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)