The most important thing is to find malleable material in the actor
Three important adjectives to describe you...
Adventurous, passionate, stubborn.
Three important adjectives to describe Maladype...
Integrative, experimental, authentic.
Who has described you best in your life so far, and what did they say about you?
Tim Caroll (director of the Hamlet performance I played in), who explained stage situations and relationships to us using the example of football. Once, in connection with the role of Hamlet, he said that I was the Ronaldinho of his soccer team, whose main task was not to score goals at all costs, but to pass the ball to his teammates so that they could score.
What is your earliest memory?
My mother's long hair.
Where do you most feel at home?
Anywhere in the world, but mostly in my own imagination.
What is something that probably no one would think about you?
That I am loyal.
Tell me about the most defining moment of your career on stage!
Then I have to talk about Hamlet, which was one of the highlights of my acting career. Hungarian acting tends to be very conservative. Tim Caroll, on the other hand, encouraged risk-taking. If it weren't for him, if he hadn't phrased things the way he did during rehearsals, I wouldn't have been able to experience that moment that radically changed my thinking about theatre. Due to its improvisational nature, this Hamlet was truly different every time. On that pivotal evening—we were probably around the fiftieth performance—I suddenly felt terribly tired during the monologue beginning with "How stand I then." So tired that I wanted to say to the audience: I'm sorry, but I need a little time because my head is about to explode. The actor's voice inside me said, "You can't do that, Zoli, you're an actor, the show must go on, the audience paid for their tickets to see Hamlet, and you are Hamlet." Another voice said, "Even if you can do it routinely, you're actually lying. What if you admitted, 'I'm tired'?" "You can." "No, you can't." "You're an actor..." "You're a human being..." And then, unexpectedly (even to myself), I said, "I need two minutes of silence so I can be alone with myself." I had never heard such silence in a theatre before; the audience didn't dare to move. I don't think they believed this could happen in the middle of a performance. It didn't even take two minutes, and I began to speak: "How. Stan I. Then..." – and I built the monologue out of silence, out of nothing. I received grateful applause; the audience felt that they had witnessed some kind of "new authenticity." On the way home, I wondered how I dared to behave so "unprofessionally." And then I realized that Zoli Balázs was not tired as Zoli Balázs, but as Hamlet, because Hamlet had overworked his brain. The character was preoccupied with his problem: he was thinking, arguing with himself. And although the pleasure of thinking determines how the brain works, its capacity is finite. That's when I realized that there is such a thing as a human actor. That's when I grew up as an actor, and incidentally, I directed Leonce and Lena, which marked the beginning of a new era in the life of Maladype.
What are you most proud of about your company?
The successes we have achieved at home and abroad, and the fact that audiences anywhere in the world immediately welcome our performances and our actors.
How do you choose your actors, what is most important to you as a director?
The most important thing is to find an actor who is malleable, who allows and demands to be constantly shaped. As a director, besides curiosity, openness, and childlike playfulness, I am most attracted to a "predatory" attitude, an actor's "hunger" and "alertness."
If I say one-man show, you say...
Viktor Kravchenko: I Chose Freedom
If I say Maladype Base, you say...
Homeliness, humanity, directness.
If I say travel, you say...
Sándor Kányádi's poem "Előhang" (Prelude)
Directed by Sándor Zsótér, Maladype is staging Richard III, in which we can once again see you as an actor. What was the most memorable moment of the rehearsal process and how do you feel about the premiere?
Every moment was important, therefore I experienced an enlightening moment during rehearsals, that is, the joy of a unique and unrepeatable realization.
I consider the premiere to be just another rehearsal opportunity, like any other rehearsal, where I can always learn something new about Richard III.
LeCool, 2016
Translated by Lena Megyeri
Adventurous, passionate, stubborn.
Three important adjectives to describe Maladype...
Integrative, experimental, authentic.
Who has described you best in your life so far, and what did they say about you?
Tim Caroll (director of the Hamlet performance I played in), who explained stage situations and relationships to us using the example of football. Once, in connection with the role of Hamlet, he said that I was the Ronaldinho of his soccer team, whose main task was not to score goals at all costs, but to pass the ball to his teammates so that they could score.
What is your earliest memory?
My mother's long hair.
Where do you most feel at home?
Anywhere in the world, but mostly in my own imagination.
What is something that probably no one would think about you?
That I am loyal.
Tell me about the most defining moment of your career on stage!
Then I have to talk about Hamlet, which was one of the highlights of my acting career. Hungarian acting tends to be very conservative. Tim Caroll, on the other hand, encouraged risk-taking. If it weren't for him, if he hadn't phrased things the way he did during rehearsals, I wouldn't have been able to experience that moment that radically changed my thinking about theatre. Due to its improvisational nature, this Hamlet was truly different every time. On that pivotal evening—we were probably around the fiftieth performance—I suddenly felt terribly tired during the monologue beginning with "How stand I then." So tired that I wanted to say to the audience: I'm sorry, but I need a little time because my head is about to explode. The actor's voice inside me said, "You can't do that, Zoli, you're an actor, the show must go on, the audience paid for their tickets to see Hamlet, and you are Hamlet." Another voice said, "Even if you can do it routinely, you're actually lying. What if you admitted, 'I'm tired'?" "You can." "No, you can't." "You're an actor..." "You're a human being..." And then, unexpectedly (even to myself), I said, "I need two minutes of silence so I can be alone with myself." I had never heard such silence in a theatre before; the audience didn't dare to move. I don't think they believed this could happen in the middle of a performance. It didn't even take two minutes, and I began to speak: "How. Stan I. Then..." – and I built the monologue out of silence, out of nothing. I received grateful applause; the audience felt that they had witnessed some kind of "new authenticity." On the way home, I wondered how I dared to behave so "unprofessionally." And then I realized that Zoli Balázs was not tired as Zoli Balázs, but as Hamlet, because Hamlet had overworked his brain. The character was preoccupied with his problem: he was thinking, arguing with himself. And although the pleasure of thinking determines how the brain works, its capacity is finite. That's when I realized that there is such a thing as a human actor. That's when I grew up as an actor, and incidentally, I directed Leonce and Lena, which marked the beginning of a new era in the life of Maladype.
What are you most proud of about your company?
The successes we have achieved at home and abroad, and the fact that audiences anywhere in the world immediately welcome our performances and our actors.
How do you choose your actors, what is most important to you as a director?
The most important thing is to find an actor who is malleable, who allows and demands to be constantly shaped. As a director, besides curiosity, openness, and childlike playfulness, I am most attracted to a "predatory" attitude, an actor's "hunger" and "alertness."
If I say one-man show, you say...
Viktor Kravchenko: I Chose Freedom
If I say Maladype Base, you say...
Homeliness, humanity, directness.
If I say travel, you say...
Sándor Kányádi's poem "Előhang" (Prelude)
Directed by Sándor Zsótér, Maladype is staging Richard III, in which we can once again see you as an actor. What was the most memorable moment of the rehearsal process and how do you feel about the premiere?
Every moment was important, therefore I experienced an enlightening moment during rehearsals, that is, the joy of a unique and unrepeatable realization.
I consider the premiere to be just another rehearsal opportunity, like any other rehearsal, where I can always learn something new about Richard III.
LeCool, 2016
Translated by Lena Megyeri