Matei Visniec: The story of the panda bears, as it is told by that saxophone player, one of whose girlfriends lives in Frankfurt. It is performed like a performance of reader’s theatre of an absurd drama, with the stylish signs and artistic sophistication, which are typical for the troupe – following the viewers’ wish – already for the second time.

The performance of Maladype is more than a unique event based on verbosity: Zoltán Balázs, director composes the pictures of the scenes based on the pattern of paintings. He creates a visual poem, which in ten scenes and fourteen pictures – differently from the characteristics of the genre of absurd – are about the main character’s spiritual journey and about the relationship of man and woman, which is built on perfect harmony.

The episodic scale of scenes – the saxophone player’s journey from the “rebirth” towards the freedom (nirvana) , to which the road takes through the recognition of reality – it is Vergil framed by the meeting and saying goodbye. “Venus” the mythical Woman, whose appearance in the saxophone player’s life means the rebirth of feelings and senses – the beginning of a new era, it brings the world of naivety, the purity of soul. The saxophone player does not remember anything about his “previous life”: he does not have past, only a present, and in the present he asks for nine meeting from the Woman, which is generated by the desire for new feelings.

Their encounters are the games of being together and being presented – these are the experiencing of the moments of life, the traveling of soul, the stages of experiencing. The chosen picturesque view of world and artistic style of the scenes can express the changes of the main character’s relationship to the reality, so the intensity of the sensed stimuluses, their inner representations. This is the process, through which the man continuously gets further of the reality of everyday life, and with the strengthening of the inner attention, his way goes towards the spiritual existence, the perfect freedom of the soul.

The performance is reader’s theatre, the script is built aesthetically and organically into the precursor: the play can be read on the properties and pieces of set. The static pictures can concentrate the attention: the stress is on verbosity, and it gives aesthetic and intellectual experience at the same time. By the recognition of the parallels the viewer can become active collaborator, that way the decoding of the relationships of the linguistic, acoustic and visual signs can become the station of experiences and personal career, the momentary state of soul, according to the depth of the philosophical and fine artistic previous knowledge can result in individual impressions, individual interpretations, which are placed on the field of meaning, as it is offered by the performance.

Together with the fine-artistic time travelling, the writer, the director, the actor, the viewer can create their own interpretation of the play. The depth of the play, the conception of the director – thanks for the strong meaning of the pictures – it can be experienced already in the form of reader’s theatre.

Performers: Erika Tankó, Mariann Molnár, Zoltán Lendváczky, Ákos Orosz

Director: Zoltán Balázs

Inspirations of view: Boticelli, Ghirlandaio, Bosch, El Greco, Botero, Picasso, Grünewald, Dalí, Van Eyck, Rubljov, Kahlo, Bakst, Chagall, Hokusai

(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)