If we compared the Greek myth, which is the topic of Theomachia by Sándor Weöres, to a grand opera with three acts, then the story about Kronos’s fall and the taking over of power by his youngest son, Zeus would be the overture of it. The myth indicates a step of religious history which is about to explain the time: the time with circular form turns to be historical and linear at the same time; the eternal gods turn to be the captives of time too, to be fleeting so they can share the fate of humans. The myth finds its image as the circular time really expressively in Kronos who eats up his own children. This is the price of the golden age of the World of Gods, and Kronos has to pay it too. Rhea, who has let her children die so far, rebels against the ancient time, represented by him, when she gives a well-bundled rock to her husband as it would be the newborn Zeus. Besides many mythological helpers, Rhea’s servants, the Curates come to help her during the child-saving action they hide the little Zeus in their cave, and cover with their noise his cry from Kronos’ ears. Zeus beats his father finally and takes the power over the universe.

Weöres’ beautiful lines from the Third Symphony seem to be about Kronos, they can concentrate his figure in one long ringing harmony: „He is above / rigid shining indifference, while his figure hidden in fate, it is a quake here underneath, which can never rest.” Which is behind the human thoughts, which has created the myth: the endless time seems to be eternal, which has to be broken, to make it measurable and metric. It has to be decided to measure it, with Zeus’ rule the era of intellect begins, the creatures get sense. Although it has its own price too: by breaking the eternal joy of the golden era, by coming on stage the awareness we have to face up with the mortality, which opens door towards the fate, and the lines for people who try to understand the infinitive world as the last shelter of thoughts by the myth, which come together in Moiras’ hands. They are not parts of the golden era anymore, their roles and importance can be understood from the point of view of the end. In contrary to the timeless harmony of the golden era, the story has beginning, middle and end, so it has linear, progressing time, metre. The circular time does not stop existing because of it: from the mixture of the two times the spiral form was born which can reflect most precisely the idea of the „real”, natural time, so the story repeats itself in a new form (in a new dimension) and a new circle.

The mental construction, which is put into these naive pictures can be examined actually from the point of view of history, that is why it can be up to date to us: the Kronos-myth is there in front of us as it is pulled down from its antique height, and set up into a drama of history of world, like the scenes of eternal, human „machinations” for power. So to go on with the play of language, which was done by the divine conspirators’ descendants on the stage of history: it is full of Machiavellianism. But the metaphor is true the other way around too: the structures of the great dictatorships up until the present (moreover up until today) are similar to Kronos’ rule: the Time does not move, there is personal cult around the ruler of the empire, a complete spy agency works to protect him, the form of the ruler’s splendour is served by the sample of an earlier Global Empire. If the conductor it cheated by his organisation, and deprives of his power, after the coup, the earlier followers try to clear up the clues soon and put on a new costume, which is loyal to the new era. They strengthen this new era after it again.

Maybe it is not by chance that Sándor Weöres who, according to his poetic lifework is less sensitive to the political actuality in his dramatic oeuvre turned towards the typical political initial state of the power shift. In Theomachia appears the idea partly, which is really fulfilled in two later masterpieces of the drama-poet, in the Octopus and in The two-headed beast: just the costume is changed the conspiracy is the same. However the divine conspiratorials of the first drama by Weöres act according to their certain role – function (as it is given by the Moiars), their task can be defined well: Okeanos (Rhea’s brother) acts as the intellectual organiser of the child elopement, while Gaia, the „grandmother” imprisoned by Kronos, wastes time, prevaricates, before she admits to Kronos that the child is still alive. (Weöres uses another turn, to give role to Rhea: she placates Kronos with her fake love when he becomes suspicious when he hears the Curates’ noise.) The divine trio who conspire successfully for power become full. From the last two not only the teaching of Moira, which can give meaning to the happenings, but Kronos’ middle point are missing too: the characters are going around as orphans in the panopticon of historical time. It is logical: because of the lack of serious idols („gods”) only the vacuum, just the turning of „machina” can become permanent. „Down with world history” – as Weöres tells the nihilist-anarchist password in The two-headed beast, in the stationary period of the Kádár’s 60s as the final statement of his dramatic career.

The divine attributes

Zoltán Balázs in case of Weöres’ play works with Theomachia besides the formality of ceremonial theatre, from the point of view of the old master’s very realistic historical phylosophy, uses all tools to emphasize the series of conspiracy which is there in the story, and to sharpen it more. But in front of the director, who reads the play from the end of the lifework, there is an impassable barrier: if he degrades the Theomachia into the story of cheap machinations for power, it will lose its universal validity. Weöres’ play stops existing, if its characters are not „true gods” (or remains pure oratorio, and cannot become a drama, nor an opera, which is the creators’ aim, and for which he is suitable too after seeing the performance). To combine the two meaning layers, the creative team use an enormous apparatus, which works entirely not only with the whole area of the theatre, but with the whole scenic apparatus and the actors’ stamina too. In the Bárka Theatre the two types of omnipotence, the motionless and the dynamic ones fight against each other, and the performance shows us the unique composition of area, light, movement, text and sound.

The creators use the great Fencing Hall not in its depth but in its width, so we enter the area not from the background but from a side: the stage is on the left hand side, the podiums for the audience are on the right. However from the area which is dedicated to the audience a part belongs to the play in the middle, from above a net comes down, following the line of the auditorium. In its highness chained, there is a figure with long, red wig and black dress: she is Rhea. Opposite to her the middle of the stage is for Kronos, he is standing on a podium, his dress and long, knotted hair are black, his face is white, from his body comes an inner power line, to lengthen his body, moves our viewpoint behind his back, to the engraved, concentrical circles of an enormous dark block of disc and from there further to a stone which was thrown into a lake and would make circles towards the invisible banks, but gets frozen when it has hardly reach up until it. The space behind the disc remains in mist, just a strange figure is walking slowly up and down on a spiral staircase in the back corner: his face is veiled, there is a cage on his head, in it there are three birds. His walking is continuous during the performance. (Even after it: we cannot see his personality during the applause too.) In front of the disc, in a wide area, in a regular order the five Curates are standing, their dresses are red, as well as the long draperies, which are from the ceiling to the ground, connected to them. When we enter their vowel- music meets us: we can hear clear vocals, without any consonants that could give meaning and action to them, which turns into the following harmony of ethereal Gregorian-imitations. The whole area („the world”) seems to be undivided and indivisible. And then, a half-naked figure from upstairs comes down on a rope, arrives just in front of Kronos, and settles in front of his podium. Besides that piece of cloth that covers his pudenda, his only cloth are sickles which cross each other tightened to his head. His personality is not obvious, sometimes he barks as a dog, like a gourd dog of the empire, but he is similar to the moving co-partner of the one who exists only in his movements, visions, sounds and words, to the instinctual being next to the mental power that rules by his voice, who does everything, which the other one asks for with his motionless words. He is that one who lacerates the crumb (bread instead of a rock), which is believed to be the child. He enters the woman with his sickles and finally he will get to the throne after turning into an independent body. Sometimes he is a mouth, then a genital, finally a creature becomes conscious – (mostly above himself) a ruler. According to the program he is the Boy, if I put it together well: he is the verb, that gets its body.

But neither Kronos nor the moving creature (which belongs to him for a long time) leave that vertical lane, which is in front of Kronos, and which reaches until the end of the net. It seems to be that the authority above the world in connected to tunnel vision (Kronos) and limited moving potential (the Boy). The view of the audience who follows the story on the stage, can accept the happenings like weaker effects in this vertical lane. (Do not misunderstand it: that it is a real power, as it is shown by the enormous shadow appears on the disc during the actions of the active creature.) Kronos’ rule is static, block-like, this motionless tunnel vision indicates, that he is far away from the world he rules on. (Of us too: Ilona Béres’ look, who plays Kronos, cannot meet any viewers’ ideally, as she does not move, and opposite to her, there is the net.)

Kronos’ attributes are created partly according to Ilona Béres’ personality, thanks to her artistic power, and they are formed by the combined pulsation of the set and costumes, which are dreamt by Judit Gombár. But what can the director do with the opponent group of gods, who have to represent dynamism? What kind of staging and actor „miracles” can make them powerful – similar to the main gods – gods too?

There is a scene at the beginning of the performance, which shows not only the difference between the two types of divine existences, but at the end of the scene, as the director solves successfully the requirements for the conspirators to become gods. Balázs shows contracted, simultaneously the first two scenes of Weöres’ play, the dialogues between Okeanos and Kronos, and between Okeanos and Rhea. (During the first dialogue Kronos asks Okaenos about his own and the baby’s future, who answers honestly: the Moiars’ prediction will become true, so Kronos with curses sends to bring the child there. In the second scene, Rhea goes to his brother to ask for advice, who talks her about the method of saving.) At the beginning of the scene, a narrow beam of light appears in the undivided place, which divides it, and it separates the main god from the net, which belongs to his area. Two of them are walking on the long bruise of the universe: Okeanos leaves from the right, Rhea from the left side of the area, and go towards each other during the simultaneous dialogue, then at the end of the scene they leave the stage in the opposite direction from the centre. (It is a beautiful solution, as beyond the unreal spatial directions, Balázs distinguishes Okeanos’ actual partners: he speaks to Rhea from a sudden close to ground position, while with Kronos he does it straightened.) The fact that the conspirators have something to fear of is indicated well, when they get into Kronos’ view, Okeanos hides Rhea, who has a candle symbolizing Zeus, in her hand, behind his back.

It can be seen well that while Kronos moves in a frontal-vertical direction, the conspirators gods do it horizontally, across (Gaia, the mother-god, who announces the saving, will use this lane too). Balázs gets the auidence into the performance in a clever way: we cannot follow the moving characters across in a unity, so our point of view has to jump, so we involuntarily become the part of the dynamism of the conspiracy – this is the reason to turn the place with 45 grades.

But the director, besides the plastic „laying” of the conspiracy, does not accept the pure spatial representation of the conflict between gods. He would like to create Kronos’ (Béres and her space) real, scenic counterweight. On behalf of it, he uses the fine tool of illusion: when Rhea disappears on the left hand side, she appears suddenly on the other, the right side of the Fencing Hall. The viewer can understand soon the gracious fraud, the „miracle” on stage: the other actress, Gabriella Varga, who will be Gaia later on, appears on the other side, with the Zeus-candle in her hand. But it does not make the value of the effect smaller: we meet up with „real” gods, they can appear here and there at the same time, their main ability, contrary to Kronos, the Hermes- and Puck-like agility. Now they are using just the horizontal „bypass”, but soon they will rule the whole place, and together with the Curates they will use gradually the whole area of the Bárka Theatre.

The fact to appear in Rhea’s dress is not an isolated idea, the performance starts with a „fake” Rhea: instead of the „real” actress (Andrea Spolarics) we can see Rémusz Szikszai on the net, in Rhea’s dress, who will be Okeanos later. So besides the once in a lifetime surprise of illusion, we can see the other existential expressive form of dynamism: against Kronos’ double existence, the conspirators are three together, and this trio forms a strange unit, when two of them get into Rhea’s dress to pretend. The end of the performance rhymes with it, when all the three of them appear as Moiras in front of us. It is not a coincidence that Zoltán Balázs gives them Eros’ text, who is missing from the performance: „I am changing everything and I am permanent. / The hand with which the motionless Three-One, the Moira reaches this world: this is me...” So not only Puck but Proteus too. The question is that on which level of the performance they transform. Do they transform really or it is just dissimulation?

The moment of reveal

To be able to answer this question we have to return to the beginning, to the enigmatic foreplay of the performance. During the opening, Gregorian-imitation the singer intones Zeus’ text. Zoltán Gavodi’ ethereal male alto makes many unprofessional listeners to believe: a woman is singing. But the figure „comes down” into a music formed by strange rhythmic breath (Curates), and in a sigh shows his real „face”, his manhood. This is followed by the spatial appearance of the musical gesture: the real coming down of the „Boy”, so the musical a scenic happening shows us first of all Zeus’ arrival. The beginning music of breath after it refers to Kronos and Rhea’s sexual intercourse, then without any transition it becomes the woman’s labour and birth giving. The Curates are the midwives during the birth: they take out the child with C-section, then hit him severely, and serve him on a decorated tray to their ruler. The scene is very neutral, the intervention is made with the help of real surgical tools, and the baby-puppet is a punctual imitation. But all of it is put into quotation marks, because it does not happen with the real Rhea. It is suspicious, that the fake-Rhea, who is played by Rémusz Szikszai, is synchronized evidently by the „real” Andrea Spolarics: on her mouth the bitter cry is turning into blues. The illusion becomes obvious at the end of the scene. Okeanos with a theatrical gesture gets rid of his Rhea-wig, and from a woman he turns into a man.

After following all of it I think that the singer’s sigh on his own register is much more than the musical equivalent of the descent: it indicates the main theme of the performance. This main theme is the reveal, the act of leaving the mask. During the performance it is shown by many tools, and it has mostly ironic form, but finally at the time of Kronos’ fall it appears in a tragic form too. So Okeanos’ transform is nothing more than the first ironic reveal, and the imitation with dramatic validity of the beginning musical gesture at the same time: Okeanos reveals himself and invalidates everything which has happened up until then in front of Kronos (and us too).

The isolated, neutral phrasing of the foreplay is thought-provoking too: Balázs shows here the ancient barbaric community’s magical ceremony in its bloody reality, but from there on he avoids the illustrative solutions. All of it from the point of view of the whole performance, with the dissonant usage of the modern tools of course, makes the prologue really alienating. So the foreplay is similar to „theatre in theatre”, according to a Hamlet-like sample. Its target is the guilty ruler (who ate his children), the topic of it is the replay of history: that is how it has happened so far. Its message: we leave from there, and the time, which was named by Kronos, gets „renamed” from this point, and gets „dislocated” like a good Fortinbras would do it (do not backwards- but for the first time), to make the world moves once. (After Kronos’ fall the giant disc behind him, opens up like a blossomed flower to let the new rulers of the world settle down on it.)

But Okeanos’ self-disclosure, and the play, which is withdrawn by it, is a prediction too: Kronos will be cheated the same way in a sharp situation, when he faces up with the real Rhea. The beam of light which is written visually continues the prediction in the next scene, Okeanos follows it with the open announcement of Zeus’ takeover: „... he will conquer you and steal you, and you the genderless one, and without flame, will remain, the king.” As this announcement happens at the same time of the child saving, however the metaphor is a trivial one, it makes me remember the magician-genius of my childhood, Rudolfó. He always told: „follow my arms, because I cheat”. Of course, we did it for nothing through the screen, as Kronos does it for nothing too: in his archaic, inner „movie” he cannot know where and in which direction watches, and does not know first of all, that when. He cannot follow the conspiracy with Okeanos’ mental leading: his time (and place) is over.

Okeanos’ behaviour during the first two scenes gives us important key to see the gods’ conspiracy as real dissimulation. In the performance, which quotes many kind of eastern theatrical culture the „Rudolfó-like” refers from the language of the ritual are continuous. The showing of it is far away from any effects by Brecht, as they would degrade all happenings on human level. Zoltán Balázs chooses a really new solution, where the authentic elements are represented by the visuality (and sometimes the movements) of the performance, while the alienation is (strangely) from the musical sphere. My statement is together with quotation marks deliberately: as the sounding course which transforms the dramatic text, and gets composed by László Sáry, cannot be considered to be spherical. I think this is one of the most original feature of the performance: usually the theatrical usage of music works with the rising of some moments, there the music serves the reveal, it „pulls down” the ritual. Which I state is similar to a rough simplification, but if we think it over better, the quoted cultures on the first level of the visuality of ceremonial theatre are there to show the characters’ divine features, then any neutralisation of the style is there to put this divine life into quotation marks. In that way mostly the acoustic elements remain in the director’s hand to reveal the real form of conspiracy to us. Among others, Gaia and Kronos’ scene enlightens this operation, which is a separate part inside the performance. Gabriella Varga quotes the young no-actors’ acrobatic tricks, playing with her stick, passes Kronos flapping on the cross lane. The ancient old woman, as she is formed by the young actress reminds me to a playing child. The choreography which is performed on high level, reflects that she is a divine descendant, but her voice leaves Weöres’ text (partly from the movement too). She tells the complaints of the old goddess squeakily, affectedly, with common repetitions, like an accelerated rhyme, then suddenly intones the beginning of the aria from The Queen of the Night by Mozart, she finishes her text, then before it on the most prosaic tone tells to the impatient Kronos: the child is well, thanks. The dislocation, which is made by the aria-quote, works well: at the end laugh arrives.

Maybe a little bit more important that the final meaning of the conspiracy is revelled by musical gesture to us too: at the end the god-trio’s (Gaia, Okeanos and Rhea), like Moiras, canonical-singing (together with gestures) turns to be obviously an opera-parody. The musical quotation mark turns to be dramatical as the synchronization of the fake Rhea at the beginning: we cannot „take seriously” here Rhea, and there the Moiras. According to me this is the point where Balázs transports this early drama towards the end of the career. While according to the young Weöres Okeanos can talk about the Moiras with wonderful metaphors – he was just „the axe, and the fate cut with him” - , there is nobody to point at. If the goddesses of fate are the conspirators themselves, then nothing has happened, just takeover of power, they have changed their clothes, lost their shape, changed their colour, turned the wind and the fate. Exactly as the Curates, who were breathing together with their ruler at the beginning, then changed fast and changed their dress and colour at the end: the giant red flags, which symbolized the empire, defined the colour, then they are „shining” in black at the top of the opened disc, at the side of the new god. They above have the same position, the lotus seat, their hat similar to headsets, makes me remember to Buddha too. At the final point of all the conspiracy, this is the most cynical thing is the solution of Zeus’ rising to his throne; the new power chooses a religion which stands for a time conception, which returns back to itself, chooses Buddhism as its idol, to preserve with it his own „time” and power.

Kronos gives finally the reversed formula of reveal, without any irony. The sixty years old Ilona Béres plays Kronos, without any movements and with great power – terrifyingly. In this opera, played by stage actors, Béres holds the bass line, she is the Borisz Godunov in this Theomachia, (when Kovalik directed Puskin, she played Sujszkij the counterpole). She has deep voice, and she has deepened it more, but it has not lost any of its naturalism. She transforms too at the end, but it is totally different from Okeanos’ transformation at the beginning of the performance. It is tragic and elevating, as she is tearing out her hair in clumps, and taking down her clothes. The god-like human, who creates „breading and life” turns to be fallible woman in front of us: behind her black, Japanese dress there is only a simple white robe. After she has been standing for endless time (two hours in theatre) she finally sits down tiredly: this is the moment of the taking over of power, the Boy behind him, steps on his throne, to the horizontal line of the half-disc.

The philosophy of silence

Weöres’ play ends there. The performance does not. The new power group starts singing a hymnal song, which cannot be reconciled with the irony of the rest of the play, which has not been uplied: we can hear The drum and dance item from the Ninth symphony by Sándor Weöres, which was musicalized by László Sáry. (Weöres connects the whole poem to the topic of fascism: the subtitle, The coffin of the beast, refers to it, it is followed by the recommendation: „Offering to the peace and calm working of all”.) Morever, as it leaves the performance, seems to be told to us: after so many reference the actors form the giant throne into a concert podium and sing about silence and peace – without any quotation marks.

But what can be done with silence and peace? How can we consider the end as a ceremony, when the beginning of the performance withdraws itself as a rite, with it the golden era, the harmony? Or here at the end they withdraw the drawback too? What can be taken seriously after all these? The answer of the creators: the silence and...the lack. The lack of the gods. If we watch this moment well, we can see that the actors, like people who are playing gods, disappear: we can see on the opened disc, choir singers, under them, a woman. If there is „truth” in this performance, then this moment is a true one. Because the insatiable and implacable Zoltán Balázs, wants even more after he has „done” and „formed” his gods: wants them to disappear without any trace, and above it, that we miss them. This lack cannot be shown on the level of a ritual play, only music can do it. László Sáry can add only one thing to it: the topic of this „music” has to be the silence.

To make it understandable I have to make a short turn about the theory of music, to see through the performance once more as a closing gesture. László Sáry’s whole career which started from the New Musical Studio, is penetrated by the American composer, John Cage’s musical philosophy which is based on the elemental contrast of the voice and the silence. According to John Cage the classical-romantic idea, which is built on mostly the changing of the registers, can be changed by a new musical way of thinking, which can give silence back its own rights. Of course it is possible only in a musical composition, which construction line is not the traditional one, a plan of tone built on linear harmonies (as in case of classical and romantic music), but a composition which is based on the rhythmical changing of sounds and silence: the duration. It is not accidentally similar to the fact that in the initial part in connection with the meaning of the myth I was talking about the fight between the harmony and meter. Well now we can see the „myth” as an image of a turning point of musical history: one of the apostle (metre) of the music of the XX. century based on Zeus, can question the kronos-like system of the classical musical basis (harmony).

The period, like an idea of a system leads us from the isolated world of music, and based on its time offers the new possibility of old-new synthesis of arts. The basis of the common language is simply the time of the play: while the art is going on, whether it is a musical or theatrical performance. At this point Zoltán Balázs and László Sáry’s creative methods meet. The „musical language” which is built on sounds and silence (according to Cage it is the „sounding process”) can interfere into the performance that way up until the level of texts, and that is way it can turn upside down Weöres’ play: unfaithfully but faithfully to the poet’s spirit. The beautiful rhyme is an example for it, as in the first part of the performance the Curates, then Kronos, after his fall, can speak: backwards words by words. During the play this solution can show the most clearly the turning of the power relations: what else can report better that Kronos, who has acted by his words so far, loses his potential, than the confusion of his language. As he becomes a creature from a creator, the king-maker Curates’ speech becomes understandable. We can see the changing relation between the ruler and his people, who are leaving him, with the help of these double elements, the musical and mental one, of the language which face up with each other. But the creators confront not only the understandable and reversed speech, but the movement and the sound too: at the final point of the fight for child, when Kronos sends Tyhpon the dragon to the earth, the three Moiras only with their voice and text, so with the potential stolen from Kronos, can destroy the monster.

At this point I have to connect to Cage again: in his musical system, the silence can get important role, because just through the silence the absolute time can get into the play, that is going on independently (during that too) of the play: in his work, titled 4’ 33’ we cannot hear any conscious sound. The aim of the composer is to make us listen to the other, to the time that is going on involuntarily („with or without sound”). The concrete time of the work of art can be built only on it, just on it. The performance in the Bárka Theatre whould use this idea as a guideline: the one who is moving on the spiral staircase stands for this active consistency, the spiral of the natural time. (as we have told at the beginning, Kronos and Zeus’ time is connected that way.) He is the time himself: that is way he cannot come out for the applause, that is way, he has to continue his way into the sphere beyond the performance, until the last viewer leaves the area.

The adaptation of Cage’s philosophy of silence in the Bárka Theatre leads us to somewhere else too. In connection with it I would like to talk about one of the most memorable moment of the performance: while Typhon and the Moiras are fighting, the Curates knee down in front of the audience, their song turns into silence, and they change their sound into the sign language of the deaf ones.

The action, the mute song written into the area is obviously a prayer. The silence not only the opposite but the lack of sound too, and the criterion for the inner thoughts, the prayer. This space which is made by silence is filled by god inside the one who prays. The Curates’ prayer, as there are no real gods, is for us, it turns towards us, and talks to us. As well as the noisy silence of the closure, on the throne, which is turned into a podium, and under it the real muteness: it is Kronos’ thing, Ilona Béres’ who has turned into a woman. The two „silent” acts of the performance are connected by this gesture: the actors, at the same time (without any signs, as a miracle) put off their masks, and talk to us with the power of their pure personality. This is another moment of reveal, but on a higher level, over the tragedy and irony, on the musical meta level of theatre, and it is shown with the usage of the conception of time of the philosophy of silence.

The actors of the performance have to make a long way until we can get there: they have to fight for the presence of the masks, to be able to put them off finally, at these important moments. All of us know the original meaning of the word: „persona”: „talks over, sounds over”. According to Zoltán Balázs, he always looks for the personality in his actors. It is paradox, that this personality can reach its aim with this strict, archetypical (As Béla Hamvas told, it is hieratic) mask, which is well known from the eastern traditional theatrical forms, and which is got from east by the performance. (If I have to tell a genre, I will mention opera again, but the one from Beijing.) It is a cultic moment, which is quoted from different places, and with it the performance can become an exotic museum, but Balázs can avoid this trap too. The direction gives conscious meaning with professional western dramaturgy: the religious and cult diversity indicate it, the fight is over the whole area and time, the gods’ „arms and armour” which they turn against each other: it is the play and the mask itself. The power of actors have to get over it. And they do it, let me emphasize Erzsébet Soltész, the guest, who plays Typhon,to her strange monolit-like figure the Indonesia dance is connected to show us a perfect uniqueness, a choreography that moves her body from parts to parts, and Gabriella Varga, who in the role of Gaia, shows us her comical ability, which has been hidden so far – and we learn all of that with the appearance of the traditional Japanese theatre. But I have not seen for a while neither Rémusz Szikszai nor Andrea Spolarics to speak so punctually, and mostly this is typical in connection with the Curates who works through hard the whole performance (Róbert Kardos, Attila Egyed, Róbert Lucskay, Erik Ollé and Balázs Dévai as a guest). I feel a little bit paler the „Boy”, Kristóf Horváth, next to Ilona Béres, maybe here he wants more than he can. For himself too: the size of the role is just mental, and cannot be accepted on a sensual level which is so important to Balázs.

Besides this, the actors acts better than their best form I have ever seen, because their exercises are well defined, the form, which is dictated by the director never let them rest. And that is why it can have special power when during the Curates’ prayer and in the end, they can become personal in front of us. In the rite it is essential to get into it, and without any force at these important and emphasized moments of the performance, it turns to be a ceremony.

Epilogue

What do they tell us? Today only that can be „saint which is personal” (S. Weil), something like that. There is not any other messages, there cannot be, which can be heard. If we get together, and there are not any of our gods between us. They have not got any message, because they do not have language too, which can tell it. Through which they can „over”talk to us. We are just alone, and we are standing alone and stupidly at the end of this colourful religious kaleidoscope: with the string in our hand. „I also tried / to win in the noise of the city, / but the silence always pulled me back. / I lost everything, / besides that one, / which was brought by silence.” I quoted Weöres’ poem, The silence, in its whole length. In the third symphony he wrote: „You are the hunter and the wild one, / And the powerful there far, you are too, / (...) getting out from the red joists / looking at yourself with wide eyes.”

That is all that remains. We have remained for ourselves. And alone.

Gábor Pap, Ellenfény, 2004

(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)