Zoltán Balázs’ theatre has an outstanding paradox. If we think about for example, that they performed Ghelderode’s play The School for Fools on three languages, but not one way here and the other one there, but they mixed in one performance the Latin, the Gypsy and the Hungarian, from this the fact it would come that the young director does not appreciate much the text. Since between the audience of the Szkéné Theatre there were not many people who could understand well all the three languages. The text lost not only its primer status in this performance, which has not been new thing for many years, but it has lost the importance of its meaning. It could take part in the performance of a story which is built on a ceremony, with its rhythm and music. (It would be really paradox too to talk about the telling of the story, however the stories about the rebellion of the pupils and their fight with their master were told well-followed.) The incomprehensibility of the text did not mean the demotion and degradation of it. The actors acted out and used the incomprehensible text very well-developed, concentrated as a very important element of stage. Nothing else has happened for more than twenty minutes, than the pupils, sitting around the table, recite Latin texts of ceremonies and play music with wine glasses. For the audience the incomprehensible text becomes the central element of the staging effect. With the help of sounding, rhythm, musicality reports everything clearly and understandably which is necessary for the understanding of the importance.

In the Bárka Theatre now, the performance of Theomachia exposes this paradox better. In the powerful performance we can hear one of the most important Hungarian poet’s important work, finally in a worthy and powerful way – in a way that it is not told mostly. When it is told, it happens as one of the element of a total theatrical world, then when during the final scene of the performance we can hear Kronos’ text backwards, it is not a question at all, that it is Sándor Weöres’ poem too or not. So when we think lightly, that finally, after six and a half decades after the writing of it, this text cannot be right for a stage, this dramatic poem, this oratorio drama is performed successfully, and we can feel that the Hungarian theatre finally lives up to the poet, reaches the flow of the poet’s fantasy from the middle of the last century, we does well if we try to specify this enthusiastic idea a little bit. Of course the perfect performance of the Bárka Theatre is a great joy, and it is obvious too, that it could not happen without the inspiring effect of the text by Sándor Weöres. But we cannot forget that the adequate appearance of the dramatic play or the oratorio, where we can enjoy all value, beauty and the musicality of the text is the podium play, oratorical recitation so the stage of literature, which existed in the 20s and 30s, and it was really popular in the 60s and 70s. István Keleti tried to do it, but as I could not see it, I cannot tell why it has not become successful. Maybe because of that why the whole genre was pushed back: it had an important role, it was an opposition to the naturalistic theatre, and the one with empathy, but could not become the most important one of the new theatrical ambitions. It was too puritan for it and did not offer many formal variabilities.

Zoltan Balázs’ theatre is the opposition of it: it uses hardly everything, which can be imagined in theatre. The audience is enchanted by music, dance, noise, movement, magic and by really magical scenic during two hours. Of course, we do not talk about those, who during the first minutes, by self-defence, fall asleep, because of the too powerful and stressful stimulus, or the other way, they react with rigid rejection. This kind of rejection is always an important sign of the fact that something has happened in the theatre.

Something has happened for sure during Theomachia, maybe not the most important thing in it, but a wonderful and valuable text is finally put on stage. That is mostly covered by László Sáry’s music and Judit Gombár’s set that dedicates the whole place into the location of a ceremony, and her suggestive costumes, which offer culture-historical sights and András Szöllősi’s choreography. In the wonderful visual theatre the philosophical content of the text has become less emphasized. We cannot hear loud enough those which are seemed to be really important during the reading of it, that three phases of creation appear during the fight of gods. Uranus created the world without life, Kronos rebelled against him, because he wanted to make it alive, he would like to fill the universe with living beings, then Zeus the rebellious one, who was sent by the fate, a new murderer of a father, would like to create intelligent creatures.

In Zoltán Balázs’ direction this theological, ambitious process cannot be seen well. Instead of it we can hear and see with fantastic ingenuity and sensitivity the eternal fight, the battle which is always repeated, the chaotic waving of life in its unchanged order, its flood, its highness and horror, pathos and pain, ugliness and beauty. The sensual world, the sounds and visions which are thrown to the auditorium make us believe that we are in a world below us and before us, that the gods, who are played by human-like actors, even if they are in strange costumes and masks, cannot be similar to the ordinary mortal beings of earth, and that their feelings and reactions are the same with ours. We are at the same time in the 21st century and in the time before history. Ilona Béres’ mask, posture, voice, as she is standing, forms the god motionlessly, the motionless mover, she is a supernatural and purposeful being and an ordinary, determined tyrant. It is the miracle of the presence on stage, the concentration but mostly of the personality. It is the creature of man-power, who can rule everything and the creature over the genderless being at the same time. Anyway it is seemed that she is held together mainly by the mask and costume, so the function, the task, the determined will, and the attachment to power. Andrea Spolarics maternal suffering is fallibly human-like and archaically huge. Rémusz Szikszai as Okeanos is the stubborn clerk of fate, Gabriella Varga, as Gaia brings ethereal news about the pains after life, Erzsébet Soltész’ Thypon gives sound to the pains of a helpful fossil in the wonderful costume of a ritual dancer from the Far-East. Kristóf Horváth is the boy, who is like an alive prediction, is there at the feet of the father, a small and shy person between the great ones.

If the viewer gets into the charm of this theatre, he can feel like meeting up with the totality of existence. The analyst sense stops, because the totality cannot be touched, taken apart and analysed. In the background, a little bit further from the audience a figure in grey-white clothes is going up and down with steady slowness on a spiral staircase. As he is measuring the time, as they are turning a sandglass. However he does not measure anything of course. Who knows that how many times he does his way, while the performance, the fight of gods, the human history are not over.

László Zappe, Kritika, 2004

(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)

I have no doubts that many people will put off the watching of Theomachia in the Bárka Theatre because of those complicated and deep explanations by which my expert colleagues try to make the theatregoers to watch it. I tell that: it is not a light performance, it is better to give us to it from the first minute of it.

Better to accept that: it is what we can hear and see, and it means which comes into our mind first. Zoltán Balázs tried to solve the impossible task – to put on stage Weöres’ oratorio drama, which as written half a decade ago, is a poem instead – because he wanted to tell us, what Kronos, the young titan, could do. Who, as we know it, at any cost, wanted to keep his power. That is why he goes against the divine prediction – according to which his own son will take it from him -, and eats all his children, until the baby Zeus is saved from his father by his mother, and the others – for example by Kronos’ mother too – and he is fed by a stone instead of the child. But there is bread too. Do not turn towards the obvious message, according to which who wants the power too much will fall because of it – the performance is not about it.

It is about the fact that the more than simple resume will get an intensive theatrical form in the great hall of the Bárka Theatre, about which I have felt for the first time to be deserving its name: it is a real fencing hall, and we are sitting on it longer side, next to the field. There is field too, what else can be those narrow, beam lights, which go against each other, getting bigger and smaller, while on their ending points two characters, Andrea Spolarics as Rhea and Rémusz Szikszai as Okeanos, with eastern-like dancing steps and intonation save the future.

There are big red veils too; they are rolling up and falling down. The Choir is in front of and behind, or the Curates as they move us on together with the story, and they give that mythological-mysterious tone which symbolises the best this ceremonial theatre. They bring their character by dancing, singing, chanting and posture: they play everywhere, in horizontal and vertical order too – Judit Gombár impressive set can enchant the audience not only in its complexity, but it makes them think through its elements too. The terrifying, giant wheel behind the motionless Kronos will break up at the end of the play, its two parts turn into a horizontal, and on it everybody will find shelter, who remain for the future. We can say, that this is the Earth. In front of it there is a net, the place of birth: but there is a corridor above, a spiral staircase on which somebody is continuously going up and down, like a liturgy in himself, a prayer wheel or the time itself; and there is the drop too: there the little Zeus can be saved.

Kronos is standing on the geometric or dramatic mean of the space and performance, in a giant, black robe, because he is an enormous god, motionless, a strong and tragic character. Ilona Béres is standing motionlessly all through the two and half hours, this is a strong dramatic element in its own, her performance has a “mobile” part too: Kronos’ sharp, deep voice is frightening, destroying. When he gets destroyed in the end – he is so self-conscious, he is just the power, the tyrant power only, that when it disappears, he disappears too with it - , the fragile actress comes from him, who has been the posture, the weight herself to be able to go up in a shirt and tell the last poem together with the others.

Béres performance is impressively humble. In minimal artistic space, she shows strength and frightening power in a way that she can turn into fall and self-destruction in the end. When Kronos tear his black hair with slow movements, he is dead at the same time: this is the language of Zoltán Balázs’ troupe. With symbols and pictures, with music and dance, with lightness and darkness. Gabriella Varga, Erzsébet Soltész and nearly everybody can speak this language perfectly, in which there is folk dance with stick, head voice, raised gestures: so everything beyond the usual words and movements, from which there are not many.

The audience can feel from the strange organisation of the space and the wide premier plan: the performers want to make them the part of the story. Moreover, as we are sitting in long lines, everybody has their own special viewpoint, they can choose from the stresses, from which there are many on each corner of the place. The rhythm – the persisted and useful but thick lines of scenes – helps to concentrate our attention: since we do not need to understand each gesture – many time they are simultaneous – staging signs on a traditional way, but we have to get into the emotional-sensual scope of the performance to be able to live through the tragedy of fate together with the characters, with their help. It is all about clichés: we have to become an initiated viewer.

Although there is someone who initiates us. Therefore, it is not hard after all.

Judit Csáki, Magyar Narancs, 2004

(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)

A mystical atmosphere welcomes everybody who enter the Bárka Theatre on the performance of Theomachia, from the strange deep-like area dusk and whispers arrive, while we find our seats on the podium. Stadium and church – I like this kind of profane association, because they exclude each other. Devotion can be connected to one of them, and applause to the other one. Both of them have cultic meaning too, both of them are built on mass psychosis, at the time of the ancient Greeks they could live side by side. Just the new era laugh at them, in one of them the suppression in the other one the enjoyment without limits of the instinct count. That is why the theatre feels to warn the entering people to behave well. This is the sad reality of our life: we are thought to be incompetent to the ceremony that is made for us – and made with us. It is not enough if we are different at the end of the ceremony, we have to enter as initiated ones before our initiation. There are chroniclers, who would cover theatrical speech with purple fog. We are looking down and wondering. Zoltán Balázs, the director of Theomachia tells, that he wants a theatre which is “understandable to Mary and Rose too”. Why is it important to make them understand those things too, which clever people tell about them? Do not wish the impossible.

The young Sándor Weöres’ oratorio dramatic poem from 1938 works off one of the stories of the ancient Greek mythology, in which Kronos the youngest titan eats his children, because according to his fate, one of his child is about to take over his power. Which will happen anyway, as instead of the child-Zeus, the executor father-god, who was hidden, he was fed by a bundled stone. The poetic story is as dramatic, as any text should be and it is as much as a tragedy of fate as it is personalised by the people (actors) who try to show it. In the middle of the black padded area, the symbol of the infinite time and power as a black motionless monster: Ilona Béres as Kronos. He is without body in his mass being too, neither a man nor a woman, it is an allegorical creature, it recites its text gutturally. It is a fantastic artistic achievement, because of the physical and mental concentration too. The symbol of the eternal world order falls apart in front of us: Béres leaves her black robe, pulls out in clumps her messy hair, from the shapeless eternal god she becomes deformed mortal being in her white nightdress, bare feet and bald.

Everything is moving around her. The ageless gods and the orphan Zeus’ armed guards (the choir of the Curates) play all over on the plain stage, the drop, the net and the balcony above. Oral and physical demonstration broadcast the “actions”, the birth, the fight, the battle of gods. The thin Gabriella Varga, as Gaia the “wide breasted Earth” in a choreography with a stick (András Szöllősi), which is similar to the movements of dancers from far-eastern area, can build her monologue. Andrea Spolarics (Rhea) and Rémusz Szikszai (Okeanos) on a narrow beam of light opposite to each other try to “balance” the bridge of the dialogue. Typhon, the fire-breather Giant with hundred heads, Erzsébet Soltész is a muscular Indian dancer. The Curates (Róbert Kardos, Attila Egyed, Róbert Lucskay, Erik Ollé, Balázs Dévai) are the cult fighters of the angry human tribe. A boy (Kristóf Horváth) sometimes is similar to the Egyptian dog-god, to Cerberus. A greedy eclecticism – form of an ancient egg, rubber-baby and crumbled bread – they over lined and connected together the performance, László Sáry’s music which is full of noises and human sounds, Judit Gombár’s spectacular stage with eastern-like patterns of costumes, with the sign of the fallen red draperies, the ancient disc of the universe, which broke up and that way on its flat tribune the characters solve the end of the ancient chaos with the harmony of Weöres’ poem, (The drum and dance) which is about silence and piece. We can think about historical allegories in connection with the drama of fate, but it is disarming and impressive without it too.

*

Why do you have to be so cruel, asks one of the character in the performance, A Lie of the Mind by Sam Shepard, which drama was translated by László Upor, and the other one answered: “The fate is so cruel.” It is another drama of fate; from nowadays, on the modern, American Wild West. Two people, two families. A young couple. Jake and Beth are far away from each other, both of them with their own family. Because of jealousy Jack nearly killed Beth. The woman’ brain suffered damage, her cure is slow and doubtful. The man made himself believe, that he has killed his wife: his brother travels to Beth’s family to make it clear, but the girl’s brother shoots and captures him. Both families are full of secrets and lies. Jake and his sister cannot face up with the real surroundings of their mother and father’s death, Beth’ parents escape to their own selfish and painted world from the reality. The couple will meet once more, but Jake has been ruled by catatonia, and Beth by her madness – their last meeting is a fatal one.

Shepard’s play is suffocated, tensed and grotesque. His dramaturgy is missing, like in the case of antique tragedies or the modern psychodramas. To ask why it does not follow the traditional realism - why they have not investigated the domestic violence, why they do not arrest Jake - , is similar to ask, why the three sisters do not go to the train station to buy tickets, or why Hamlet does not hire a private investigator. It is not necessary, the world of the drama does not need it. A Lie of the Mind – I would tell it as a Fake Sense – is the drama of unconsciousness, its characters have lost their connection with reality. This is the well-known topic from the overseas, the inheritance of the American dream. Shepard honestly without any sentimentality, forms sentences in a cold way, with rising irony, he shows simultaneously the fate of passion and narrow-mindedness.

The performance of the Új Theatre is really good. The director, Árpád Sopsits does not build rooms into the studio, Péter Horgas put into the crossed place the two main (and the other minor) places. Only the necessary objects, some effects of movie-like lightening and the phantom characters like ghosts behind the walls are needed, to make (not because of the author’s aim, but not against him) the deformed world appear. The passing from the opposite sides at the beginning and at the end of the performance is the atmospheric frame, however Sopsits from the actor, without any help, can form a strong atmosphere. Anna Györgyi as Beth can show not the mental case, but a technically perfect human medical history. Zsolt Huszár is a profit to the theatre, in the role of Jake he brings the pure power towards its fall. Mari Nagy is perfect as Beth’s mother, she is Meg, who lives between the smiley illusions of the pink dream. Levente Király is crazy about hunting and the American flag, frighteningly selfish and ridiculous as Baylor. The others also do their best: Ildikó Bánsági and Kata Pálfi are the mother and daughter who are about to destroy their past, and Zoltán Géczi, is Frankie in trap and Sándor Almási is Mike, who is vengeful. In this performance there are as much mythical as much casual there are in Theomachia. Who after these two wants to work with psychological realism instead of rite and back, that one does not understand theatre at all.

(Sándor Weöres Sándor: Theomachia - Bárka; Sam Shepard: A Lie of the Mind - Új Theatre)

Tamás Koltai, Élet és Irodalom, 2004

(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)

On the stage: the stressed and continuous appearance of the personalised time. A strange, statue-like figure is going step-by-step – the beginning and the end of his movement remain unknown for us. (When we arrive at the auditorium he has already been going on, and he has not finished it when we leave the place after the performance.)

In Weöres’ play: this is the era of the formation and recognition of time; the way from the timeless existence up until the life with fixed end. It is a mythological story about the bitterness raised by the knowledge of time (the knowledge of our own finite), the unavoidable loss of the ancient completeness. “The life is going on, it cannot stop in the half way, you cannot tie it with kisses or strings."

Weöres’ oratorio drama: the free poetic transformation of the first pages of the Mythology written by Apollodorus, which is about the ancient gods’ fight and the beginnings of first humans’ life. The meaning of the title is the “fight of gods”: Kronos killed his father – Uranos, the first god – then ate his descendants, that there would not be anybody against his power. The baby Zeus has managed to escape with the help of Curates, and after growing up, he kills his father. That way the lifeless life, the era of Uranos has been changed by the lively life, by Kronos’, than by the era of sense, by Zeus’. “Then he is pushed into gloom by a better one, the existence can grow above completeness that way.” The play is a brilliant work, which can form Aeschylus-apocrypha with the form of a drama, into which the author built in pagan, folk-art imitations too.

The performance: the free adaptation formed into an important vision of Weöres’ play, to its story, independently from the era and place, music is composed (László Sáry’s, with the performing cooperation of Kornél Mogyoró and Zoltán Gavodi), it contains Hungarian folk-music imitations too. In connection with the staging, the expressive tools of the eastern (Japanese, Chinese) performing art are strongly used: the stylized playing method, movements, and visual effects.

The director, Zoltán Balázs and the group of the theatre together with the guest stars did not believe – which is mentioned many times by the experts - , that the young writer’s play, the Theomachia is not suitable for stage. As Weöres turned towards the myth, to give sensual form for the ideas, the performers formed the same way the language of the performance, which is made of many lines, to be able to give sensual forms for the lines of the poem. (To evoke different cultures together it is a form, which is very loyal to the writer, as Weöres was interested in not only one circle of myth, but in the universe shown in different myth.) They are brave enough to sacrifice the important part of the text on the altar of non-verbalism: some parts are missing, some of them are changed a lot: the Curates who have not got their senses yet, and Kronos who is mad because of the fulfilment of his fate, tell the words backwards, they use a special non-existent language that way. (It belongs to Weöres too, if you like it that way.)

Kronos, by Ilona Béres, rules the black-red-white world of the performance. She is standing in the middle, motionless up until the end of the performance. A bunraku-like mask covers her face. She can build only on her voice and artistic vibe, but her performance has enormous power that way too. He is commanding, terrifying and then just pitiful. Gabriella Varga is using just stylized gestures, shows perfectly the blindness, the ageing and the inside power of Gaia who is coming back from an underground exile. Erzsébet Soltész with impressive knowledge of dancing shows us Typhon (the namesake of typhoon), his fight against the pretender of the new world.

An imaginative, exciting performance was made on the stage of the Bárka Theatre. However the staging effect of the performance – at least according to the writer of these lines – was under the poetic effect of the literary work. The reasons for it can be the not always evident showing of the story, the length of some parts, which test the audience’s attention, and the references, which are ununderstandable, confusing sometimes, and they are against the text itself. Besides the earlier ones, the merit of the performance is the fact that it leaves the fight of gods in its eternity, and does not turn into an actual political parabola about the tyrants who come one after another, and who think that their power is forever.

Adrienne Dömötör Adrienne, Zsöllye, 2004

(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)

Sándor Weöres’ play, which is similar to ancient Greek dramas, the Theomachia is not a typical theatre-friend play. Gods are against each other using lines with quantitative metre, while the choir helps in the battle.

Not only its style, is archaic but its topic too. After that Kronos beats his father, Uranos, he cursed him: according to it, Kronos will be beaten by one of his son, as he did it with his father, Uranos. After it, Kronos tries to cheat his fate, and he eats his children, born by his wife-sister. But Rhea could save the last child, and gives the baby Zeus to the double legged, “stone thrower” Curates, who after growing up will kill his father finally. Zoltán Balázs with the actors of Bárka Theatre and with Ilona Béres as a guest star creates a really exciting theatre from the drama. Interesting that Ilona Béres now plays a role of a man, she is Kronos, standing on the same point during the two and half hour long performance. The style of acting and playing technique is similar to the Far-eastern theatre. As they are using the sets, tools, costumes and face painting of a traditional Japanese theatre for the story. Moreover, as in the case of a no- or kabuki performance, the audience has not known the archaic language yet, here Zoltán Balázs takes apart the elements of the text. Some of the actors tell backwards Weöres’ texts, and sometimes the words as sounds are falling out of their mouth. However, it does not prevent the understanding of the play but helps it.

During this punctually, over thought performance they use the whole area. They equipped the fencing hall of the Bárka Theatre to be able to show it as a very big room, weirdly. In this high and wide area the characters of the stage are speaking sometimes from head level, then from above or under side. They have no limits, and it gives magical mood to the performance. It must be one of the most important performance of the season, where outstanding theatrical moments were born.

Haynal, Budapesti Nap, 2003

(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)

I understand, I understand well the young Zoltán Balázs when he decides: he will adjust to the stage and to the possibilities of the Bárka Theatre, Sándor Weöres’ oratorio drama, Theomachia. After all everything is together in the fight of gods – from the Greek mythology and tragedy of fate through the metaphysical anxiety until the magic of poetry – which can move the talented actor-director’s fantasy who has wishes of totality. The beginning, Kronos’ cruelty, who eats his own children, and his madness because of the fear of the loss of power, has thoughts with multiple meaning. With some simplification it can refer to the dictators’ of the 20th century, to Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Ho Si Minh and the others’ story and terror.

From Sándor Weöres – as I think – the updating which uses clichés and tries to tell everything can be very far. At least he “lets” us associate from Uranos-Kronos-Zeus, the perfect divine trio’s fatal fight to the imperfection of the world and human beings, to their repeated madness. (Unfortunately, I could not think of a better cliché too.) Zoltán Balázs mentions in his reports the open and direct connection between the Kronos’ cult and the modern dictators. The spectacular, suggestive performance protested with its distance. Judit Gombár’ spacious red and black set, the costumes, the various dresses and robes emphasise the agelessness. We could find the rich treasure of motives and traditions of Japanese, Indian and Ancient Egyptian culture in the refined patterns, in the strange lines of belts, hats, floating veils, the frightened drawings of the wigs and masks. “The meeting of cultures” is quoted by László Sáry’s music, his strange and frightening “bum-bum” which is composed on percussion instruments and deep human guttural voices and the choir’s fantastic and diverse choreography.

Zoltán Balázs took Sándor Weöres’ oratorio as a starting point, from where he jumped high towards the stage of brave visions. In this strange world Weöres’ wonderful, expressive poem is divided into sighs, cries, shouts, whispers and simple sounds. At the beginning of the performance, as a choir the letters ó are rounded, the ú gets deep and bumming, the letter i cries and screams and the s letter are hissing. (For Endre Szkárossy and other followers of sound-poetry it would be an extraordinary pleasure.) When the drama reaches its top, the lines are told backwards, they sigh and cry. They try to indicate that: because of the dramatic happenings, which are raging in the gods, because of their pain, they cannot be approached by the normal order of sounds. (I think that way, maybe I am not right. This all can be pure provocation and mannerism.) According to the young director we can call his adaptation “meta-communicative theatre” or ”cactus milk and guinea fowl” too. The name is less important. We “take the words apart then we bubble like children, and try to put together again the parts of sounds, and find out new words...”

One thing is for sure: for the sound perfection and the unusual performing, the actors need enormous devotion and precision. Ilona Béres’ achievement supposes a great physical power too. For two hours, she is standing disciplined, in a demonstrating way, motionless in the middle of the stage in Kronos, the cruel ruler’s heavy costume, with his terrifying mask, and torn, heavy wig – and plays only with her voice. Her huge, deep voice with warm tone, sometimes rages with manlike aggression. It fills the area. When she tells backwards her monologue about loneliness and fall, she can save and express the musicality and beauty of Weöres’ poem. Andrea Spolarics – in the role of Rhea – also has hundreds of voices to express the pain of a mother, who has lost her child. Gabriella Varga, as the crying Mother of Earth plays, turns, swirls with her huge stick fantastically. Erzsébet Soltész are wandering like a dizzy and lost Puck, she is dancing as Kronos’ servant in the complete bikini-like, shining dress of the Siamese twins. The masculine reserved Okeanos, (Rémusz Szikszai) with perfect musicality gives sound to Weöres’ Alexandrines lines. He gives the truth at once.

Zoltán Balázs’ Theomachia-composition is really different from any traditional theatrical performances. Its visual world charmed me. Meanwhile when I got home, I happily opened again Weöres’ oratorio. How did it happen once, when one of the titans, Uranos and Gaia’s son, Kronos cut their father genital, pushed him from the sky, and put himself on the throne of the universe. He ate his children for nothing, he lost his power anyway. Through his youngest son, Zeus. Because “the life is going on, it cannot stop in the half way, / you cannot tie it with kisses or strings, /.../ It is that way. you can protest against it or not.” Weöres’ lines from his poem seduce me as always. Into a dreamless dream. However, they call me straight ahead, not backwards.

Ilona Gantner, Vasárnapi Hírek, 2003

(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)

They warn us nicely in the hall to switch off our mobile phone there, and then take our seat inside as quietly as we can, because the performance is already going on at the moment of the opening of the doors. As we are entering the mysterious, reddish dusk, between the „whispers and screams”, we become incompetent watchers, who have got into the middle of a ceremony by accident (remember The school for fools performance by Maladpye). We do not know this religion, this rite, we are not involved in. Many times there is a thick – sometimes a disturbingly translucent, sometimes it is not at all – glass wall between the actors and the audience. It is not similar to the wall, which is sometimes there in theatre on the thin borderline between the stage and the auditorium. In those theatres after a while the tension is eased, the wall disappears; everything which happens in the performance „seems like happening with us too”. Here and now it does not. It is impossible to identify with the barbarian rhythmical melodic speech which is told backwards and the monotonous chanting (or maybe because of it?) of the red dressed priests’ of ancient religion and pagan rites. We are outsiders, who have forgotten and have not learnt (again) yet this language. It is natural that we cannot always understand everything – or it is not necessary, is it?

It is connected to the question: how does this theatre want to effect us? To say banally: on our emotions or senses? On both of them or neither of them, the truth is somewhere in the middle. This is mostly the night of our instincts which are sleeping inside, the night of qualities which can be understood by sense organs (so hardly told by words). Sándor Weöres is hard in his simplicity, his wonderful, poetic text, hard words are repeated many times one another, they fall again and again into the cold silence of the cosmos. Inarticulate ancient feelings are swirling around us in the Fencing Hall of Bárka Theatre. It is also a „Battle of Worlds”: we can see, hear and feel the birth of a new world, the destruction of the old one, its fall into the darkness, from where the earlier one has come. The wondering attention is restricted, there is not any escape from Kronos’ power, which fills all corner of the place. It would drown and eat us, the audience too, as he would do with his children if the liberating ending did not arrive, where the collected, great tension can flare up like a small flame for people of the new era, in the Boy’s / Zeus’ (Kristóf Horváth) hand and covers his young, almost nude body with ash.

Kronos’ (Ilona Béres) presence is obvious, she is standing motionless and unmoveable in the middle of the universe (which only has its contours); she barely opens her paper-thin mouth to give her short, cruel (harmfully for the vocal cords too) commands. Strong black lines divide her grey-white face, her messy hair is long and black. We can meet Kronos in his full power, but he will lose it soon. He has already eaten three of his daughters and two of his sons, because of his fear that any of them would take his power, as he did it before with his father, Uranos. This fear is the only feeling that leads all of his actions and thoughts. That is why he cannot become an unlimited ruler: Kronos is morbidly afraid of the fulfilment of the Moiras’ unavoidable prophecy.

This basic fear became well-established when his wife, Rhea turned against him, and secretly had her youngest child brought up in the isle of Crete, and served her husband a stone instead of the baby Zeus. Andrea Spolarics as Rhea is perfect opposition of her cold and insensitive husband: she is full of blazing, passion and vibrant vitality. Her motherhood is above everything: as we have mentioned at the beginning of the performance with its strange mood becomes full, that during the priests ceremony, who are repeating Kronos’ name, on the net, which is stretched out between the two half of the auditorium, Rhea gives a birth to a child, who the servants put immediately on Kronos’ table. Kronos’ brother Okeanos helps Rhea to get rid of her bloodthirsty husband: Rémusz Szikszai on his firm voice gives advice to the mother, he cannot be stopped by Rhea’s fear of her husband’s revenge. Okeanos believes of course not in his own plan, but in the power, independent of him, he believes in fate.

There are things in the world (on stage) which can work independently of Kronos (and anyone else too) – the veiled woman creature – like a Magritte painting – with a bird-cage on her head is one of them, as she is walking up and down on a tall spiral staircase all through the performance. Who is she? Maybe as we see the strange creature, the most obvious one is to associate to The Time, that is indifferent with the fate of any creatures. The time is an important part of this performance anyway: it is well known that in ancient times, Kronos was identified with the „Father of Time”, partly because that according to Homer „the sharp-witted” god consumed both his past (his ancestor, Uranos) and his future (his successors, among the others, Zeus too). The giant wheel behind Kronos / Ilona Béres, than its „dislocation” on the top of the actions, and its breaking up can be connected to time, to the beginning of a new era. Or maybe this appearance on the stairs represents the three Moiras’ ominous power, which is always hidden there behind the nice surface? The grim goddesses of fate are mentioned many times on the stage, but they never appear in their body in front of us – the veiled creature could warn us as a silent exclamation mark to our common fate.

It can be a too didactic lesson, but anyway: the basic topic of the play is about the fight between the old and new, barbarian and civilized, or even the pagan and the Christian (we can go on with it), and about the winning of the later one (this topic was interesting in ancient times too, think about The Maenads by Euripides or The Persian by Aeschylus). It is a cliché that the base of the European Civilization was built by the Christian – Jewish culture and the Greek – Roman world. Weöres „oratorio drama” from 1938 shows us fateful moments during this process: we can become the witnesses of the first „change of paradigm”. However Kronos got rid of his father, Uranos, as Zeus would do it with him, but with the fact that Kronos got on the throne, nothing has changed yet. The pantheon on Mount Olympus will be formed just after the strengthen of Zeus’ power, so he is the "homo novus", by the winning of whom our world can born from chaos.

Zoltán Balázs’ considered direction faces up with these listed problems – but we cannot get calming solutions everywhere. We do not have to be in close relationship with Sándor Weöres’ poetic texts to recognise the very important role of sounding in his works, and of the feelings, which are generated – recalled by him, and of the impressions. The staging is based on this recognition and uses ancient methods for the ancient topic, in that way it reaches (word) magic and towards the ritual theatre (which is spreading nowadays). The words get their own life at the moment of their articulation, their repetition, varying, sounding backwards or the breaking up of the sentences into their elements opens new dimensions for the audience (that is why we can hear the poet’s other works too, like the Drum and dance). The musicality of Weöres’ texts are strengthened more by the important role of percussion instruments (Kornél Mogyoró) and the singing voice, which is sometimes from unearthly regions (Zoltán Gavodi).

The almost two and a half hour long performance, without any intervals builds up the story following this way and tries to form the most varied techniques into an organic whole. That is how the Hungarian folk song like singing can be next to the „baroque” countertenor aria; the ancient Greek topic and some outside elements of the eastern, static staging (so both the organisation of the set and the costumes can be thanked for Judit Gombár’s work); Weöres’ texts which he dedicated to Babits and the new-old-like magic poetry which is born from it and by it.

It is compulsory to watch Zoltán Balázs’ staging in the Fencing hall of the Bárka Theatre. It is not the best performance of the season, but for sure even with its inconsistency, we have to consider it as one of the most exciting and poetical try. It is good to be considered as the next step of the director’s path-finding; it is not a complete work, but it is full of references forward (hopefully) and (to the earlier ones – The School for Fools, Jack, or the Submission) backward, and a mental construction thanks to a lot of hard work.

Tamás Jászay, Criticai Lapok, 2004

(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)

The Bárka Theatre takes a great risk again with its new performance. The young Zoltán Balázs (who is member as an actor too) has put on stage Sándor Weöres’ poetic play, the Theomachia which we have not seen on stage before. After the mixed acceptance of Romeo and Juliette, which was the first performance of the season, the theatre would need a good, successful performance among both the viewers and the professionals. The Bárka Theatre chooses the harder way - which has the risk of fall too.

Zoltán Balázs’ directions with the Troupe of Maladype have had promising critical success so far. The profession takes the young creator as one of the great hope of the future. The performances of Maladype try to handle both the Hungarian and the Gypsy culture as a starting point, while they are looking for new and valid artistic forms as well. For Zoltán Balázs’ works, the game of language is very typical: he does not insist to the fact that the audience can understand the words, he tries to have effect on the senses, like in case of Jack, or the submission, which was played mostly on Gypsy language. He has strong effects on stage with the choreographed movements and with the music of the unknown language. It is also conspicuous that Zoltán Balázs directs those dramas with the Maladype, which examine the relation between the individual and community, the tyrant and the crowd.

Weöres’ play finds its place after the Jack... and The school for fools. The situation and the reason is different. The Bárka Theatre works as a company, as a theatre with repertoire, and not an independent group, which is formed according to sympathy. The troupe will be able to become a mature creative community after many years, but now they are talented people, who are contracted next to each other, who work according to different theatrical idols. Zoltán Balázs’ strong conception supposes some kind of calling, common mentality and working method, the lack of which can change the performance into the pure demonstration of style. If I - remember well - the same “mistake” happened in case of Shearwater, directed by János Mohácsi: everything was there which is typical for a Mohácsi performance, but the staging construction did not work, because the elements were shown one by one.

The director’s prior conception can be seen on the website of Bárka Theatre: “The writer of Theomachia, the title of which can be translated as: The battle of gods, gets its topic from the Greek mythology, called his work first dramatic poem than oratorio-drama. However, some amateur university students played it in 1972 in the Szkéné Theatre, because of the lack of happenings and the long dialogues it can be performed better in front of the microphone as a radio play than on stage. Therefor, it has all the attributes to put it into the category of unplayable plays by theatrical experts. Meanwhile as a young director I think the Sándor Weöres’ drama which is more Greek than many Greek drama from the point of view of its topic, style and language usage, and more Hungarian than the language of many Hungarian folk tales, brings up those kind of dramaturgic, staging technique, visual and acoustic problems which challenge the most modern and up to date theatrical thinking too. I would like to handle this challenge, when in the Fencing hall of the Bárka Theatre, together with eleven, very different actors, I research the unified, common language of the oratorio ceremonial play, through Weöres’ Hungarian type Alexandrines, the base of which is the author’s infantile, childish, hardly abstract lyre.” He admits that he has accepted a really hard challenge with Weöres’ text, as the Hungarian staging traditions do not have many performances with similarly elevated poetic texts. Zoltán Balázs tries his talent on an almost untouched area.

After seeing the performance and knowing Zoltán Balázs’ earlier works, the keyword is the ceremony or the rite, which can rise the play from the traditional staging circle. In this case he makes the audience simple viewers, interested peepers. (Of course it is a very subjective idea, that only those performances can be good, where the viewers are partners and not outstanding viewers with wondering eyes.) It comes from this rite-like nature that the performance can work in its own inner circle, according to its unique rules. The players know the keys, the system, which they follow, the question is that it will get to the other side of the “glass”.

The Fencing hall of the Bárka Theatre is ruled by the view of giant red draperies, which reach the ground. We can see the whole, wide black space – from the stairs to the window. The audience is pressed to the side. Like during an exciting tennis match: we have to turn our head continuously from left to right if we want to follow the parallel actions. It would be more useful if the viewers were able to go around the ceremony, or choose from the others the episode which is the most important one for him. The performance is an exhibited object too, it is far away enough from the outsiders. At the entrance they warn the viewers not to make any noises, not to disturb the performance. The evening starts with anxiety and this tension will not soften with the moving of time. Kronos (Ilona Béres as guest) is sitting firmly in the middle: the actress is standing almost motionlessly all through the performance, and playing only with her resonant, angry voice. It is a shocking experience, that rules the performance and the viewers’ attention too. The aim is Kronos’ fall, to move him out from his absolute power. (The set cites the dictatorships with red drapes really obviously.)

The performance uses Weöres’ text as an ingredient. The stress is on the form instead. They play with the text: they repeat it, and sing lines backwards. The actors do various voice tricks: deep sounds appear as well as opera-like tones. The moving on stage is stylized too. It can be seen well that the actors do not have any professional dance training, so they do the choreography with hard work but they cannot perform it. László Sáry composed distracted sounds to the merciless world of Theomachia. The performance can be called the most adequately, noisy theatre of movements.

It is an irritating conclusion that Theomachia is just a good reason for the ritual theatrical work. The director’s typical tools are there and they vividly form a system, as the players evidently put together the divergent motives. From its falling apart the actors’ great humility can save the production. The performance is without any intervals, there is no way to escape. Who enters once, cannot get away from the gods’ fight. The director’s aim always wants a lot, tries to provoke big effect, which makes the watching tiring too. The presence of the effective dramaturgical work cannot be felt. This version of direction is uncut and it is full of suckers. It is similar to the situation when we watch an unknown, exotic religious ceremony, which can be interesting for half an hour, than turns to be embarrassing boredom, as it is not about the view anymore. If the meaning of the words, gestures and sounds are unknown, as only for those who are inside, then it is hard to follow sensibly the strange action on.

Zoltán Balázs’ experiment has remained an experiment. It could not leave the list of aims and possibilities, the circle of its introduction. It is partly proved that with the actors of the Bárka Theatre cannot or should not be done the same as with the troupe of Maladype. Meanwhile it is hard to build a new group in the Bárka Theatre if all performances have different sounding and style. The performances come from nothing and they are hardly connected. The Bárka Theatre is still looking for its voice. More voices are trying out at once, who knows which will be the real one.

Melind Sőregi, Kontextus.hu, 2004

(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)

The moderator of the professional discussion:
Ilona Mélykuti journalist
Invited commenters:
György Karsai critic, theatre historian
Erzsébet Bogácsi critic

György Karsai critic, theatre historian:

Zoltán Balázs does the Greek style with Theomachia. It is a great pleasure to watch this performance for a philologist. We can see on stage analysis, punctual analysis and the conclusion of them. The first pleasure for me was, that the director – if I understand well – he simply looks for the meaning of the word “theatron”, that is all he does. That is a place where we can learn with the help of sights. The theatre is about the process, that we get information, and this information comes from the sight. The relationship is very important in this performance between the sight and the text, the sight and the music, the sight and the movement. Here we can see a scale of rites. The recall of a rite, which is on an exact language. According to Weöres’ definition of genre, it is an oratorio. Zoltán Balázs was stick to the original in that case too, so we could watch an oratorio-like performance, which was followed by music and movement, it means that he has to take into consideration some forma elements of the rite.

There is a choir, or if it is not a choir, than a crowd, the five Curates. They can be called as guards, or killers, or simply the choir of the Greek theatre. For we can immediately connect the text, which is told by them during the two-third of the performance, that text which is told backwards, from which we cannot understand, of course, even a word. It is wonderful again, because it refers to the importance of the archaic rite, which is happening in front of us is like a mystery, like an initiation. Something, which we have not known yet, but we will be the part of it. If once we get there to understand what it does, what is the text about.

I do not think that there would be anybody in the auditorium, who did not try to reconstruct the text when realised that, they were talking backward. Which is an exciting but of course a hopeless try of course, because when one has understood a word and got the experience of Eureka, they were with five words ahead. I would like to tell with it, that is can rise an incredible tension. We are learning. We cannot take a rest for a moment during this performance. We are sitting there two and quarter of an hour and leave the auditorium dead tired. There is not any rest. That is why I have told that we get back the original meaning of the word, “theatron”.

The story is very important here. Is which story told by Weöres and Zoltán Balázs? Well, this story is Hesiod: four lines from his eternal work, from The birth of Gods. What is happening there: Uranos, Kronos, and then Zeus is coming. That is all. Transition of power.

I do not want to talk about that it can be a political parabola. I have read that it is tyranny and the rebel against it, the end of the tyranny and the birth of the new power. I am not interested in it. If there is anything interesting in this story, so in the story of Uranos, Gaia, Kronos and after Kronos in the story of Zeus than it is the immobility of Kronos. That figure carved from a block, which Ilona Béres puts in front of us with a very scary intensity, about it I would like to tell some words later. This motionlessness on this stage in the performance by Zoltán Balázs, indicates for me, that we can see the time, the continuity of world history in front of us. Since people involuntarily associate to one of the basic tragedy of classical Greek culture, to the chained Prometheus, when we see this motionless and unmoveable figure, which is the next part of the story of the chained Prometheus, this is the story of the rebellion against Zeus, and it tells its consequences. When I think that this story becomes secondary behind the rite, then we suddenly get involved in the theatre. Into which can be made by theatre with what kind of effects.

There are so much humour in this performance. We can see well the humorous parts, when the five Curates are jumping around the baby. It is not shouting, we do not laugh aloud because of it, but it is there like another element. Here Zoltán Balázs dares to play with everything from the bravest and most horrific elements, from the tearing up of the child, up until the situational comedy. I can mention humour inside the oratorio too, when Gaia goes aside or runs through the stage and starts singing, suddenly we get three seconds of illusion of The Magic Flute, which makes people listen to, then the story is going on, this performance has no connection neither with Mozart nor with the opera of course, but they are in it too. If I understand well, this performance tries to salute to different genres, authors, great creators and styles. It always puts the theatre, the “theatron” in the middle.

In connection with theatre of rites, we have to mention of course József Ruszt. For me Rhea’s first scene, when hanging, entangling and chaining to the net she gives birth to her child, makes me remember József Ruszt’s direction from the middle of the 70s, The Bacchae. I can tell another thing: the conscious and wonderful game with the lights. When on behalf of the moiras, of the moira herself is standing on the left side of the stage and behind her a thin beam of light cuts the scene, crosses it in front of Kronos...Robert Wilson has a performance, which he made together with Michel Piccoli: the “La Maladie de la Mort”, which plays simply with it, that a very thin beam of light goes through the back part of the stage and cuts up the life. Here it forms a border too. This shows the end, the border of Kronos’ power.

Or the time. The game with time. The time is unstoppable. Behind Ilona Béres, there is a giant wheel of time. This time will not get out, but it will shatter in this performance. It is very frightening. Otherwise, the colour dynamism of the whole performance is very important. The game of black and red, which are obviously: about a game with style, staging language of eastern-like theatres from the opera in Beijing until the quoting of the language of the Japanese theatre, which I do not think needs more explanation. Here is the rite again. The universality of which is touchable, so its crossing on cultures can be understood from the point of view of any culture, and with different movements, these cultures can be connected to each other.

For me the most captivating was that Zoltán Balázs understood, he has shown us, that we do not have to understand everything in theatre. The theatre needs to have effect on us. The effect again...You get it...I do not, I hope someone will explain it for me. It is not important anyway. It is so good and beautiful, that I do not need the explanation, because it is good. When Gaia appears with that stick. How does she get it? What is she doing with it? Why does she have this stick? It will become a samurai sword after a while. It helps the movements.

This view of time... What these heroes miss from their life is something, which can make it the most tragic one: this is the risk of death. Do not forget that it is about Theomachia so about fight of gods. It is a separate genre in the ancient Greek literature. Theomachia: the fights of gods until the formation of the world of gods on the Olympic, it is the fight between different generations of gods, which was finished by Zeus, but we are living in Zeus’ era, so Zeus’ power – if we understand it well – is always endangered. This is what we can see, I think, on the left side of the stage, in the back, that spiral staircase there, when a veiled figure is going up and down, which is a quote for me, of a Magritte picture, or by Endre Szász or by Dali. From another branch of art, but it is very appropriate, and it does not stop. He does not do anything, does not have contact with any on the stage, he is not in the text, in any situations, but he is there. And it gives me the creeps. Because when we are clapping, when it is over, he is still there. He is going on. This veiled figure is there in the background, with this cage on his head...so it is terrible but very very punctual.

Ilona Mélykuti, the moderator of the professional discussion:

Gyuri, you told that we do not need to understand everything in it. Is not it a kind of release for the director?

György Karsai:

No, it is not at all, because I think with which I have started, that it is a very philologist performance. That way the director convinces me, that he has watched everything. Here everything is really well measured. It is counted out not in centimetres but in hundredth of seconds. I have never seen such disciplined artistic movements and speech – when girls have to sing in choir – I was listening to it well, I would like to catch as they sign to each other, to know when they need to start, but there was nothing. Everything is worked out perfectly. Because of it, I think that if I do not understand anything from the performance, then that is my fault. It is not even a fault. That is what I would like to tell, that I do not need to understand it. It is good! Do not get it. A performance is good similarly to a good lesson in school, where they do not tell everything. We have to think it over. The child should go home and think about those things he has heard. Do not accept my explanations, but those things, which come up in him after it. It is much more important, than what I say, or what is on stage. Then tomorrow. By then we will find out what the performance becomes. It is similar to happiness. If people in it, he may not recognise that it is true. But when they sleep one after it, and remember it, the next day, then they realise, what was missing from it, but it has been so wonderful.

Ilona Mélykuti:

Was it so obvious to everybody that we do not need to understand everything of it?

István Nánay, critic:

I have worked a lot with the understanding of this performance, because I have given it to many of my classes to watch it. That way the students of the University of Theatre and Film Arts were working with it, there were drama teachers too, so the scale is quite wide, and they could hardy do anything with this performance. People usually watch performances with that attitude, with which you asked now. With the attitude that they have to understand everything in the performance. We teach them it, when we teach them performance analysis, they have to take care to the method how the different aspects of the performance are put together.

In case of such a complicated text and such a complicated performance, where there are so many different styles and quotes – as Gyuri has said - , it is very difficult to put things together, because there is no relationship of cause-and-effect but a very complicated one. Well, if Gyuri has mentioned this woman, who is going up and down, then it is an element of fine arts, another projection of time, and it is a spatial counterpoint at the same time, so everything works with multiple meaning.

I think that these can be understood, but we have to accept, that a type of theatre – that type which we do not like in Hungary very much – where the text does not tell everything, so we cannot decode everything immediately from it, force people to reread and re-watch it. That way, when I made people watch it again, many things – they got some viewpoints of course, to know what they have to watch more or less – have become understandable. As Gyuri has mentioned, many things live on inside and get into the right place, or at least find their place according to his own values and knowledge. I think we cannot understand perfectly even Hamlet when we watch it; however, we think we have all the keys to it. A theatre, which is working mainly with pictures, and voice, where action, space and colours dominate together, cannot be understood at once, we have to think them over. It is not sure that we will get one and true, valid solution. The director, of course, - I can prove it, because we have talked a lot about it – is very well-prepared from it, so he knows it well, as the actors do too. It can be felt from the fact that here everything is very punctual.

Erzsébet Bogácsi, critic:

I try to add other ideas to it, to state those points, which make this performance good, and then try to put in order those which have been told somewhere as examples, then what we could exactly see and finally that what could make this performance even better.

I think too that it is a very consciously made, artistry cared and talented performance. Obviously, it is because of the director, but he forms unity together with his colleagues. Unfortunately, during these debates we never have enough time to analyse the artistic performances too, so because we would run out of time, I would state, that the troupe make such a devoting and punctual work for which there are only a few examples in Hungarian theatres. Both the member of the troupe, from the main characters to the members of the choir, and the guest stars too, from Ilona Béres to Erzsébet Soltész. I would love to emphasize that without them it could not happen that way.

In advance I would like to draw attention to the fact, that we very rarely can see theatrical example which bravely differ from the psychologically realistic staging which is usual in Hungary, which choose a different way, and I welcome it.

What did happen in this performance? It starts with the text. Zoltán Balázs chose a text by Sándor Weöres, with which he felt that Hungarian staging had a debt. I do not think so, I think that Theomachia has literary values, but I think evidently, that any literary text can be suitable to make a performance with which the director has aim, can do something with. This was the case there too.

To talk about dramaturgy too. Do not go wrong, they do not only change the order of letters from time to time, there is a system of it too. The first and greatest changing is that they foreshadow the story at the beginning, as a vision of a dream, or better to tell, as a vision of a nightmare. Then the story begins. I understand it. Some colleagues have believed that it is not a fortunate solution, because there is a monologue in the original one, which gives verbal information, about which we have to know, but here it is built in a shown system, so we have to make efforts to make the story complete. I think it can make hard to follow the performance for some, but that way the direction can give a stylistic key, according to which we have to interpret the others.

Another bigger change comes in the end, when he gets text from Weöres’ poetry. Meanwhile there are those words backwards, but besides it sometimes just consonants can be heard, then just vowels, replicas are repeated, some replicas are told simultaneously, they told texts in canon, so there is a very serious system, how it has been built up.

I jump here, I try to go on with its musicality. What I have told there, what happens with the text, it leads to the musicality. It is partly based on the fact, that if there is a pure meter – I call it pure because it has lost its content – it gives alone the musical meaning of it, and the interpretation of the mood of words has a kind of mood too. Besides it there are whispers, cries, echoes and so on, these lead to musicality too. I think if I were László Sáry, I would be very happy to be able to compose music to this kind of performance, because it makes a perfect ground to his excellent music, which is built mostly on percussion instruments and singing. I think I would state most stressfully, that there is no speech neither in prose nor in singing, nether with music nor without it, which does not have any musicality in it, together with the mute signing too. Here this mute signing is a kind of movement too. The musicality of the movement is natural, as choreography is mostly built on music, why would it be differently here? That upright, square-shaped dance, which the Curates show at the beginning, that is as musical as when towards the end, at about the two-third of the performance, they do their choir dance too. Now I leave the nanny thing with purpose, I would like to mention it later from a different point of view.

The next one: the choreography is a sight too. The sight has a special feature too. The set and costume has value of fine arts too from the point of view that it does not just help to do situations and describe characters, but they always have a fine artistic value too as placed in the space. You have mentioned Rhea and Okeanos common act in that light corridor, but other examples can be mentioned there, maybe a very simple one too – which happens simultaneously inside Judit Gombár’s double action - , that she creates a space once then put red wigs into it as exclamation marks.

What can make it even better? Mysteriousness has been mentioned too. I would call it Hermeticism, as the aim is obvious too. It has even more elements, I do not think so mysterious the woman with the cage on her head, especially if I think of the baby-flame also in a cage on the other side of the stage, so they are not so hard to understand. The Boy has his small-dissociated personality, there are sound changings, who uses which sound, more of them play Rhea and so on. I think this last one has practical reasons too, as it is very interesting that somebody stops her speech here and then speak there the other side. Everything, which we appreciate so much and which can engage during the performance, that is its form, and this is the most important thing. I have doubts here. I do not get explanation why this performance has to be placed into this Eastern-like culture. I have an idea, but it has not turned out from the performance. I do not want to complain, of course, why the actors did not appear in Greek costume. I suppose that Zoltán Balázs looked for t a world, where he tried to perform the archaic with a far stranger. Then I would tell one thing, which breaks it a little bit. It is not useful to confuse us here in Europe, I feel a break there, when Typhon appears, and there are Japanese-like things there. This system breaks up there. I feel that it was peacefully functional until this part, so far the sight has brought those, which design is almost known from martial arts.

I have one more question, why do I say, that the form mostly affects me? I have watched this performance twice mostly with pure professional interest, in Budapest and here. Nobody has taken me emotionally. I was looking for it, I was waiting. Andrea Spolarics eyes were shining yesterday, I looked at her and turned out that it was just glitter on her eyelashes. Fortunately now I was sitting close to Ilona Béres and I managed to see that she did not have only glitter on her eyelashes, she did not have it on her lashes...so I would need to sit very near to see the little fallibility in her greatness; which could bring me close.

György Karsai has talked about similar things he has mentioned rhythm too. I would not examine them more, as it is not a rite built into a great system, but different things. If it is a rite, we may think about it because of its relation with stylization. Well, then use rite as a working hypothesis. I will finish in moments. How can a rite get closer to anybody? That they are the members of that community or they are in connection with its object. It must be solved somehow here, that I could become a part of it, and do not remain a viewer from outside. I suppose, I can become part of something when I recognise myself in them. Generally, we can recognise ourselves, when the form breaks up and I can see the human fragility and weakness.

I would like to repeat that it is a very talented performance, I would give it an award too. It is fantastic when somebody in his twenties put something like this on the table. That is all.

György Karsai:

I would give another context of the meaning of rite. The rite is theatre. I will be initiated, and I am waiting for it during any theatrical performance, that I would become somehow the part of those things, which are going on there. I used the word, rite with this meaning. From this point of view, I do not need to see the tears shining in the actor’s eyes. There are those types of performances where the actors’ immersion helps me to get closer, helps me get into the performance, but to be able to make me the part of this embodied rite is totally depend on the performance.

Erzsébet Bogácsi:

It is just a possibility to make tears shine. I can imagine very well, that I would identify with the characters.

György Karsai:

I identified with. I was Kronos. I was as beautiful as he was, yes I was. If we arrive there to the using of eastern theatre. I did not want to tell before, that what people thought about while watching Zoltán Balázs’ direction. I saw it first sometimes in the 80s in Ariane Mnouchkin’s direction in Agamemnon, where the choir did the same. In case of the Greek tragedies, it is always hard to do something with the choir, especially in case of Agamemnon, which needed a complex choir from one block. He made in his theatre twelve men in eastern-like dresses run around, jump up and down the walls, everywhere, and this eastern style could give something extra to make me live through the Greek things better too. For me the connection of different cultures to one another meant that, no more, I did not want to see an opera from Beijing in it, I did not miss the Greek side of the story, and it was made to be Greek as it was Hungarian, Chinese and Japanese and everything too. It was universal. The eternal reality of the story, that is universal.

Adrienne Csengery, the curator of the competition schedule:

In this performance, we can live through the birth of the Greek culture, as the whole European culture starts with this rite and story – as it is. Here we can experience the birth of art, which Zoltán Balázs emphasized by the solution, that he finished the performance with Sándor Weöres’ The drum and dance poem, which is a fantastic choice and fits perfectly to the whole play.

Erzsébet Sándor, journalist:

I would like to add, that if I thought myself to be a professional theatregoer, and something wanted to talk about the universe, it would not matter whether it was Indian, Chinese, Japanese or Greek. It does not matter, it simply about the universe. If Ilona Béres’ swirl does not get anybody from the auditorium, and could measure this performance from outside, through its tools, from the point of view of its form, and look at it coldly, then I am very sorry for you, Erzsi. I suppose I am heterosexual but after days, I have been still in love with Ilona Béres and I would recommend her the award of the best male performance. (Laugh and claps...)

Erzsébet Bogácsi:

Here one thing missed which I have signed before, that there was a part which touched me emotionally too. First, I would react on Ilona Béres. I said that I was happy to have sat closer yesterday, that way I could see, which touched me. This is one of them. I have foreshadowed that the Curates’ scene where they nurse the baby, was also close to people, of course. It is about the example when we can see human fallibility and weakness too.

Ilona Mélykuti:

Let us give the opportunity to Erzsi Bogács to feel that it did not get her that it left her or at least she remained far. Adrienne told that we are the moment of birth of European culture. It is worth a question that why would the birth of the European culture is carried out by the using of eastern culture and eastern rites, which are stranger to us. It is universal, it is true, but it can make viewers think that it breaks up in them or starts breaking up.

Gyula Sipos (France):

I would like to add three points to the question of Far East. First: I totally agree with György Karsai, that the metaphor of Far East can work well with that example he has mentioned, the example of Mnouchkine so the far-eastern alienation sometimes can highlight our situation, the Greek situation or the European or the Hungarian one. That would be one of them.

Second: in connection with the Far East again. I watched the performance as a theatre of world, as universal theatre, because the story is universal too: from the fall of the myth, from Uranos to Kronos, through Zeus to mankind (so mankind falls) and it points until the worldwide realization of mankind nowadays. I see it as a theatre of world, because there are different genres next to each other, they are mentioned as quotes, and a far-eastern quote fits there too. The third one is a pure reminder, a literary and biographical one, Sándor Weöres is between those Hungarian poets, who had personal experiences with the Far East, he translated many poems form the Far East, and he tried to suit his mentality to his own Zen Buddhist, Taoist ideas. We can find it weaker from philosophical point of view, but the Far East was an important part of his poetry and worldview, so it would be cheating if into this world drama this Far Eastern viewpoint can fix in.

Ilona Mélykuti:

Pista Nánay told right that it was not Greek, it was by Weöres. We have forgotten – I think all of us – that here we are talking about a play by Sándor Weöres. With it, he did not want to show the birth of the European culture only.

Adrienne Csengery:

Weöres is a universal poet, he brings the world onto our table with his poems and translations, however he did not speak any foreign languages. He spoke only German very bad. That way he translated everything from rough translations. It is good to know it. With his dramas, he was far ahead of his age. A lot more ahead, that is why he can be mysterious to us, who has got used to the psychological realist dramas and straight-lined stories. It is not that one. It is a rite. This –we can tell – takes us far from the topic, it does not illustrate, but demonstrates.

György Karsai:

Before we would go on, a philological data comes into my mind, which I would like to tell. Weöres wrote this play in 1938. In Hungary it was performed once, in 1971 in Szkéné Theatre, István Keleti directed it, and one of the performer of it is sitting there with us, she is Adrienne Csengery. (Silent giggle)

Ilona Mélykuti:

I would add one more sentence to that Erzsi told, she was in love with Ilona Béres for days. We would understand it. For me the fact that Kronos is played by a woman meant the asexuality in a way.

György Karsai:

I think we do not need to explain it. One critic told that the direction is Zsótér-like because of it. I do not think so. We do not need to explain it. Yes, Ilona Béres would be the best male performer this year.

Géza Hizsnyan, critic:

I go back a little bit to Erzsébet Bogácsi’s sense of lack. I think we agree that we could watch a perfect and very exciting performance. If somebody misses something I can accept it. I have missed a little bit too, maybe because not only those things made me think after it and the next day which you (Erzsébet Bogácsi) has mentioned, but there were two questions – one of them would be a key question according to me - , which caused some kind of problem for me. It is a brilliant idea, that they tell backwards a part of the text. It has incredible atmospheric power. Then it raised a question for me, if they had to tell the other texts understandably, and where would be the limit? It is a great question, where is the limit between the situations when I have to understand the text and where and when I do not have to, then why it has not been important? If this limit exists, and it is important, then the articulation have not been that understandable to make it clear to me too. Now if I divide it so well, that whether the audience understands it or not, that it leaves a question mark in me.

The other one is that I am not a musician, but I have a question, which I do not know. I felt Rhea’s first monologue, which she sang on pentatonic scale, a little bit forces, and then it has never returned in musicality. Than it is a big question that why is it so striking, but not hurtful, for my non-musician ears?

Zoltán Balázs, the director of the performance:

There is a Chinese proverb: “Do not touch the idols, the gilding remains on your hand!” I suppose, that if a performance – it can be anyone’s direction, with any actors - , needs to be explained, than I am not interested in it. I think that our work together with this troupe is continuous, we start it all over again after each performance, we always have rehearsals before them, but it will be always the same in front of you. I can place signs, I can place piles inside a performance, but the shipping-lane is filled by the audience – I believe in it.

It is not an accident, that I have started working with Sándor Weöres’ this work. I think it is that kind of challenge – for me, for the young director - , which I would wish for all of my mates. I simply think that young students on the university would need to work with plays like this. Sándor Weöres does not give any instruction. Neither furiously nor angrily, or even nicely, neither out, nor in, or up...- the play does not have these kind of instructions. All words need to be solved, this text shows us the whole story. From this point of view we can say, that it does not need to be put on stage. Why? Lilla Mikes can stand up on the Korona Pódium with a candle and tells it, and then it appears in front of me. Meanwhile I think that it is our task in connection with Sándor Weöres to connect words to this world, to give language to it. It cannot be done without a form. I think that form is not the enemy of content, and the content is not the enemy of form. I think we can miss the glittering in the actors’ play if they are disbelieving. I suppose that the most important thing is to create the belief of the direction inside the performance. It is a long process. It does not happen over one performance, over neither two nor three. It is a long-term journey, which I could obviously show in this phase. I hope that I still have some year to work and then we can move on.

It is a starting point for me I think to formulate that kind of language, to undertake it, which is based on meta-communicative signs. Not only on verbal things. I feel many times, that they cheat me in theatre, when they say angrily “I hate you”, or they say sensitively “I love you”. It is rare in life that people feel and tell the same thing. Many times they hide, deny, want to give other forms to it, and cannot stand it, it overflows, over floods them. For example in connection with Ilona Bares’ Kronos I was interested in this overflow. That a fragile, 63 years old woman plays a masculine ancient god with man-power, and the weakening of his power means effeminacy for me, and the same time everything else get stronger around him in the figure of a new order.

There is not any story. The story can be similar to everybody. It is not like a big family with many problems between them, conflict, they hate the neighbour, so they poison their dog...these things are not there. There is an old god simply, and there is a new one too. Then what will happen between the two characters, between the two idols, that is the serious exercise.

I am sorry. I have not thought that I would tell it, because...because, what I can see, that is there. If it exists, than this is there. If it is not there then we do not need to talk about it. Meanwhile for me it is very important that here is a phase, and I am happy that I could try it out, and I could meet Sándor Weöres.

There was one of Sándor Weöres’ relative, maybe his nephew, I am not sure, on one of our performance, and after it, he came to me and said: - Well, if Sándor had watched it, he would have been very happy, because it is he. We can believe it or not. I think that for Hungarian theatre it is very important to try to combine the diversity of arts. It is not sure that it will be successful, but we must think the other way around too. Not only those things can happen which we tell, step, put on us, but all these always have extra meaning involuntarily.

The Eastern world is a basic question in connection with Sándor Weöres. It is about the effort towards completeness – whether people can reach it or not – it is in it. It is there in each speechlessness and silence. To answer to your question (Géze Hizsnyan’s) that why the folk song is there? It is a mourning based on a “csángó” folk song. I suppose that our culture, the Hungarian culture, the European and the Easter one – they are all of us. From the cradle to the grave, we simply create the myth of birth through a mourning. Gaia’ folk dance is a Hungarian element. For me, it can be organic part of a Greek story, in which there are Eastern motifs too. I do not know how the Greeks played. I can imagine it, there are many information of it, but I do not know, I did not see it. I do not know, I just have some fantasy. This is the only treasure in theatre that is why it is worth making performances that fantasy can work when meet some creative people. I have great creative partners, I have to mention it. Thanks God I have the possibility to work with the same people for a while, hopefully for a long time – Judit Gombár, László Sáry. I must tell some words about Judit Góczán, because there is a huge dramatic work in this performance. Many times we do not get it, because who watch it for the first time, maybe cannot pay attention on it, but for example the meeting of Rhea and Okeanos, which happens on two beams of light, that is three following scenes in the original play. It becomes one here. Okeanos talks to Kronos and Rhea at the same time. It is an incredibly hard task to solve. We have to keep its truth, the personality has to be kept too, that three scenes have to happen at the same time, however they are one another in time. There are very hard things, and it is for example Judit Góczán’s merit.

There is another crazy man next to me, András Szöllősi, who made these movements with actors, who were not born to be dancers, they did not have any dancing training before. I suppose it can be very hard to make them that beside stepping from left to right, they can express themselves in some more complex, more grotesque, more complicated system of movements, and they find their belief and joy in it. I think it is a mosaic of my life, hopefully it is a mosaic in your lives too. Thank you for being there, that you have watched this thing – also in Sándor Weöres’ name. (Claps)

Adrienne Csengery:

Thank you, Zoltán Balázs, very much for this performance, for this experience. We understood it very differently then, but that was also watched by Sándor Weöres. I did not want to tell it, but I would like to finish this discussion with a joke, because we got very sad. The joke is: when priests still celebrated masses on Latin language, a woman in village left the church, clapped her hand and told, “we had a blessed priest, we did not understand even a word”.

Ilona Mélykuti:

A line came into my mind in the end: “Then deep silence floats, like a cold sound” – to stay by Sándor Weöres.

Ilona Mélykuti, POSZT.hu, 2004

(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)

Interview with Zoltán Balázs, theatre director and artistic director of Maladype Theatre, ahead of the premiere of Csongor and Tünde, which will be presented in the 54th season of the Gyula Castle Theatre.

Zoltán Balázs graduated from the drama department of the Horváth Mihály High School in Szentes in 1995. In 2003, he graduated from the University of Theatre and Film Arts with a degree in acting and directing in Miklós Benedek's class. His first production with Maladype Theatre was Eugene Ionesco's Jack or the Submission in 2001, when the theatre was just starting out. His latest Maladype production was Anton Pavlovich Chekhov's Three Sisters in 2017.

At the same time, you have already directed Eugene Ionesco again this year (The Lesson - University of Theatre and Film Arts). Do you like framed structures?

So much so that when I played Richard III here in Gyula on July 14, I realized that I had played Hamlet here on the exact same day 11 years ago.

That's right, you've encountered Shakespeare before in Gyula, as you were here for the 10th Shakespeare Festival in 2014 in connection with Macbeth/Anatomy, and in 2006 you played the title role in Tim Carroll's (artistic director of London's Globe Theatre) iconic production of Hamlet. This time you are not performing, but staging an expansive dramatic poem. Where did the idea for the adaptation of Csongor and Tünde come from? How can the story of the search for happiness be staged in a new way?

Only adventurous artists should be allowed to stage Vörösmarty's play; artists who are not interested in creating solutions, end results, or canonizable performances, but for whom the search for happiness itself is a kind of quest – a creative quest, or a reckoning with themselves. Where do I come from, where am I going, and who am I traveling with on this special, unique journey?

Could this reckoning have something to do with the fact that you turned 40 this year?

It has a lot to do with it, because a much-awaited period of my life is coming: those mature years, when the experiences I have accumulated over the past years can take me into new dimensions. The cosmology of Csongor and Tünde is extremely suitable for taking stock, as the encounter between the profane and sacred worldviews expressed in it is also relevant in our current world. This is accompanied by opportunities to meet rebellious directors, authors, actors, and audiences, from which a new self will emerge.

Your conscious departure from the canon has also influenced your previous productions. What is the reason behind this?

Irregularity is a very powerful driving force. Vörösmarty takes his characters through 11 stations in an incredibly precise, Dante-esque manner, in a cone-shaped structure. In my opinion, the two main units are Csongor's falling asleep and Tünde's "awakening." At the same time, the two roles are one; you cannot separate the outside from the inside, the here from the there, the above from the below. Balancing the points of tension is the noblest task. According to my concept, these levels are concentrated in one actress, Ágota Szilágyi, and my perspective tends to reinforce Tünde's story and role. The main point is not the lovers' pursuit of each other, although the search for this form of happiness is obviously present. Tünde's attitude generates an act of creation, which is realized in the image of Csongor. The fundamental question of the performance is therefore how a person finds themselves, how they become aware of their self-consciousness. The possibility of playing a dual role is not thought through in terms of male and female clothing or gender roles; the costume does not help the actor, whose inward journey, along a surface of intense concentration, draws in those watching the story and the transformation.

So, besides "irregularity," the other key word is "transformation"?

Yes, that's also a basic concept. A character doesn't just go from A to B, but through many selves to the essence, the realization of which—due to the struggle and suffering in between—is happiness itself. This, of course, has to do with love, as we often idealize the “one and only” throughout our lives, while they have been sitting right next to us all along, unnoticed, while life passed us by.

Although you are still young, you have already achieved a lot. You are the artistic director of Maladype Theatre, and in your training method “The Golden Bug-method”, you combine common, symbolic, and magical storylines with a new type of knowledge acquisition inspired by the work of Edgar Allan Poe. You draw parallels between the Self and the Other, the animus and the anima, the Woman and the Man, Csongor and Tünde. In what space and time can all this be imagined?

In an imaginary space, purely on an imaginary plane. The story is sufficiently multi-layered so that there is no need to focus on an actual space. Since I have been on every stage in Gyula, it was not a priority for the actors to run up and down, even though the castle has a natural atmosphere and is a very playable space. In addition, the audience only understands and feels the story quite vaguely. I don't mean it in a derogatory way, but we cannot expect them to be aware of every nuance. The primary task, therefore, is to tell them the story, with all its little tricks and refinements. The storylines are intertwined like a DNA spiral. I don't want to be didactic, but it is a fundamental directorial, professional, and primary intention to make the backbone of the story recognizable and followable, yet at the same time, I don't want to make it too easy for the audience by spoon-feeding them. I didn't want to include any unnecessary gimmicks—say, three ducks or nine frogs—because I don't like them, and what we find funny at first glance may not necessarily be funny to the audience. Even so, it will be exciting enough to untangle the threads of this play. I've been working on it for years, and I'm madly in love with this work.

If I’m not mistaken, it’s not your first time directing a play where the main character is a traveller.

Indeed, I've staged works that involve symbolic journeys, such as the works of Dante, Homer, and Goethe, so I'm not afraid that lyrical dramas lack dynamic storylines or a sequence of events. Csongor and Tünde also has countless stereotypes associated with it, and in a positive sense, a kind of silliness that offers some pressure to conform in the portrayal of the devil's sons, Tünde, Mirigy, and the three wanderers, but this is not the focus of my production.

Then what is?

Basically, that those who seek shall find, and this is also true of happiness; the charm lies in the journey itself, in the Madáchian sense. Therefore, it is not primarily the chronology, the identifiability of the characters, or analytical thinking that becomes important, but rather the cooperative interplay of the audience, the Gyula Castle Theatre, and the Maladype Theatre on the level of sensuality and perceptibility. I believe that so many emotional impulses will come together here that they will create a kind of tingling sensation in the audience.

Could you give us a little preview?

The program notes specify that László Sáry, winner of the Artisjus Prize, and fashion designer Anikó Németh worked with me on the production, with Andrea Lengyel as rehearsal pianist and Katalin Balázs as production manager. The cast features excellent performances by Ágota Szilágyi, Marianna Sipos, Erika Tankó, László Kéringer, János Fekete "Jammal," Viktória Denk, Zsigmond Bödők, Lóránd Bartha, and Eszter Balogh. Although Sáry also composes opera, the musical accompaniment in this piece follows a beatbox puzzle. The adaptation is absolutely not classical, but neither is it "fake contemporary", in the sense that it does not include eight movements at all costs in order to be abstract. I would certainly not use the words "strange" and "interesting" in connection with the performance, although Vörösmarty's original work is grotesque, cynical, ironic, and bizarre in many places. I tried to find the overlapping planes of thought by combining them in a total art puzzle, which ultimately and hopefully results in the harmony of the text, the visuals, the movement, and the opera music.

As director of Maladype Theatre, you have always strived for groundbreaking harmony and innovative productions. Your previous works are available on the theatre's website, which I highly recommend for further information, as it was named the best theatre website of the season in 2017 and received the award at the National Theatre Meeting in Pécs. Your current production is a collaboration with the Gyula Castle Theatre. Every year, there is more and more attention when you accept an invitation to stage a play. How did you receive this commission?

We try to meet all requests, as it is one of the basic tasks of the theatre to be audience-friendly, both in its performances and in its accessibility. If Marianna Varga hadn't approached me, my desire to stage this work might have lingered within me, but her timing was perfect, as “I have searched in every nation, / every land upon the earth, / for that infinitely rare / beauty, far beyond belief, / for the lady of my dreams.”[1] Thanks to this commission, I was able to do the reckoning and I felt ready to stage this play.

Thank you for this refreshing and informative, friendly conversation. I wish you every success with the play and, of course, in the future! During your stay here, I wish you and the company a pleasant time in Gyula!

Thank you for the opportunity. We look forward to seeing everyone at the play on August 11, 2017, at 8:30 p.m.!

Gyulai Hírlap, 2017

Translated by Lena Megyeri

[1] Mihály Vörösmarty: The Quest - Csongor and Tünde. Translated by Peter Zollman