
Have you been planning to do all the possible variations once, as a sort of a record?
Absolutely, it's necessary. There’s a marathon planned, so we are doing something in which the audience brings a cold meal and it’s going to last two days. So we start at night, let’s say about 10 o’clock and with breaks, I think we get to the beginning of the first act before dawn, but certainly not to the end, then a little rest in the morning and we start in the afternoon with the end of the first act and we might finish it at dawn the next day. By the way, this is already being prepared at Zsámbék. I'm sure it's interesting for the spectators to consider all the scenes because they are very excited when they are watching one scene to see the second and the third as well. Many would watch all four, but since the story has to go on, there is a sort of selection.
Let’s talk about props. Bamboo sticks have ingeniously shaped both the objects and internal visions. Where did the idea of using a bamboo stick come from?
I have a scenic designer, Judit Gombár, with whom I have been working for seven years, and we come up with everything together. I came with something myself, she did too and finally, the whole came together. We do everything together, so I don’t know where the idea came from, what came first, the egg or the chicken. It just simply is, and thank goodness it works well because I didn't want it to be ruined, that one brings in an ashtray, the other one chair the third one a curtain. So there is a single object, which is the bamboo, and through this everything can be made and formulated.
As a director, you participate in the performances and you inform the audience. Didn't you think about taking a role in the piece?
No, by no means. Only Woody Allen could do that on film, that he was in and out and he was brilliant in both parts. On one hand, I am sure that the trust of the company would lower If I, like a squirrel, jumped between them, because after a while seriousness would disappear in what I say from the outside. If I do my job inside and out, what are they adjusting to? And I don’t want to perform and at the same time to observe them as a director. As an actor, I did what I had to do, but I never thought of performing in my own company, nor would I, because the two tasks are different. And I want to do this seriously so that there is a process so that I have the insight and I am accountable for that I see.
Does this piece have a developmental process?
It has. The starry sky is the limit. Just think about it, you can't figure out what kind of variations come together that night. There are one hundred scenes, and many of them do not appear two or three times, so we have to go over them by ourselves. Conditioning the piece is an important task because if you put together a fifteen-scene performance, you have to constantly maintain that as well, you have to innovate it. Here, the actors have a great internal responsibility, but it’s also my responsibility when we are maintaining the performance.
How long did you rehearse the piece before the performance?
For two months. I know it seems like it was half a year, and it could have not been bad at all, but unfortunately, it was only two months, because of the Bárka, which allowed us a state theater type of a rehearsal. Of course, we've been rehearsing at dawn, at night, whenever we could, in the restroom, in the hallway, in the garden, everywhere, but, if I could, I would have been rehearsing it for one year. We've been going through these two months very intensively, and this is the result, thank goodness, from which I can see that the energy of a very concentrated company can be recognized on stage, and I think this is the most important thing.
The company had moved its inhabitancy from Bárka to Thália, what was the reason?
We have been at Bárka for three years, and this is a lot of time to be in one place. So if there was no Thália we still would have left. But fortunately, Thália offered this opportunity. An independent company works at a completely different pace than a theater that has a rehearsal from ten to two and six to ten, so the rehearsals are placed within definite bounds. If I want to rehearse at three in the morning, I have to ask for permission, which was acceptable, because they were helping our work. After all let's not forget that we were a very strong profile for Bárka, that they being able to show us was good for them and us as well, because we had an infrastructure behind us. However, we were thinking about how we want to continue. We did not think that we could do it under the same conditions as before, but luckily in Thália we have a separate place, a rehearsing room, studio, we have more elbow room. And more importantly, we have fifteen performances this month while at Bárka we had only six.
When will be the companies’ new premiere and what will it be?
On September 27th and 28th in Nitra Bolero will be premiering at the International Festival, which is based on a Ravel musical composition- I don't know what to call it- maybe a movement theater, gesture theater kind of piece that will introduce a new side of the actors. While in Leonce and Lena their physical preparedness was obvious, this will be an improvement of that. I wanted them to work on classical music, which is pretty much missing from the theaters, it is usually left out. I think it's important for an actor to work with classical music as well, I've been using operas in my previous directions, but now let's focus on Ravel. Of course, there will be five Mallarmé poems, so it will be neither dance nor theater, but somewhere in between, a series of etudes. Maybe that's the best I can describe it.
I've seen you in the Seagulls performance at Bárka. Will you be still performing there?
No, because I won’t be home for a month, I'll be in France and I think it's unworthy for the theater to wait for me with the Seagull. It is better if someone could replace me from their own company. Besides, my schedule for the next year is unpredictable, on one hand, I have Maladype, which is the most important, I have to direct abroad, and after that I have Faust, so it will be a full schedule, I can't guarantee to agree on two or three occasions.
Zoltán Kristóf, gondola.hu
From Transylvania to Tibet - 2006
To this day Zoli Balázs still sulks at the train station at Cluj-Napoca. He had no intention to come. He attended drama high school in Szentes. From here he goes to college, in Miklós Benedek actors, later László Babarczy directing class. In Avignon, he attends Anatolij Vasiliev’s workshop, learns from Robert Wilson in Paris and takes directing courses in Stuttgart. He is the artistic director of Maladype Theater of a Gypsy-Hungarian Company, he is performing and directing at Bárka, because of his “bad luck” he receives two awards a year. The most recent one, the Gábor Miklós award was for Hamlet in Tim Carroll’s directing.
It is known that he does not like to talk about his awards. I don’t think because of false modesty. If I’m right, he has his definite opinion about this as about other things as well.
The awards are not about me, but about themselves. Because every year they have to be given to somebody(ies) and a board of trustees decides their fate according to various interests. I’m not saying they don’t matter, but they don’t help you any further.
Your performances have been invited to the National Theatre Meeting in Pécs (POSZT). This year the Empedocles. What do this festival and similar professional meetings mean to you?
Árpád Schilling and I recently arrived from Lithuania, where we’ve attended a one week workshop in Vilnius. We’ve worked with Schilling with four actors from Krétakör-Annamária Láng, Lilla Sárosdi, Zsolt Nagy and Tilo Werner- and with the renowned director’s actors of the Lithuanian Theater. We got into it because we both sensed – and I think the same about POSZT-, that something does not happen what makes such a festival interesting: there is no live dialogue between the creators. Everyone has a day or two, they rush home, or they get drunk and have a good night. They don’t argue or interpret each other’s work.
There are debates in Pécs as well, although the question has been raised whether they can be qualified professionals.
They are not real debates. Those who talk about the performances are prepared –if they are prepared-, so they are elevating the performance or calling it down. Ther are no real, valid arguments and counterarguments. I’ve learned from my foreign masters, that teachers and students do not necessarily have to think the same thing. A disciple justifies its masters' teaching by surpassing him at one point. If the director had chosen this style, he imagined the piece in this construction and I can only comment based on this. Instead, they call the director to account for their ideas. Of course, there are receptive discussion partners at home, who can fit into the finished construction and this is their starting point. In this case, I take into consideration, when one expresses his criticism, his lack of something. But calling somebody out for something compared to ourselves cannot allow anyone to develop, it can’t be the basis for a live debate, meaningful conversation.
For example, you are often accused of excessive aestheticism and formalism that this is at the expense of expressing the content.
For me beauty is orderliness, orderliness is power, power is an aesthetic experience, like a beautiful woman, a slow-motion, an accurately opened book- like the priest is flipping the Bible’s pages. I assume if I’m formalist and arty-crafty from this.
You consider the mass to be the most perfect structure, as Pilinszky wrote in Nail and Oil: “The theater of the future must be like a mass, for only the silent sweep of the mass can revive the bloody events of the past.”
Mass is also an aesthetic experience and I need its aesthetics. It has its exact script, just like a theatrical performance. When the priest lifts the wafer, the worshippers believe that that is the body of Jesus, thus the miracle is born, “it transforms”. They attend a ceremony with bound rules, but the same thing does not happen twice. Just as with two different performances. Content is given form within the mass: they talk about the Bible or the life of Jesus with people who accept the rules of this form. I experience the same thing in a good theater: I am publicly alone. We believe together the set of rules because we want to believe. That’s why you can’t make theater by yourself.
Are these the view-point you are considering while choosing a piece?
You’ve noticed, I’m choosing pieces and authors that don’t have recipes of long-standing at home. They don’t know how to play Hölderlin’s Empedocles or Weöres’s Teomachia.
You want to explore new paths that are quite different from the usual.
On one hand, so that these authors and their works can be known by the Hungarian audience so that they don’t have to watch the same six Tennessee Williams or Edward Albee adaptations every year. On the other hand, these roles are challenging for the actors, because they use the intellect of the actor as well – which is not very typical, because in Hungarian theater there is constant state-mongering. Thirdly, for me as a director and my permanent co-workers, these tasks are to be solved. You have to figure it out visually, acoustically and formally. You have to create an image, visuals, and aesthetics around them. I cannot say too often that: form is not the enemy of the content. I choose a piece, I give it a face. The face’s veins and wrinkles are mostly in my head, but the features smooth out during the rehearsals. When the director tells his actors: it makes a difference how you hold your little finger, how your head turns thirty, forty-five or ten degrees, your spine is straight or not, this turns into power. It is incredibly important that theater is not equal to life, but is a redefined language. I feel sick when it tries to imitate it. There is a good reason they say: theater is a heavenly duplication of life. I don’t want to see Ilona Béres shopping with two string bags. She still speaks of human emotions, even when she is standing still like an idol for two hours.
Or if she says the text backward, like in Teomachia... Generations of actors grew up in what is known as “salon acting”. They are reluctant to stand still for two hours like an idol. A significant proportion of the audience who were not socialized with Zoli Balázs or Sándor Zsótér does not go to the theater to think but to entertain themselves. So you first have to win over your actors and then educate the audience for an open-minded, wide-ranging willingness, which is the basis and the starting point for your work to be understood at all.
That’s right, but I’m not alone. Others think the same. Zsótér, Kovalik, Schilling... The audience is not separate from the theater. They are organic constituents, just like critics. It does not work like we do a contemporary theater, the spectator sits in his velvet chair, sometimes reacts a little – because he paid with his money for the performance to get the catharsis – and then he goes home. Or it would be nice if it didn’t work that way. We can be expected to evolve, experiment, change the outdated rules of the Hungarian theater, to use our great ancestors experiences- it doesn’t have to be denied, but it has to be melt in, we have to move on-, but the audience must also learn a different kind of reception, or more precisely, to revive what once existed. I’m not trying to create a strange phenomenon for the audience. Sensory attention, sensitivity to metacommunication, undetected thinking, deepening, the calmness of observation are all birth-defying qualities, which are dampened by placing the spectator in the dark and they can watch the story just like a soap opera.
This is why you don’t choose story-centered pieces?
The story for me is that we are together. This is often mistaken for the concept of the ceremony, which in some ways is a pejorative term and can point thinking about theater in the wrong direction. Because it’s not that we force the odd, in-depth ceremony theater and the audience will either understand it or not. I try to open up, what was natural to me as a child at a mass or a rock concert. So, I may not understand exactly what the rock star is singing, but I fell that he is conveying something and hundreds of people beside me are involved in this energy flow. That’s why when our audience comes in the theater the performance has already started: the actors honor them with their concentration and preparedness. The spectator should not be a consumer, he/she should be allowed to slow down. Because everything in the theater has its own time.
What happens if the actor’s attitude makes it impossible for the piece to get close to the audience? Let’s say because he doesn’t understand what the director wants, he is convinced that the audience will hate him and he becomes passive and unmanageable.
I’m lucky I haven’t been in this situation so far.
So you have not directed in a theater where...
I don’t want to. Of course, it might happen that at one point I will accept something... The point is: if the actor sees that I am prepared – maybe he does not understand why he will have to walk in an iconic style (like in Pelleas and Melisande) for one hour and a half-, but he feels, that I know exactly what I want. There is a sense of confidence based on the senses: the actor is willing to go crazy if he knows, that everything eventually will come together. Of course, when the rehearsals start, you still have to fight for each sentence.
Do you like it if the actor is asking you back, is thinking independently?
I’m impressed. But I’m aware that Anna Nagy, -mother of Kata Huszárik- is, for example, reluctant to be hired by the directors because she is asking back. This is exactly what I like. The vivacity and enjoyment of thinking is nothing, but the debate of heart and intellect. The two works together: the personality is made up of soul and intellect. If these are in harmony, they are looking for each other, then we can see on stage individuality. It doesn’t matter if it’s a stylized, crazy, abstract theater, Zoli Balázs’s kind of virtual theater or Zsótér’s still theater... The actor will either impress me or not. If there is not, it won’t work, regardless of the forms, contents and forms of expression. The personality must be self-identified. This is my meeting point with myself. I’m interested in whether the actor is thinking publicly in front of the audience, whether his intellect glows in every night.
Can you find these actors? Because that would mean that the lineup is fantastic.
There is a generation that is unfortunately missing. The elder.
You have probably met as actor directors who couldn't bring you to the situation, didn’t like that you were thinking. What did you do in such cases?
I suffered. I hate it if they are using an actor. If they take advantage of his will and creativity. If he does not give me any alternative solutions, then when I present my ninety-ninth variation, he says he does not know what to do. The “I don’t know” is the death of an actor. He gets left alone, panics reaches out to stereotypes, starts playing by himself, save what needs to be saved. As a director, I’d rather tell what to do exactly, but these are just frames in which he can be completely free.
You often emphasize that your performances are the stages of a longer process. Then you should see the end. What is the goal?
I see a single performance in my head, after a long time.
More specifically?
I will not tell you. But the next step is the Acropolis of Stanislaw Wyspianski, our collective work Zsótér. I’ve invited him to the Maladype. Acropolis has no help, no preview, it is extremely difficult, and it has nothing to do with the Hungarian acting. He is going to direct the first two acts, and I will direct the last two ones. Ten actors will be in it. They are going to work with two different directors in one performance: different tools, different style mark, but under the aegis of a single thought. As a director and artistic director, I see this as a very important step.
You obsessively explore the undiscovered values of world literature. It’s your method to match the found complex materials with simple tools. What’s the point of this?
I can only get to that particular performance through deconstruction. This means that in terms of concentration, of intellectual community I strengthen the actors who are by my side and who are working hard. All this with years of work to make them aware of common toolbox and language. Then, when this is built up, we begin to deconstruct the whole thing. We destroy it by building something very strong before.
What are you deconstructing?
For example aesthetics. I could picture that one climbs up a mountain and then, when it reaches the highest peak, falls and the flying compresses the climbings fatigue, work, into a single weightless moment. I have to build up the falling. Unlike those who talk confidently about how to do theater, I don’t know how to do it. I’m interested in it instinctively. I look for it like an animal, because it excites me.
Where does consciousness begin?
The theater is not a solitary genre. The actors are not puppets, I need their unconditional confidence, dedication and the full power of their personality.
According to this, there is serious confusion about clarifying the concept of director-based theater. The circle of directors which Zoltán Balázs is part of, is often accused of self-realization is anti –production, -actor, -spectator. Many people affix the latter stamp to the director’s theater.
Yes, we are self-actualized formalists, who luxuriate themselves on actors, while their personality is negligible to us... But this is not true. It is not a sin to have a director prepared for the performance and to think something about it clearly and precisely. It is also not a sin if the director is consistently and consciously building up its actors whom he can work regularly, and he also tries to rethink himself over and over again. Fellini said he was making movies to meet himself. Which artist doesn’t play, paint or direct for the same thing? The most basic artistic philosophy must be reconsidered if the creator does not justify it. On the other hand, we still have actors who believe in these directors who are curious about their “insanity”. Ilona Béres, Mari Törőcsik, Enikő Börcsök, Olga Varjú, Nóra Parti, Artúr Kálid... They do not see rules as barriers, but as liberating, safe frameworks. They know every night where they are coming from, where are they heading and what guidelines do they have. While in another type of performance, the wretched actor is standing in the backstage being anxious. I do not believe in this slavering and slivering “pretty sad” acting, because I think it is out of date. The new generation overtook the lead. Not to mention, Lars Van Trier brought theater into the film, but the theater was not able to bring the film into its framework. This is also a task that has to be solved. This is why a tried to slow down time in Empedocles: so we can see how we can freeze a moment. Because if somebody can watch a movement for a long time, it’s like watching a slow-motion movie. It is essential to reflect on the century we live in. We also say consciously to an actor that now you are playing a man, now a woman, now an old man, now a young man, because your personality can handle these contours...
In most cases, the directors' mid-life crisis is put on the table by the mixed-gender casting.
There is no such thing. The actress gets the male role, the actor gets the female role because it is him or her who can do it. For example, Márta Martin, is a more powerful man than any other of the companies’ actors. At that point, the directors moving force is the battle of real energies on stage. I believed Ilona Béres as a man, not because she was speaking in a deep voice. We need to realize these deep-seated problems. We live in a strange, genderless society: the mixing of the sexes, the inferiority of the weaker, or its eroticism is a must so that it will affect the theater. If we ignore this, we will work as we did before Christ. I don’t want such theater, only in a good sense, I want the the public spirit: so that the audience it’s part of the theater and the theater it’s part of the audience’s life.
You repeatedly emphasized the importance of intercultural meetings and dialogue between cultures. This is why you were committed to Maladype? How did the company originally run by Dragan Ristic get to you?
They started under the name Vareso Avar. Ristic is a Serbian-Gypsy man who had already dealt with Gypsy Theater in Serbia, and he thought he will introduce it to Hungary as well. Zoltán Lendvay was the first one, who directed the Blood Wedding at the Roma Parliament, which was a kind of traveling theater experiment. There was one thing Dragan didn’t like: the Gypsies were stabbing and escaping the bride in the Blood Wedding... It was a good performance, but it reinforced the image, the stereotypes that were imbibing thinking about Gypsies anyways. And Dragan did not want a folkloristic theater, he didn’t want to imitate traditions, but he simply wanted a theater where Gypsies could also perform. This is the difference between what Vareso Aver was and what Maladype had turned out.
Who asked you for the first directing?
Ristic. He was looking for a director who was willing to work with a Gypsy theater, by the thought he represented. I was recommended by Zsótér, and Maladype is the most beautiful gift of my career.
How did you become the artistic director?
Ristic had to leave due to embezzlement and the company asked me to be the artistic director.
The goals of Maladype include care for the Romani language, promoting Gypsy acting, approaching Hungarian-Gypsy culture, and exploring alternative paths to keeping the tradition alive. But what matters is a good contemporary theater. How much do you consider the original purpose of Maladype in your selection of pieces and directions?
Absolutely. Because there are members of the company of different ages, cultures, colors, they interact in many ways. It is a fantastic task to keep them together. The pieces I am choosing all require the same thing. The Blacks could only be performed together, just like Jack, or The Submission, The School for Fools, Empedocles as well. What is important, I don’t bring folklore, stereotypes, I don’t want to see Gypsy girls in pink skirts.
What are you most interested in them?
Their mentality, their relationship with the community, the idea of individual and power, which is more pronounced in their lives, it is present in a tougher, riskier way than in ours. It is difficult to break out of this social environment: if one starts down this path, he will become an outcast. It is difficult to build a bridge between Gypsy and European white culture. Few succeed. The Gypsy members of Maladype Company are often despised of their kind for selling themselves off, they “whitened” because they work together with a white director in a company with a non-Gypsy control. They take a much higher risk than those who only deal with the idea of being in a good or bad theater.
How is your company seen by the audience?
I think well.
The situation of Gypsies causes serious social tensions in our country. How can You relate to this general feeling of prejudices and fears?
People are not born with prejudices, and I have not brought this from my roots. I was Hungarian in a Romanian medium. My family had lived against his will in a place called Romania and not Hungary. My grandparents were detached from the motherland and couldn’t do anything about it, but they stayed Hungarian even under the most difficult conditions. For me this is exemplary, this is why I look for strong individuals in the theater. Our identity will not be dependent in regards to whom are we dominant. I am Hungarian in Ethiopia, Romania, and Tanzania as well, and I think this is what’s more important and not that I fix kituz my nationality on my chest. This affirms about inner life. I see Gypsies as having the same inner life.
You’d come to Hungary in 1989, the year of the regime change. You often say that you were angry at your mother because Transylvania was your home despite all sorts of atrocities. Were is your home now?
Anywhere. I need to get from Transylvania to Tibet, it doesn’t matter where I am. This is why I was hitchhiking across Europe. I’m a free man. I have nothing to lose. The one thing I care about it to get closer to myself through the world.
I don’t want to get into politics, but what I say it’s also a moral issue. How did the referendum from 2004 affect you? Did you like to live here then?
Yes. I am not tied to borders. I find it appalling that this question came up in any form. That people had to decide involuntarily, though the answer is obvious. Hungarians across the border are included here. It is not a question of yes or no. This is how it is. There is no question that they are not Romanians, Serbs, Slovaks, but Hungarians living in Romania, Serbia and Slovakia. This is the basic question, for example, they still say about me that I am Romanian. So the country should not have been put in this situation. But if you have already brought it up...
That was what the question was about, no one could argue with what you have just said.
I went and I voted with a yes. Many told me that they did not go because by abstention they wanted to emphasize what I have just said earlier. They just didn’t think of those who live outside. All of these people felt that they have been disowned by their brothers living in the motherland. We could analyze, explain, clarify, redress the stories, you can clue them up, but it is a psychologically terrible feeling. It’s a bigger trauma then the Treaty of Trianon.
What is like to live in Hungary as a transborder?
I do not hold transborder as a shield. I had a beautiful childhood, to this day I miss the mountains a lot. I do not work, I do not get money, I do not think in one way or another because I am a minority. I was born that way out there and I will always be like this everywhere, as long as I am thinking differently than the majority. I would not like to turn this into a virtue, and advantages, I do not want to deal with it at all. I became cosmopolitan. I’m Hungarian in China and I’m Chinese in Hungary if I have to. If this influenced me, I would be unable to work freely, I could not do anything with the objectivity and boundlessness of the theater. If I consistently made something from this hypersensitive damage, I would bring it up a lifetime. Life is more exciting than people always dealing with one problem.
Orsolya Kővári, Kritika, 2006
Translation by Brigitta Erőss
A new era - 2006
How do the director and actor get along in you?
I think it is now when the two are in balance. At last, I can be in a work as an actor with such a role which is progress for me. Empedocles means so much to me because it represents another important stage in a long-term workflow. I just need a sparkle to get acting and directing in perfect harmony. So important is the work with Tim right now, that this experience now affects my directions as well. A new era is starting in my head, that’s for sure. This acting tool, which goes back to the basics of improv, that Tim requires- a concentration and responsibility similar to the circus’s risk-taking nature- not only challenges my acting condition but also shapes my theatrical approach. A lot of things have been brought to my attention by this work, so maybe I don’t consider any more the overly rehearsed performances more genuine. It’s much more important that the actor gathers inspiration during the rehearsals so that he can be himself over and over again every night on every performance.
You say, that only now has this unity between the actor and director been formed, but if we look at Hamlet and Empedocles, we may discover a radically different kind of theatrical approach in them. In one of them, total freedom and the resulting eventuality prevails and in the other one, the restrained forms are determining. One would expect these two to argue in you.
It’s not, because Empedocles’s form is restrained, but inside it has just as much freedom as Hamlet. Any actor would confirm this if you would interview them. On one hand, they are incredibly safe, because of the structure, on the other hand, because of the thoughtfulness of the performance, which they’ve embraced, and thirdly, because they know that their colleague’s responsibility, good taste, mood, sanity and joy is guaranteed that night. But in acting Hamlet is the same from the inside. For Tim, the form is also decisive, meaning the space he had invented with Judit Csanád, which determines the changing stage (that changes from act to act), and the place of the audience. But it is also restrained because you can and may improvise only by taking into consideration the truth of the situations and the differences between characters statuses- added to which you’d never reproduce the same ideas, even if you held onto them. We may improvise only along prohibition boards. But during the two-month rehearsal, with the unraveling situations and the constant improvisations, a common and internal vocabulary emerged between the actors, so that we could understand the rules unspokenly as well: what is what we can do with the spectator, what is the thought that can be reproduced in a later performance. This Hamlet performance seems to be extremely free, but it is also very starchy inside. This is what makes me happy. I am in love with this production. It almost hurts if we are not playing it. Now I am in love as a director and actor as well – finally.
In this performance, everything is in motion, the space, the casting, the music, the use of props. What was the director’s intention with this targeted uncertainty? Did he want to move the audience outside their usual role? Or he wanted the get the actors out of their routine?
Both. And he wanted to dust the piece itself. In the end, Tim, which I’ve never seen before in the Hungarian theater, achieved that the students with required readings and older generations, who have seen the play with old, great and legendary actors, can both enjoy this performance. And they will be happy to come back. This proved to me that Hamlet as the subject-matter is still exciting today. The reading rehearsals did not take place in a way that we’ve first read the text and then everybody stood quiet. We had to do the play right away, and situations were born, where we realized we did not know anything about it before. Then we had to play it without the text in five minutes, and after that, we had to condense the essence of each scene in one sentence. Tim played millions of games with us, but we could never repeat ourselves. The rehearsals were truly about unfolding the actors’ personalities. I think you can feel it through the performance of how much we’ve enjoyed the work. We learned many things about each other in two months. I surprised the others as it turned out later. They, knowing my directions, it was unbelievable for them that I can exist this freely on stage as an actor as well. But I'm also amazed by the others on what they do, how far their courage went. Of course, all this could have been a huge failure. Because the audience could have said stop provoking me. Now I experience that they almost offer themselves, so we can involve them in our game. Perhaps this brings back the joy of childhood to the theater.
So far, we considered the essence of the rehearsal, when the actor and the director are working together to find the best, most credible solution that can best express what they want to show together from the piece, the character. What were the rehearsals here about, if not about finding the ideal solution?
They were about trying out the extreme possibilities. There were no blocking rehearsals, which is unimaginable in state theaters, though- as I have experienced my own- this is nothing but a simple highway patrol. However, in most places there are no real attempts, most of the time the first ideas are kept. Tim wouldn’t allow anything like that. We did the same scene as an English absurd drama, Japanese tea ceremony, and as an Italian family scene. But we always clarified before, what is important in the situation, what is the purpose and intention of the characters. But Tim didn’t want to make a final decision. For example, he did not want to fix –and it was impressive to me- whether Ophelia was pregnant with Hamlet or not. If my partner that evening decides that she is pregnant, I need to discover this myself from her behavior. It also means, that the actors have to be very sensitive to each other, so they can notice the other’s decision that night. But this does not question the evolution of the character, it only enriches them.
The text allows countless possibilities, but each decision has a series of consequences, otherwise, the pieces’ internal structure would collapse. How can this be sustained while everything is the result of a momentary decision?
It requires an incredible concentration because neither of us can lose any of the information that happens in other scenes with other actors. But there is no need to build character arcs, because for Tim –which I also liked- the scene lasted from beginning to the end. In the next one, we had to switch (many times even several times in only one scene). We didn’t carry our mood as a burden. Although I was sad before, in the next scene I could be happy. Here I was evil, here I will be nice. This is very liberating because nowadays the actors do not work like this, they continuously carry their “moods”. We, during the rehearsal, had to learn how to cut, cut, and cut from the confusion of ideas. Somewhere, this is the essence of improvisation and presence: a thought it is not fixed in a person’s mind, but merely determines its relation to the moment. I realized, that I, as Balázs Zoli, need to absorb more and more from the rehearsals, the National Museum or the rehearsals at the apartment. I need to soak up everything like a sponge so that at any moment I could represent the sentences of the piece as exactly how I see the world. But with the impulses from my partners which they’ve also absorbed during the rehearsals.
During traditional rehearsals, the director helps the actor by selecting his ideas...
Tim also selected.
How, if each idea only came up once?
By indicating what was the wrong choice. It is good, that you’ve tried-he said- but throw it away. It is tasteless, thoughtless, stupid, autotelic. He used such words. And we knew exactly where not to go.
But if the rehearsals were a series of training and exercises...
Not only. Of course, we went from scene to scene, then one act at a time, and at the end, we played all five at once.
Did you get enough reference with this open method, which you could use later in the performance?
We talked a lot with the actors about this. We have concluded that anyone who panics because we just only been improvising, but not rehearsing will lose the match. Because Tim was rehearsing with us, we just only had to pay attention to him. For example, I’ve tried every scene at least thirty different ways. But this did not happen, like, the director told me his ideas, what the scene was all about and what he expects from me. Instead, he told us the parameters with which we began to improvise. And he responded to everything exactly, and I had nothing else to do, but to absorb it like a sponge. Even in my discarded ideas, there were some elements on which I could build something. One time, for example, I’ve used a prop, a cup, which I’ve put on my head. At that moment I remembered the emptiness of the offering of the story. I managed to stay that way all scenes, without the cup falling off my head. However, it fell before the last sentence. I started blubbing, I could not believe that someone creates a situation, he thinks he can do it, keep it, hold onto it, but it breaks in the last minute. Tim told me to keep from all of this that Hamlet is constantly inspired by his failure. That there is nothing that he can show, and this drifts him in helpless situations. This was an important recognition for me. I will not use the cup anymore because it’s forbidden, but I will try to recreate this experience. It’s not the prop that matters, but the result of its use at a given moment.
I’ve asked about Hamlet, what changes had Tim Carroll done in the theatrical rote, when he created unusual terms. Did you ever have that intention of change, when you’ve started doing performances in a fundamentally different way, then we were used to?
My theatrical approach comes from a mass, which had been a defining childhood experience of mine. The same thing happened in every mass, the priest always did the same things, filled the altar wine always at the same time, he read the gospel at that specific moment, he was lifting the objects with the same gesture, but still every time was different. Others were involved in it, even if the same aunts were sitting in the same place. The same choir was singing, but always in a different way, the text from the gospel, which the priest was reading always changed, and he always did this in a different emotional state. But I also was not in the same spiritual state at these ceremonies. Most interesting was the discovery of “public loneliness”: being in the community where I was with them but completely alone. The ritual nature of my performances is inspired by this childhood experience. There is a structure for each of my direction, the structure has a soul, but this does only develop during the performance, and also from evening to evening. It is not only me who gives the soul to it (although I offer it as a celebrator), but also those who are involved in the work as creators, and the actors, who are performing it day by day. They also fill the structure with their personality, but it also depends a lot on the „soul” of the spectator, because in the end, it is them, in whom all of this an experience builds up.
You started with unusual pieces, which as performances do not have precedent.
This is a kind of risk-taking. These pieces, as well as the content and forms associated with them (which are always the results of deliberate decisions), obviously show that I do not want to follow already tried and tested paths. Because now it’s the time for me (at 28 years old) to test myself. However, since I am not playing a lonely, self-serving game, I’ve also made my colleagues interested in the piece, and also made the actors curious, so they will be interested in doing it. And I see, that the risk-taking –including the choice of pieces without prelude- inspires my colleagues, my company, physically, mentally as well. Of course, it is a challenge to bring together an instinctive, free-spirited team from the Roma Parliament with professional actors from the state theaters who already have various acting tools. In the meantime, I am trying to extend more courageously to freedom, which we already have as a company. While using seemingly extreme restrained forms, I am looking for, how this can explode or disappear in such a way that only its essence is what remains. In other words: we are taking part in a deconstructive process with my actors, in which starting with very powerful pieces, Gehlederode and Genet, I am constantly simplifying the tools, so that the actor can easily do a Seagull or The Beggar’s Opera, while of course, he has all the tools in his possession: movement, dance, vocals, text. Now we often use an unknown, complex set of tools, so in a sense, I am testing them, but not just because of the use of complex forms of expression. During work, they come across ancient texts, philosophy. So they also have to start using their brains. This is not necessary for the theaters they are working in. You have to be nervous, nice, and beautiful, this is what matters. But you can’t make theater from this. I want to educate them, so that when they have learned so much, yes, I can say that through hard work –what we consider to be natural for a ballet dancer, a musician or an acrobat- we can manage to make the performance that causes the purest and simplest mass happiness. The School for Fools, the Blacks, and the Empedocles is each a station of this road.
You don’t need to dust the pieces, because you usually choose texts that are hardly known by us. How do you find such works, like for example Hölderlin’s Empedocles-fragments?
I read. That’s my simple answer. I am curious, there are all kinds of pieces on my shelf, known or less known, ones that someone has already worked with, others that have not been touched before. I read and there are meeting points.
What were you interested in Empedocles?
My recurring theme is obviously from my past, the conflict between the individual and the environment, between the individual and power and the inner conflict of a man himself. Like Empedocles, I struggle with myself. On one hand, I think I am the favor of gods, on the other hand, I find myself in a very unfortunate situation. Because could it be more fortunate than starting my career at Bob Wilson, but after that, it is very difficult to listen to the instructions of much smaller directors. That’s why working with Tim was important. Before it was Mary Stuart with Sándor Zsótér. Meanwhile, there were times when I almost went crazy because of inertia. Then I remember what Wilson once said, that you have to create the “inner run” yourself. Sometimes, you succeed, sometimes you don’t. Reading Empedocles I feel that on one hand I am challenged by this work, on the other hand, I can show through it what has touched me in a way that will be interesting for both the actors and audience. I direct a piece in which I can talk about myself. At the heart of Hölderlin’s fragments is a contrast between the protagonist and his era. I am also constantly asking myself how I work in my era. Am I falling behind? Or am I moving forward? Are we in sync? It was not by chance that Hölderlin had chosen a philosopher of Agrigentum as the protagonist of his creation, who as a philosopher represents the still time. Because he knows exactly what he must do, even though he can’t convince his era of that. They do not understand, that when Empedocles said that I am a god, he did not speak from the aspect of a haughty man, but he wanted to suggest that contrary to the concept of multi-god faith represented by priests, the man himself it is god, so there is no need for a mediator between man and god, thought and freedom, because people can speak with their voice, because they are all individuals. This is what I am referring to when talking about Empedocles. That every human is an individual, but much depends on whether or not he or she will commit himself or herself, will he or she stand in the crowd behind Hermocrates (the high priest). Later, the citizens of Agrigentum call back Empedocles, but it is too late. Such a city, such a world must be destroyed to create a new life on its ruins. Babylon and Nineveh were destroyed, so did Pompeii. It is no accident that Etna appears in the Empedocles as a symbol of death. But it also could be Fuji. I think that Japanese aesthetics is also strongly embedded in Hölderlin philosophy. But there is also Greek-ism and Christianity in it. The author lived in an era in which these effects could fit well with each other. I could go on with the list, that how many things the great German Romanticists took from the aesthetics' festive boards of precious eras. After all, this table is our stage-setting. But we can also think of a platonic feast. I think Hölderlin talks about things, which are the focus of past and present as well. People are capable of reception. I can see on those, who watch the performance, they open themselves up. Therefore, I must serve not only easy-to-eat meals. Maybe over time, they will feel the more sophisticated foods taste as well. Maybe some people could become gourmands over time.
Zoltán Kondorosi, Ellenfény
Translation by Brigitta Erőss