Actor and director Zoltán Balázs questions personal responsibility with a manifesto based on Viktor Kravchenko's book "I chose freedom." Viktor Kravchenko was one of the first to report firsthand on the workings of Stalinism, with the intention of shaking up the free world, yet it took decades for the Hungarian translation of his book to be published. However, actor-director Zoltán Balázs, founder and director of the Maladype Theatre, considers it a personal mission to use this story as a prism through which we can confront our own unspoken and everyday traumas. Most recently, he impressed—and liberated—his audience at the Zwinger in Kőszeg. We spoke before the performance.

You've been telling Viktor Kravchenko's story for two years. What is life like with him?

Intense. Although yesterday's performance in Budapest followed a longer hiatus. I don't say I played him, because it's far from acting in the classical sense; this "one-man show," which is difficult to define in terms of genre, is based more on communicating thoughts. I call it a manifesto, but not because I'm loud or I'm trying to force it down people's throats. I call it a manifesto because Viktor Kravchenko's important moments, dilemmas, and decisions—which he experienced from his birth to his defection—seem to be repeating themselves: around us, within us, through us. The kind of personal responsibility that the text conveys, and that is an essential part of our everyday lives, is always very precisely encoded, regardless of the age of the audience. Yesterday, for example, there were many students in the audience who, although they did not know this era apart from learning about it from hearsay or their studies, were still perfectly capable of adapting the story to their own lives, down to the functioning of the small communities in which they themselves exist. The most shocking thing was when, in the end — there is always a discussion after the performance—one of our audience members stood up and said that because I had interpreted this story so honestly, he considered it a personal gift, and in return, he would like to give me a personal gift too. Something he had never shared with anyone else. That his grandfather was a kulak persecutor, and that this is still an unprocessed fact for him; a trauma that needs to be talked about. That he also has ancestors similar to the characters in the Kravchenko story. It was shocking. We also created a theatre-in-education program for the performance, entitled The Kravchenko Case, which was supported by many people regardless of their worldview or political affiliation—something I am very proud of. Thanks to this, I was able to reach disadvantaged regions and students who don't often see theatre, especially on such topics. There was a project called the Freedom-tour: I visited important places in Viktor Kravchenko's life and recited the manifesto from Washington to Ukraine. A documentary film was made about the trip. But the crew didn't just visit the locations of Viktor's life, they also visited the locations of my childhood – my hometown is Cluj-Napoca. The end result will be a strange common denominator between our stories.

When can we see the movie?

Hopefully in the spring: it is being made in co-production with several partners. A lot of people are looking forward to it. The thing is, there is something else I can't talk about yet: there will be a major event connected to the premiere. I had a crazy idea that I would really like to make happen. It looks like there's a chance. So, this complex program has been going strong for two years. There is a constant demand for it. The world feeds it, keeps the topic alive. And the truth must be told. And as a freedom-loving person—that's how I was raised, that's how I'm genetically wired—I seize every chance to create opportunities for those who also define themselves through freedom to exchange ideas. Viktor's story is perfect for this, as is his personality. He is restless, energetic, creative, humorous, relentless, and unpleasant. At the same time, his family is strongly driven by a strange mixture of a desire for freedom, ideologies, utopian visions of a better world—and, consequently, great beliefs and great disappointments.

Restless, energetic, creative – as if you were describing yourself. I thought that even if I knew nothing about the background of the performance, I would not feel that anything was missing. The title says it all: I chose freedom – it could be the motto of your own life and your career as a theatre maker.

That's exactly what happened: that was the motive. Ariane Mnouchkine said in an interview that one of her five favourite books is I Chose Freedom, which I had never heard of before. Later, of course, it turned out that historians in Hungary knew of its existence; that it was published before Solzhenitsyn's Gulag, and was therefore one of the first to report on the distortions and horrors of the Soviet system. But when I read the Mnouchkine interview, I immediately thought that anyone who writes a book with such a title would interest me: both the author and the work. (It was also significant, of course, that a theatre director whom I greatly respect lists it among her favourite books.) We jumped into negotiations with the sole legal heir, Kravchenko's son Andrew Kravchenko, without knowing what we actually wanted to have translated and published. I just trusted that a work with such a title would be about what I suspected it might be about. So that's how I felt about the book—just as you may feel about me. But Andrew Kravchenko didn't agree for a long time. He only saw his father between two scrambled eggs at breakfast once every six months. Viktor Kravchenko, disillusioned with the Soviet system, had made it to America, but he did not find freedom there, or at least not in the way he had imagined it. He was constantly on the road, sometimes popping home to visit his current wife and his only surviving son; his sons left behind in the Soviet Union had been executed. Andrew had few real memories of his father, so for him, the portrait painted in the book was sacred. No one could even add footnotes to it. Andrew couldn't even begin to imagine what kind of stage production could be created from this story. And here comes the twist. After about three years of negotiations, when it seemed that I would have to give up and abandon the project, my colleagues sent Andrew a recording of my last Hamlet performance. He watched it and immediately wrote back, "Well, this is my father." My sanguine personality was in sync with his idea of his father. That's how Maladype Theatre got the rights, and that's how Péter Konok, himself a historian, produced his wonderful translation.

When I think of Zoltán Balázs, Hamlet is the first thing that comes to mind. That mercurial, fantastic kid brought to life in Tim Carroll's production. But on the other end of the spectrum, Balázs Zoltán is also associated with his production of Ostrovsky's The Tempest: full of music, grand visuals, and theatricality.

I think in terms of processes. From the beginning of my career, I have thought—as I have experienced in my family and with artists who are important to me—that change is the most exciting part of a creator's life. Not to preserve, record, or become insular, but to allow for the recognition or new encounters generated by the risk factor to happen. It is true that this diversity places a greater demand on our audience and on those who want to chronicle the history of Maladype. We are not characterized by predictability and the use of well-known codes, but always by something new. This is not always easy for my colleagues either. The process is organized by one thing: rethinking, redesigning, the unexpected. It is a constant kaleidoscope game that moves and drives us, with certain defining stations on the road. Hamlet was such a defining point in my life, influencing many things in my career and the further development of Maladype. Fast-forwarding, rewinding; this is very important. To have an objective and a subjective time, in which I can create a dialogue. Then we also need crazy people who support this way of life, who believe in it. I'm not complaining: we have a wonderful audience at home and abroad, but I don't make things easy for them, that's for sure.

Did the Kravchenko manifesto open up new paths, just like Hamlet did? What paths did it close? Although your activities are very diverse, there seems to be a solid foundation underneath that does not change.

The theme of freedom expressed in the Kravchenko story brought me insights that made me think not only as a man, a human being, a Hungarian, and a European, but also as a creator. Where is one headed, and when are those moments when certain decisions must be made? That we do indeed have to let go of some things that we believe to be inseparable from ourselves. What it means to start over courageously, freely, powerfully. The gesture of re-creation – that is what interests us. People recreate themselves in every situation. That is what is happening here, in the Old Tower in Kőszeg. And there is something else that connects all my performances. According to Bob Wilson, who was my teacher, there are two types of actors. One comes in to the theatre from seven to ten to be liked, doing everything with that motive. The other, less spectacular, comes in because they have something to do on stage: with the subject, with themselves, with the audience. If they receive love, they don't reject it, but it's not their primary goal. I consider the Kravchenko manifesto to be a particularly personal matter, and based on my experiences over the past two years, it has had a significant impact. For two and a half hours, people sit and listen, lending their time, attention, and energy to the story of a single person. Today, when everything is buzzing, spinning, and whirling, people sit here and listen to another person. This is a great gift.

Lívia Ölbei, Vas Népe, 2017

Translated by Lena Megyeri

Zoltán Balázs graduated at the University of Theatre and Film Arts in Budapest with a degree in acting in 2002, followed by a degree in directing in 2003. He directed his first play while still in college (Pessoa: This Ancient Anxiety – Merlin Theatre, 1999). After college, he joined the Bárka Theatre as an actor, where his most important role was perhaps Hamlet in 2005, directed by Tim Caroll. He made his directorial debut with the Maladype Theatre in 2001 (Ionesco: Jack or the Submission). Originally established as a Gypsy-Hungarian theatre, the company gradually became an independent theatre with its own identity. Between 2004 and 2008, Maladype was a resident company at the Bárka Theatre, but in 2008 they moved to the Thália Theater’s studio stage. In 2009, they established their own base in a bourgeois apartment on Mikszáth Kálmán Square, while they perform at other venues as well. Meanwhile, Zoltán Balázs regularly directs abroad and holds courses and workshops.

“Could it be any easier?”

You have degrees in acting and directing, you've been a member of professional and independent theatre companies, you actively act and direct, you are the artistic director of the Maladype Theatre, while you also teach, lead courses, and write theoretical essays about your work. How can you summarize all these different activities? What do you consider yourself to be?

I would say that I am a pivot that holds the diverging axes together. I am a combination of a thinker and a creative person. I cannot afford to not see my different roles (actor, director, company leader) and tasks (organizer, strategist) as parts of a whole.

Wouldn't your life be easier if you didn't have so many tasks?

I find it hard to imagine what that would be like...

What would make things easier for you, what could you possibly give up or let go of?

Since I receive quite a few invitations from theatres abroad, I could organize my life in such a way that I would only work outside Hungary. As a theatre maker with my own method, I would also hold workshops and courses, which have a very high theoretical and practical value on the international cultural market; various festivals and theatres are constantly interested in them. I would take a maximum of one or two creative partners with me. If I chose this life, I would no longer have to worry about my daily livelihood, how to pay the bills, the fees of permanent company members and guests, and where to find the money for the various Maladype events. I wouldn't have to constantly worry about whether there would be a grant that suited all our plans, and if so, whether we could realize the program in question with the amount awarded. If I were free from all these worries, I might be able to focus more on my own personal development. Now I have to divide my energy and attention between the goals I have set for myself and the tasks I have undertaken with others. I also have to think about those who wish to achieve their goals through and with me.

“Chance to stay alive”

And why didn't you choose to be an international director traveling the world?

I ask myself this question every day. I still see a chance that we can achieve everything we set out to do with the founders of Maladype eighteen years ago. Somehow, we survived even the most difficult times... Somehow, we always overcame the crises and redesigned our work. We were able to develop; newer miracles were constantly born... In short, Maladype still has so much potential that it's worth doing. I hope that for a while it will still be possible to synchronize my work here and abroad. I have tried to organize the life of the company in such a way that while I am directing abroad, other directors work with our actors. If the story of Maladype must come to an end, I will accept it and let it go. I will not wait for disaster tourism to kick in during our final days, as is the case with other independent companies. If it really is over, we will leave with dignity, and I will try to prepare those involved in time.

What chances do you see for the company to survive?

The world does not favour our kinds of independent communities and theatres. In fact, the world does not favour theatres or the arts at all. At the same time, there are three factors that can give us a lot of energy for our daily struggles and survival. The first one is a sense of humour: the state when you can see the world around you with playfulness, irony, and creativity, and easily dissolve into the abstractions of everyday events. Another important factor is good company: meeting and working with creative people who inspire us. People who are good to be around because they also consider shared values important both in our work and our private life. I think it is crucial that everyone receives the amount they deserve for their work, as without this it is quite difficult to maintain enthusiasm over several years. In fact, a lack of money will sooner or later undermine faith and trust. The third factor is the central idea that holds together different intentions and defines each creative period. "Internal belonging" as an organic driving force that creates coherence can motivate us to act together. As long as these three factors are present, our work makes sense. This does not mean, of course, that we do not need reliable funds to plan our work. The problem is that many people cannot even imagine that the life of an independent theatre group can be planned...

“Like a kamikaze mission”

Does the plural form refer to a real community? Apart from Maladype, do you feel a sense of belonging with other independent companies as well?

There are few of us who work as truly independent companies with our own identity. Few companies have a permanent cast of actors with whom it is possible to maintain and develop the repertoire. The rehearsal and performance schedule, which is tailored to the various hosting theatres, does not allow them to think in terms of processes, nor does it allow the artistic director to work as an experimental, research-oriented creator.

Ultimately, why did you choose to be independent?

It was an instinctive choice, stemming from my personality. If I hadn't had a fundamental attraction to this quality of creative freedom, I would have avoided this way of life, as it offers no prospects, either structurally or financially. I can say with certainty that founding and running an independent theatre company is a crazy idea. It's like a kamikaze mission.

What does it mean to work in an independent company?

We need to have a very serious audience-building strategy in order to find and retain our own audience base. We need to have a clear idea of how we can reach out to, bring together, and engage those who are truly interested in our work. This audience integration process must be carried out with great care, with the participation of the company's actors. This additional task is organically integrated into our daily operations. When Maladype burst onto the theatre scene in 2001, I didn't have time to build a brand because we were doing our job, because we had something to say, because we were bursting with dangerously good energy, and because the Gypsy and non-Gypsy actors found each other on stage in a euphoric performance. We were swept away by our imagination, our desire for freedom, and our courage to conspire with rebellious authors (Ionesco, Ghelderode, Sándor Weöres, Genet, Hölderlin), who offered us unusual and unexplored plays. Exploring their worlds gave focus to our energies. Only with time did I realize that many people struggled to keep up with this pace. Those who initially found our theatre-making method attractive and novel soon grew tired, became complacent, and gave up on us. They invested less and less in understanding our internal processes, analysing our performances, and developing tools for decoding them for the audience. Since it proved too complicated to engage deeply with our performances, most people pigeonholed us into some category: ritual theatre, poetic theatre, movement theatre, etc. They would show up at our performances from time to time, as if they were exclusive, elite events, but after these unidentifiable experiences, they would disappear again for a long time. Meanwhile, interest in our work grew abroad. This is how foreign festivals and theatres representing different traditions and contemporary endeavours came into the picture. We were able to establish long-term partnerships with them, based on mutual interest. But this is something that very few companies are able to achieve.

“Risk factor”

Does this mean that you have encountered greater openness towards the theatrical ideals and aesthetics that you represent abroad than you have at home?

Yes, definitely yes. Even in environments where, due to documentary theatre trends and current political events, people are almost obliged to be more sensitive to the situation in Hungary. Most recently in Switzerland, where we performed our show Great Sound in the Rush to great acclaim. It was a huge revelation for the Geneva audience that in every moment of László Sáry's "half-serious" opera – which certainly cannot be described as a work that waves everyday events like a banner or a manifestation of degenerate social processes and socially sensitive fragments – they discovered the "human factor" based on doubt, which theatre makers slowly forgot while proclaiming "certainties." It is possible to "preach" based on tribal wars and internal political battles from the stage, but the essence of theatre is still only human. It was shocking and touching to see how the elitist Swiss audience – just as the Dutch audience accustomed to “delicatesse” productions at the Holland Festival in 2011 in Amsterdam, in response to our performance of Leonce and Lena – rediscovered within themselves the primary and very personal feelings induced by the performance. It was a gigantic confirmation of everything that we at Maladype have been searching for in the concept of the "human actor" for many years.

Can you define what the company's main goal is?

The most important thing is that audiences and creators, who have somehow "drifted apart" over the past decades, once again view theatre as an entity with its own identity. I often feel that theatre makers exploit and take advantage of the rich nature of theatre, using it to further their own creative and economic interests. They degrade it into an abstract concept or commercial tool, forgetting that theatre makers were once the humble and understanding medium of the complex nervous system of theatre art. Our goal is to approach theatre in a sensitive, human way, searching for its essence. I would like our theatrical processes to continue to be defined by change and diversity in content and form, rather than by what audiences liked or what critics loved. On the contrary! We must change, refresh our existing knowledge, redesign and rethink our previous achievements; tackle new topics and find new forms. This is our primary goal.

So safe operation is not the most important thing.

No, rather the risk factor. Looking back on Maladype's seventeen years, I can say that risk has always been at the centre of our theatrical endeavours. This is why so many people of all ages and cultural backgrounds love and follow us on our unique journey. Of course, we have done a lot to achieve this with our open rehearsals and programs featuring various people of value. In order for the theatre to truly be an integrative space where theatre creators and audiences can meet, we need bold and innovative ideas that can support the practical aspects of thinking about theatre from many angles. I also think it is important that we dare to put our intuitive insights into words and share them with others.

“To make theatrical language exciting”

Why do you find this important?

Because if we don't open up, our souls will shrink. It will become increasingly difficult, and eventually impossible, to express our thoughts and creative intentions. We will not be able to find the right words, our expectations of ourselves and our partners will become unclear, we will not be able to interpret our feelings, and our instructions, which we believed to be valid, will wear away. It will turn out that we have no common concepts, we cannot refer to them; fruitful debates will be missing, so we won't be able to engage the audience in our creative processes... In this context, I also consider it the task of theatre makers to get to the bottom of certain blocked theatrical processes.

What exactly do you mean?

Representatives of Hungarian theatre arts are still pursuing the Stanislavski method, and in the meantime, they don't have time to deal with other innovations in acting pedagogy. Even though there are occasional isolated attempts to introduce other methods that have already gained acceptance in different parts of the world, these continue to be regarded as "exotic aberrations" by the guardians of Hungarian theatre traditions. This is how we miss out on innovations in puppetry and circus arts, and our theatrical compositions become increasingly schematic and predictable. To make theatrical language exciting, we need a new vocabulary, new concepts, and new interpretation strategies.

In your own endeavours, do you find it important to utilize the achievements of puppetry and circus arts?

I strive to do so wherever possible.

Can you give some examples?

In Swan Lake, staged at the Budapest Puppet Theatre, I used fans as an animation tool, which posed a serious challenge for the performers. The "transformation" of the various fans required not only sensitive acting but also technical knowledge, which the actors did not have, so for a long time the fans could not come to life, become airy, obey the various tricks, and enchant the audience. That is why I believe that theatre directors—if they have the opportunity and want to provide their company with the richest possible means of expression— should plan ahead to ensure that actors can learn new techniques in good time, in the form of workshops or practical sessions, which will enrich their acting abilities and be available to a director who is working with the team on a new production to integrate new theatrical forms and tools. Thus, it will not be the task of the designated rehearsal period to develop the actors technically and accustom them to new means of expression, but rather a joint opportunity for the director and the actors to build on their existing knowledge.

So, a richer theatrical language (and wider theatrical knowledge) would be needed.

Absolutely. I would be delighted if there was much greater professional demand and audience openness for this.

“Finding the Gold Bug”

You say that most spectators are looking for the familiar; the tried and tested. Maladype, however, goes against this expectation because it performs unusual plays in unusual ways. Although your repertoire is quite diverse too. You perform classic plays that are always in the repertoire of Hungarian theatres. One example is Richard III, which you presented in an unusual chamber theatre format directed by Sándor Zsótér. On the other hand, you introduce contemporary authors who are hardly known in Hungary, such as Matei Vişniec, whose Dada Cabaret you performed in a completely surreal way. You had a book translated that is virtually unknown here, Viktor Kravchenko's I Chose Freedom, part of which you performed as a one-man play. These are all different kinds of theatre, requiring a different kind of audience attitude every time and offering different kinds of experiences. Is there a common intention in these performances? Or is it precisely this diversity that is important to you?

We strive for a unique style of "stylelessness." I try to free us from the temptation to didactically transfer anything from previously conquered content into our upcoming performances. This kind of awareness is also related to the Gold Bug method, which is based on analytical thinking and can be used effectively by actors, teachers, and even company managers...

What is the Gold Bug method?

A full description of the method can be found on our website. The Gold Bug is the title of a short story by Edgar Allan Poe about Professor Legrand's voluntary exile and his deciphering of the external and internal characteristics of the Gold Bug he found. Thanks to his analytical thinking, the professor discovers the only route to a treasure that was once hidden on the island by pirates. The Gold Bug is therefore knowledge itself. There are important and less important signs. Those who can distinguish between them can separate the essential from the non-essential, the useful from the useless. The four stages of finding the Gold Bug are observation, inference, combination, and finally, composition. The acting pedagogy method I have developed is also based on these four steps. Since the Gold Bug method mainly induces professional discoveries based on analysis and self-observation in those who are looking for valid internal processes in line with changes in their environment and new paths towards the "terra incognita" of the future, it requires a completely different way of thinking and attitude from the training participants than what they are used to. It requires the dual synchronization of their human and professional nature, so that familiar and unexpected impulses are simultaneously present in the actors' creative strategies.

“Dada, Kravchenko”

Let's talk about some specific performances! Why did you want to stage Dada Cabaret?

I didn't. It wouldn't have occurred to me if Matei Vişniec hadn't sent me the play two years earlier. At first I put it aside, but two scenes kept bothering me, so I reread it. I realized that there was a lot of potential in the material. Matei Vişniec's instruction, which he wrote at the bottom of the copy he called "fragments of text," helped me a lot in my final decision: the director can re-edit the play according to his own Dadaist ideas! Erzsébet Kútvölgyi immediately came to mind for the role of Lenin - she's someone I had long wanted to work with. She had seen our production of School for Fools years ago, which prompted her to change her mind about leaving the profession, much to everyone's delight. Studying the character of Lenin, I felt that it required an actress with a "predatory nature," similar to Ilona Béres as Kronos in my production of Theomachia or Andrea Ladányi as Vergilius in Dante's Inferno. There are actresses who do not feed on salad leaves. The Dada Cabaret really stirred my Dadaist imagination, and I also saw an opportunity to use the character of Tristan Tzara to carry out a kind of “cleaning out” of the “theatrical relics” that had accumulated over the years. I was able to think through the period from 1914–16 to the present day, all kinds of isms, and the artistic and human endeavours of various eras. In Dada Cabaret, as in another Vişniec play I staged at Chicago's Trap Door Theatre (How to explain the history of communism to mental patients) or in the one-man play based on Viktor Kravchenko's bestseller, I was interested in the metamorphosis of freedom. The murderous nature of utopian and dystopian games. The responsibility of the individual and the community. The mechanisms of manipulation. Dadaism helped me get rid of a lot of unnecessary things that I had been carrying around for years. That's why I got rid of my previous repertoire, and that's why, after Judit Gombár's death, I started designing the performance spaces for my shows myself. At the same time, it was a great opportunity to work with Gábor Gábriel Farkas and his band, so that the actors of the company could try themselves at a completely new field, which meant learning, mastering, and representing the criteria of musical theatre at a high level.

And why did you want to adapt Kravchenko's book to the stage?

Because it was something I needed to get off my chest. Because of my childhood, my upbringing, my grandparents. Where I come from, freedom was a fragile national value, but a strong family value. The dilemma that Kravchenko's father expresses as "We are either pigs or people" deeply shaped my attitude toward freedom. I sought out Viktor Kravchenko's book after reading an interview with Ariane Mnouchkine, who mentioned this work among the five most important books of her life. Mnouchkine's credibility and the title of the work—I Chose Freedom—twisted together inside me like a double helix of DNA, and I couldn't rest until, thanks to my persistent colleagues, we found Andrew Kravchenko, the author's only living son. We managed to obtain the rights and have Péter Konok translate the work, and then I was able to make my own adaptation from the original 866-page book. Viktor's story wanted to be told through me, and I was happy to interpret it. Each performance—including guest performances across the border and in Washington—is a special inner journey, because it cannot be performed any other way than personally, in the first-person singular. It is not only for those who survived that era, but also for young people who can relate the events in the book to the social and human events that shape our everyday lives and the increasingly distorted political processes. It is my intellectual duty and responsibility to tell Viktor's story and to speak out in my "one-man manifesto" against phenomena that seem to be repeating themselves.

“Richard III”

Why did you want to present Richard III?

Sándor Zsótér was interested in the play and the anatomy of power, and I was interested in the character's flexibility, his intellectual modulation, and the unique technique with which the Duke of Gloucester is able to infiltrate other people's minds without them noticing... Ede Szigligeti's 130-year-old translation contributed greatly to this undertaking, where the plasticity of ideas, the skilfulness of the wording, and the sophisticated packaging of words open up completely new channels for both actors and viewers, which is further enhanced by the intimate, direct space created by Maladype Base. These circumstances relieve me of any responsibility associated with the stereotypical character of Richard III; I don't have to be evil or use various medical aids in my performance. Thankfully Zsótér did not burden me with such things, so the rehearsal process was very liberating. The last time I had such a great rehearsal experience was with Tim Caroll in the production of Hamlet. Sándor saw that performance several times and loved it. Perhaps it was due to this experience that we took on Richard III. I hadn't acted for a long time, and if I hadn't come across Kravchenko's book, I wouldn't have returned to the stage as an actor. But I trust Sándor so much that I know he knows what he wants to direct and why, and that there is a reason behind his casting. I am happy to be playing in his directorial concept, because an important condition of my acting is giving, reflecting the thoughts and intentions of my partners like a solar panel. As an actor, it is a serious challenge to exist almost imperceptibly and carry out my agenda. When we were rehearsing and looking for the source of the ugliness and deformity of Richard, the character I play, we realized that compared to a soap bubble, which is the most perfect form, everyone, even the most beautiful woman or man, is a gnome. So, we identified points of reference that shift the familiar emphases elsewhere.

“I didn't want to be an actor at such a price”

Why didn't you want to act for a while?

Because I had some bad experiences after Hamlet. And I have really good actors in Maladype...

What kind of bad experiences?

I participated in plays and performances where I didn't feel the kind of creativity, personality, courage, and risk factor that Tim Caroll's Hamlet opened up for me and which I experienced during its performances. I noticed that even though I was given an important role, one with which I could easily find common ground, during rehearsals Treplev or Macheath began to realize the directors' ideas and expectations, squeezing out the personality of Zoli Balázs. Let me give you an example. During rehearsals for The Seagull, I asked the director to allow me, Zoli Balázs, who was often called a “theatrical daredevil” at the time, and whom he had rightly chosen for the role of Treplev, a character searching for new forms, to direct Nina's theatrical performance, in which she bursts into flames during the play, in the way I thought about theatre at the time. But I was not given the opportunity. I am convinced that I will fight for my truth differently if Treplev's character is covered by Zoli Balázs's rebellious personality and unconventional theatrical thinking. Whether it's good or bad, I take responsibility for it, I will fight for Treplev's truth until my last breath. I will rebel against my mother, Arkadina, and I will fight for my love, Nina. Since the director would not allow it, I had only one option left: as Zoli Balázs, I assisted the director in realizing his theatrical ideal for Treplev, which had nothing to do with my own theatrical ideas. This way I couldn't stand behind the Treplev problem the way I wanted to. As a result, the character's dangerousness, personal rage, and the radicalism of his actions and words were missing from the performance. Zoli Balázs was pushed into the background, and Treplev became dull and harmless. I had the same problem when, in the same performance, I wanted to knock Trigorin down on stage as Treplev, but the director stopped the scene and steered the situation in a non-conflictual direction, saying: Treplev wouldn't do that... I didn't read such an instruction in Chekhov, and I would have considered the conflict valuable in terms of the relationship between the two characters and their shared story, but this went beyond what the director had imagined for the role. I would have let the role emerge from me, but this remained only a possibility... After Hamlet, it was very difficult for me as an actor to take on less personal roles. I felt that I didn't want to be an actor at such a price. In the meantime, Maladype had become a great company of actors with whom we did groundbreaking performances (Leonce and Lena, Egg(s)hell, King Ubu, etc.), and I focused all my energy on them; I didn't miss acting at all. In light of this, I consider it an even more wonderful gift that I can play Richard III today.

But am I right in thinking that you don't play the role of Kravchenko, you rather say his words?

Well, I exist. I hope so. There are no special effects...

Actually, it's just the text that matters, isn't it?

Yes, it is.

Not the character behind it.

The issue that I want to represent during the performances is his problem. When I embark on the nearly two-and-a-half-hour journey, I strive to have an agenda with the story, myself, and the audience. This commitment organizes my evening, whether it's Kravchenko or Richard. It is important not to push myself in front of the text, but also not to fall behind. It requires a very good sense of proportion and a wide-ranging, relaxed attention, a constant connection with internal and external events.

“I am angry, not frustrated”

Aren't you frustrated with the current state of theatre?

I am angry, not frustrated, because of the constant struggle to survive. Very angry. I feel that our situation is unfair, and I am outraged that none of our achievements at home or abroad are of any value to those who confidently decide our fate. There are many people and companies in the same shoes, and everyone tries to remain faithful to their own chosen values; there is no other point of reference. Perhaps this harsh situation makes it easier to attract like-minded creators with similar values.

István Sándor L., Ellenfény, 2017

Translated by Lena Megyeri

Drama variations on the stage of Radnóti Theatre and Merlin

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Katalin Róna, Magyar Nemzet,1999

(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)

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

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

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

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

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

Tímea Farkas, Napi Magyarország, 1999

(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Péter Gál Molnár, Népszabadság, 2004

(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Balázs Perényi, Színház, 2004

(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hédi Helmeczi, Kontextus.hu, 2004

(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tamás Jászay, Criticai Lapok, 2005

(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Borbála Sebők, Criticai Lapok, 2005

(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Á.L., Café Momus, 2004

(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)