There are tall glass cups between the regular setting on the oval plexi table. Stolen beams of light from the glass plates enlighten thirteen pairs of glasses. There are excited looks. There is very tense self-control under the cowls. The bodies which are huddled up around the table, are hardly moving. They have not got faces. Only their eyes are shining. Their personalities beam over the half-light of the room. They are rocking. They are seemed to be branches which have been destroyed by storm. It is a weird, barbarian ceremony. There are weird voices. There are animal sounds of a jungle. An understandable prayer can be heard. Maybe it is Latin. They are singing a Latin psalm. There would be a secret ceremony in an underground casemate. Are they pursued early – Christians? Is it a barbaric tribe? May the satanic congregation of Huymans’ from Fleming’s novel, titled: There down, start their occult black mass? Are there thirteen people at the table? This is the last supper. Who is the Savior between them? Who is Judas? They use the cutlery in a ceremonial way. One of the monks/apostles plays a pagan rhythm with two spoons. The others start to do the same. An elf with glowing eyes appears at the middle of the table. He is similar to the hermaphrodite of Satyricon by Fellini. It is a deformed, gothic, bald forehead. Is it a man or a woman? Is it a child or an Oldster? It is enigmatically motionless. Later he jumps like an acrobat and dances solo as a ballerina.

It is School for Fools (L'école des bouffons) by Michel de Ghelderode (1898 - 1962), who is the Belgian theatrical experimental, it is the performance of Maladype Encounters Theatre by Zoltán Balázs, who is the director. The troupe has worked successfully in the Gypsy Parliament in Tavaszmező Street. They broke up after performances of The Blood Wedding by García Lorca and Jack, or the Submission by Ionesco. They are reorganised in an extended version now. They are tenants in Szkéné Theatre.

This ceremony-like play mesmerizes the audience. Once in a lifetime, magical series of actions happen in the black and yellow robes. They show us reverently and inspired the holiness of theatre. We get back the pure theatre, which is vitalized by souls who believe in game. They get their magic from the hard work, which they do together, and which has a cleaning power. The performance in Szkéné Theatre from the point of view of its power is similar to Bob Wilson’s theatrical dream-play, Letters to Queen Victora and to the orthodox choir performance, Jeremiah’s Lamentations which was directed by Anatolij Vasziljev.

The non-informative but musical, rhythmical, sensual and emotional usage of the text helps us to understand the performance of Maladype Encounters Theatre. They sing Latin (translations by Imre Pálfai), the Gypsy and non-Gypsy performers use Gypsy language to tell most of the text of the drama (translation by Lászlóné Varga and Piroska Szõcsi).

There is not any stress on what they are talking about. They do not tell a story. The ceremony is captivating. It is theatrical rite. Its philosophy is not verbal but visual. The dynamic or crawling movements enfold the room. The explosive dance interludes are stomping. Then they are moving composedly on the cramp irons on the wall. The mostly unprofessional dancers carry out András Szöllõsi’s imaginative, changing choreography. László Sáry composed the music of the mass, and accepted to do the musical direction with his enormous theatrical knowledge. Judit Gombár designed the set and costumes.

Music and text, dance and music, performance and dance melt into a unit. The coordination of different theatrical elements gives a strong experience. The cooperative troupe is a strong experience. By name: Erzsébet Soltész who has matured into a great actress, the soloist in the first part of the performance: Erika Molnár, Oszkár Nyári who sacrificed his theatrical routine, Balázs Dévai the safe one, János Balogh(during his ecstatic turning we can see that he has got dance training), Artúr Kálid, who could serve humbly, the wonderful Nóra Parti, Krisztina Sárközi who shares herself from performance to performance, the twins Hermina and Kamilla Fátyol, the strict, monastic Éva Bakos, Zoltán Oláh who plays magic rhythms with his tin pot, and Kristóf Horváth who gets immersed into the play.

During the seasons of shabby theatrical routine, when some self-flattering and self-asserting people make the performances in theatres fussy boredom, a group try to dance through a mass with great inner concentration, sing through a dance-play, take part in a wonderful, common ceremony while taking care of each other, continuing the others’ breath, initiated movement. The group is playing with an imaginary ball. All of them touch the ball differently: according to the actors’ power of fantasy and concentration, the audience can see the imagined things as real ones. The ball can fly with different dynamics, push into bodies or roll away, get its aim or not: it is charged with the invisible symbolic weight. It will be a desired arrival. It is success. It will become value. It is priority. It is power. The radiation of the troupe is getting stronger as the performers are resigning of their self-assertion and they can melt on behalf of their common aim. Who knows since then we have not seen so many considerate looks in a theatre, shining eyes because of attention to working together?!

People do not think about the fact during the performance, maybe just after it, that Gypsies and non-Gypsies in a perfect agreement working hard for art together. It can be accepted as a symbol: they are locked together in the dirt.

Algae may settle at the foot of the walls. There is minced polystyrene rubbish with weird colour. There are industrial trash, vomit, faeces and dirt. The moral and material dirt which surrounds our life. Erzsébet Soltész climbs up to the top of the wall. She gets naked. Her bald wig disappears, the young woman’s hair unfolds.

We can hear Giordano, the victorious love aria from the opera by André Chénier. The drape falls down because of its weight. There is darkness. We can see the enlightened riverbank of the Danube in Pest through the two big windows. The fresh winter air comes into the smelly room. It is not accidental that the greatest achievement of our present national theatre art was born outside the walls. It is far away from the theatres which are over supported without any control, from self-satisfied art directors without any achievement, from economic directors who operate suspiciously, and from actors who act as the representatives of companies with limited partnership.

School for Fools is a great celebratory performance.

Péter Gál Molnár, Népszabadság, 2003

(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)