Zoltán Balázs in the Gergely Csiky National Hungarian Theatre in Timisoara directed such a strictly and punctually built up performance (Odysseus’ arrival) in which the theatre and opera music can be there together. The director’s business card is fascinating: he learnt from Robert Wilson, he took part in the workshops by Josef Nadj and Anatolij Vasziljev. He has put on stage theatre, puppet theatre, opera, he has performed on stage and in film. Since 2003, he has been the leader of Maladype, independent theatre form Budapest. I have seen their four performances, if I had to characterize the troupe according to these, the following things would come into my mind: openness, naturalness, mood to play and playfulness, lazy movements, fast reaction, sharp listening and artistic punctuality. The director builds his performances mostly on the actors’ freedom and the involvement of the viewers (the viewers many times become active participants of his performances). It is that kind of journey; on which you can feel yourself in a special state as a viewer.

EGG(S)HELL: What was first? The egg or the play? (d. Zoltán Balázs)

In English the title of the performance is a game of words, which refers to the hell of the egg and the hell of that at the same time. The Egg(s)Hell is a performance, which is built on the rules of improvisational theatre, it is a performance without texts. The performance, which I have watched, was made special by the jazz orchestra, who played alive. At the beginning of the performance I have seen an ironic trick: the actors were in costumes, but barefoot, the actresses were in night dresses, and high-heeled shoes, but all of them were on stage in the shadow of chicken and ostrich eggs. The visual world of the performance has been made more colourful by graceful groups of flamingos. The mood is made complete either with whitish or reddish light. The competition began: the steps on the ground and the higher and higher arcs drown into the air all were organised around the egg. The actors’ joy was obvious, when they were chasing one another, playing tennis, billiard and even when they tempted one another. When the egg broke, the offender became a clown, and started to make tricks – they became the mirror of the other, two or three of them at once – other times they shot the offender, then they had to bring back to life the “dead body” (with rhythmical drum playing or they blew air into their mouth).

All scenes have their own moods, which were brought up by the music, and the connection, which was formed there between the actors. For example, there was a scene when the actors rose the neck of their shirts, pushed down their hair, put lighting cigarette into the edge of their mouth, and their smoke flew mysteriously, it reformed the stage. The women’s bodies could become musical instruments, the orchestra was doubled. A wonderful scene, which was built on the thought of competition between the boot-licking and narcissism. Two women were arguing about their superiority, and they did not afraid of doing anything in this game: there are breath-taking flips, jumps into nothing, calm movements, kisses, desperation. All of it seemed to be connected in the reddish light, which appeared at the end of the performance, which would take us into a photo studio, where it was hard to grab the pictures of the moment, and put it into static forms.

Daniela Magiaru, Orizont, 2010

(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)

Zoltán Balázs, leader of the Maladype Theatre, is preparing a new production with his own company while also set to direct at the Budapest Operetta Theatre. He considers finding a permanent venue for the troupe to be the greatest challenge in the near future.

Have you directed musicals before?

Not musicals yet, though I have directed opera and operetta before — works by Janáček, Marschner, and Gilbert and Sullivan.

However, this is your first time directing at the Budapest Operetta Theatre. As an independent director, your appearance in a heavily state-funded repertory theatre seems somewhat surprising.

There is nothing extraordinary about it. My independence is the trademark of my creative method. I have already directed at the National Theatre in Budapest, in Sibiu and Nitra, at the Budapest Puppet Theatre, Bucharest’s Odeon Theatre, and the Opera House in Rennes. We had already discussed guest-directing opportunities with the Operetta Theatre’s previous management, but it seems the collaboration is only now becoming reality.

Another harassment scandal recently erupted at the Operetta Theatre. What do you know about it?

Exactly as much as an outsider can know about the internal affairs of a theatre. An investigation is underway, and we will soon know more about the results.

Have you seen productions at the Operetta Theatre?

Of course. Before the outbreak of the pandemic, I watched almost everything. Since the musical I am directing will be staged with three separate casts, I felt it was important to become familiar with the company’s current technical, physical, and mental condition.

Why did you choose Nine, based on Federico Fellini’s film?

Because it is a true ensemble piece with fantastic roles and songs written with, at times, operatic sophistication. The subject matter the work explores is highly unusual within the musical genre, and it is also important that it provides nearly every actress in the company with a virtuoso-level challenge. Fellini’s constantly renewing artistic personality is also very close to me, and perhaps it is no coincidence that he made 8½ — the film that established him as a confessional filmmaker — at the age of forty-three. Like Guido, the film director protagonist of both the film and the musical, I too am turning forty-three now.

At the Operetta Theatre’s season-announcement press conference, you also spoke about how decisive your Transylvanian roots are for you.

My entire childhood. I belong to those who have not forgotten where they came from. Not only Cluj or Sighetu Marmației are important to me, but also the lifelong lessons my family gave me. Despite all persecution and hardship, they were capable of handling dangerous situations with generosity and humor, and of seeing light at the end of the tunnel. This optimistic outlook has accompanied both my career and private life. That is why I always choose the riskier, unconventional, and innovative path. Just as in my passion for the circus, I follow in Fellini’s footsteps in this as well. I have staged works by visionary authors who view our world and its moral, psychological, and social dimensions through entirely different lenses. Artists without formulas, who must be deciphered. They constantly challenge my knowledge and imagination with both formal and thematic puzzles. As Maladype approaches its twentieth anniversary, I am planning to stage another rarely performed author with my company: Tankred Dorst’s Merlin, or The Waste Land.

You were twelve when you moved to Hungary with your parents. What are your return visits to Transylvania like?

The first time I returned — when I directed The Return of Ulysses at the Csiky Gergely Hungarian State Theatre in Timișoara — my heart was pounding. But the stage fright lasted only until the first rehearsal reading. After having to leave my homeland at the age of twelve, feeling that nothing could compensate for my losses, I began hitchhiking across Europe. I traveled widely, and I still spend much of my life on the road, so I no longer feel foreign or lonely anywhere. Home is wherever I currently have work to do. The image of my homeland, just like my twelve-year-old self left behind at the railway station in Sighetu Marmației, is always with me, but I never carry them before me like a sword.

The anniversary of Trianon has once again completely politicized this issue.

Unfortunately, our society lacks the kind of Leonardo-like moti mentali way of thinking capable of comprehensively interpreting both past and present events. We stumble from scandal to scandal, and the constant inflation of the divisive nature of our affairs consumes enormous amounts of useful and creative energy. Most theatre-makers engage in politics as activist artists, leaving them with too little time to practice their actual profession. Slowly, our true masters — those capable of identifying and preserving knowledge — are disappearing, and their places are being taken by part-time instructors functioning as mentors.

You did not sign either petition regarding the restructuring of the University of Theatre and Film Arts. Why?

Partly because, as survivors of communism, my grandparents taught me never to sign anything. The rhetoric of outrage is separated from the rhetoric of fear by only a hair-thin line. And I do not want to live in fear. On the other hand, since it is well known that I have no compulsion to conform and only sign something if I agree with every single detail of the cause represented, no one approached me to strengthen the protesters’ symbolic list of names with my signature.

You also recently spoke out angrily about the distribution of theatre funding. Why were you so upset, given that your company ultimately received support from several sources?

After we issued a public statement reacting to the disproportionate and biased decision of the committee evaluating operational grants. Thanks to supplementary funding applications and private sponsors recognizing our professional work, we eventually managed to secure half of the financial resources for the 2020/21 season. Financing the second half of the season, however, remains unresolved. I consider the current system of funding distribution a discriminatory crime against creative communities that possess long-term concepts and artistic strategies. For years, the amount of work invested and the results achieved have not been reflected in the level of support awarded to us. Everyone knows the insular and exclusionary attitude described in the chapter “Dinner at the Mravucs Family” from Kálmán Mikszáth’s St. Peter’s Umbrella, where self-proclaimed “elites” favor their loyal guests. This kind of dinner-party culture is not for me.

Perhaps you are right, but nowadays everyone labels and categorizes everyone else; hardly anyone can avoid it.

Only those think that way who seek algorithms among various trends. If someone is truly sovereign, they do not seek validation from people who reshape truth according to their own interests into an acceptable version of reality... Anatoly Vasiliev, the renowned Russian director, once said in an interview that many directors around him suddenly turned toward socially and politically sensitive topics. One after another, they produced documentary-style performances. Investigating this sudden change of direction, he discovered that substantial grant money could be won for these professionally immature “acts.” Vasiliev, who also had to ensure the sustainability of his own company, was initially uncertain, but eventually decided that — although it was less profitable and spectacular — he still wanted to devote himself to theatre, because theatre is a long-term investment. That is very much how I feel as well.

Where does Maladype stand now, given that you lost your venue and replaced older company members with younger actors?

Within our possibilities, we are preparing for the anniversary season and trying to make up for canceled performances both in Hungary and abroad. We hope the second wave of the pandemic will not force our partners to cancel festival invitations. Meanwhile, eight members of the company are rehearsing Metropolis, based on Fritz Lang’s film, with choreographer Ferenc Fehér.

Why did the company change?

Existential reasons, intentions to start families, and personal searches for direction all contributed. Everyday concerns repeatedly prove stronger than artistic commitment. I have been working with the current team for three years now, and within the framework of the Five Gates theatre-methodology program we quickly built a repertoire consisting of six productions. Our greatest challenge in the near future is finding our own venue.

You are also invited to direct in many places across Europe and even in America. Have you ever thought it might be better to let Maladype go?

Life would certainly be easier, but I feel about it the way Achilles felt about Briseis: “You were peace to me in eternal war.” Nearly twenty years of shared history obliges us, and we still need one another. If the thaw comes, we will be able to let go of each other’s hands.

Recently, Maladype posted the Bárka Theatre’s Hamlet online, in which you played the title role. What acting plans do you have?

After Hamlet, directed by Tim Carroll, it is difficult to find a challenge that fully engages my entire creative being, but if someone approaches me with a role truly suited to me, I will not resist. I do have something personal to say, but I do not crave the stage at any cost. Alongside directing, writing currently brings me the greatest joy.

Gyula Balogh, Népszava, 2020

translated by: Zsuzsanna Juraszek

In recent years, the internationally acclaimed founder and artistic director of Maladype Theatre has been going through what could be called his “Polish period.” At Bucharest’s Odeon Theatre, he directed Elżbieta Chowaniec’s Gardenia; after the great success of his staging of Matei Vișniec’s How to Explain the History of Communism to Mental Patients at Chicago’s Trap Door Theatre, he was invited back to direct Witkiewicz’s The Water Hen, a production later postponed because of the coronavirus pandemic. In January, together with the Maladype ensemble, he presented Gombrowicz’s Yvonne in a radically innovative interpretation at the Fészek Artists’ Club, searching for forgotten points of contact between creator and audience. In September, the company will guest-perform the production at the International Gombrowicz Festival in Radom.

During the lockdown, Tim Carroll’s Hamlet at Bárka Theatre — which he described as a “theatrical experiment” and in which you played the title role — was available online. Did that radically improvisational, interactive form of theatre-making, built on the mutual influence between spectators and performers, pave the way for the idea in Yvonne of selecting the title character from the audience every evening? What justified this unusual concept?

For example, my production of Leonce and Lena consisted of different variations, a kind of theatrical menu from which the audience could choose scene after scene. In our production Egg(s)Hell, the actors did not even know the order of the musical pieces. King Ubu, Great Sound in the Rush, and Csongor and Tünde were also based on interaction. Yvonne represents a further stage in exploring the relationship between creator and audience through direct impulses of human contact. I simply took Gombrowicz’s ideas seriously. In his highly distinctive theatrical thinking, he shows a heightened interest in the relationship between performer and audience. He strongly believed in the spectator as an active shaper of the theatrical event. For him, the figure of Yvonne embodies temptation itself — the possibility of both good and evil. That is why it becomes such an exciting challenge for the actors every evening to sensitively and effectively incorporate the unexpected impressions arising from the personality of the addressed spectator into the faithful unfolding of the story. I know of no authorial instruction prescribing that Yvonne must exclusively be portrayed on stage as some kind of degenerate creature. Our production radically breaks with the established performance tradition of Gombrowicz productions built around actresses’ elaborately composed “debilized” solo performances, where Yvonne appears bald, rolling in mud, kicked, humiliated, and ultimately force-fed at the end of the play, becoming the victim of her surroundings.

Do you feel there are no limits to interaction between audience and creators? Could erasing this boundary diminish the experience?

So far, we have had the opportunity to perform the production nine times, and I cannot recall a single evening when our temporary leading actress left the theatre with a negative experience. Audiences are surprisingly easy to “draw into the dance,” and they quickly adapt to circumstances that initially seem unusual. Just as in everyday life, they rapidly map out the stage situation and begin discovering their possibilities within the coordinates established by our actors. The spontaneous reactions arising from these “Yvonne-like” recognitions provide the cast with an abundance of fresh stimuli, enabling them to establish ever new points of contact within the relationship already formed with the spectator. In Greek theatre, audience members watched performances leaning against one another’s knees, so if laughter broke out in the front rows, its energy rippled through the entire auditorium. In our over-socialized theatrical system, incapable of breaking free from the conventions of the proscenium theatre, we have forgotten this immediacy and now look back on it nostalgically. As a company that values variety and diversity, in Yvonne we are also attempting to cultivate a theatrical garden in which exotic and unfamiliar plants from distant lands may flourish alongside the already familiar native species.

To what extent were your intentions undermined by the fact that, on the one hand, you lost the Maladype Base apartment theatre at Mikszáth Square due to a roommate’s negligence, and on the other hand, your operational funding was roughly cut in half this year?

Three things are necessary for survival: a sense of humor, good company, and inner belonging. No matter how difficult the circumstances may be, if we know our profession, we are capable of holding together. This was not the first time in recent years that our annual budget was unjustifiably reduced, nor the first time we had to rise from an apparently hopeless situation. That is why the statement we issued in response to the committee decision drastically reducing our operational funding can best be interpreted through Columbus’s words to Isabella of Castile: “The magnitude of my demands reflects the magnitude of my responsibility.” Although previous committees repeatedly proposed in their document The Committee Justifies that six companies — including Maladype — should be transferred into a highlighted category, it now seems we are moving further and further away from the logical and timely realization of that proposal. Unfortunately, this destructive problem will remain unresolved as long as there is no professional continuity among committee members and no unified declaration representing the shared intentions of the affected companies. Contradictory processes dominate the decision-making procedure, while the long-overdue clarification of profiles — which should be based on the actual achievements of years of value-creating work — continues to be postponed. Meanwhile, enormous structural and artistic damage is caused by the fact that, due to a lack of real information concerning the independent theatre sector, decision-makers place long-established companies with serious accomplishments into the same category as newly formed and still immature groups. The current situation mainly benefits opportunists and those with membership in one clique or another. This is not a new phenomenon. Maladype has always kept its distance from both political circles and insular professional gatherings. In spirit and artistic commitment we are genuinely independent, which is why we cannot accept that people with obvious personal involvement should decide on the operational funding of independent theatre companies. In this concept built upon the principle that “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others,” only those belonging to the category of “some animals” truly matter — those capable of devouring the most once they get close to the half-filled feeding trough. It also says much about the extent of professional hypocrisy that the committee struck our company hardest precisely when, because of losing our Mikszáth Square venue, the coronavirus shutdown, and canceled festivals, we most needed the previous year’s level of support. The loudly proclaimed slogans of solidarity and unity proved to be lies. As one of the most progressive and internationally recognized companies in Hungarian and international theatre life, our task should no longer be to prove the viability of our artistic concept and strategy. Instead, we should be striving — through proper conditions and support — to create even more varied, unique, complex, and extreme theatrical productions. Instead, because of the disproportionate and biased decision of the committee evaluating our application, we are now forced to obtain the missing 75–80 percent of our annual operating budget from alternative sources.

Besides the Fészek Artists’ Club, which currently serves as a temporary venue, what alternatives do you see for preventing the company from remaining homeless?

During the rehearsal process of Yvonne, the Fészek provided us with proper working conditions. From morning until evening, the rehearsal hall was at our disposal; they ensured the technical conditions and did not even charge rent. One of the most important tasks in the near future is finding our own venue, where we can perform for at least 100–120 spectators each evening. We must also secure the complete financial background necessary for our survival and organize the creative conditions indispensable for the premieres of the 2020/21 season.

Under such circumstances, how can one even plan a season or prepare for Maladype’s approaching twentieth anniversary?

With enormous risk-taking and optimism. For the jubilee season, we plan to stage Tankred Dorst’s Merlin or The Waste Land, a collage-like work consisting of ninety-seven scenes. Like the playwrights who have defined Maladype’s twenty-year repertoire — Hölderlin, Weöres, Genet, Wyspiański, Büchner, and Gombrowicz — Dorst is also a visionary author who, in seeking the irrational possibilities of theatre, makes maximum demands on our imagination and theatrical-human experience. At present, preparations are underway, including negotiations with various institutional leaders about the parameters of co-production collaborations. The process is usually the same: openness, enthusiasm, promises — and then the little word “but.” Many would like to host Maladype, but during discussions clarifying the conditions of ideal cooperation, that retreating “but” quickly appears. For example, when we had to cancel 75 percent of our repertoire after losing our base venue and relocate the remaining four productions among various Budapest theatres, many people offered help, including Enikő Eszenyi. We discussed our production of Richard III, which, besides regular performances at Vígszínház, would also have toured Tunisia, Georgia, and India. Enikő would gladly have hosted the Budapest performances, but once several Vígszínház actors became involved in the production, the foreign guest performances were no longer feasible for her because of the rehearsal days they would require. We appreciated the intention to help, but as a travelling company, Maladype cannot afford to cancel international invitations.

The current Maladype ensemble consists of graduating acting students from Târgu Mureș. Was this situation born of necessity? Obviously, beginners work for much less money...

Half of the company comes from Hungary proper, the other half from beyond the border. Their engagement was born of only one “necessity”: the attempt to keep a talented acting class together. We had no idea how we would secure the financial means necessary for their livelihood, but my colleagues and I knew that a company can only be developed within an ensemble structure and through consistent work. In any case, we must provide beginners with the same monthly salary capable of sustaining life in Budapest as we do for older colleagues. Rent, utilities, and other expenses make no exceptions. They are all aware that they will not buy houses or cars from their current salaries, but because of their age they can still prioritize professional investment and development. Alongside my duties as director and stage director, I am present in their lives primarily as a mentor. The good news is that two more young actors will soon join the company — actors I directed in the graduation production Alice in Bed at the University of the Arts in Târgu Mureș. Thus, from August onward, the company will once again consist of four men and four women, just as during the time of Leonce and Lena.

The theatre’s name means “encounter” in the Lovari language. Originally, you began as a Hungarian-Roma company with Ionesco’s Jack, or The Submission, presented at the Roma Parliament. Why did you eventually abandon the Roma line?

Although our first four productions — Jack, or The Submission, School for Fools, Theomachia, and The Blacks — were enthusiastically praised by critics and audiences alike, the social environment of the Roma actors could not identify with them; they longed for folklore-based theatre. The Roma members of the company were accused of having “sold themselves,” of having become “too gadjo” and “too white.” Rudolf Balogh, Zoltán Oláh, and Krisztina Sárközi all became victims of scarlet letters. They were artists of extraordinary talent and sensitivity, but because of the constant moralizing from their surroundings, they gradually became anxious and internally divided. Eventually, they could no longer participate in ensemble work according to my expectations, their own abilities, or their earlier ambitions. For example, I once asked Rudolf Balogh — the exceptionally gifted lead actor of our opening production — to remove his shirt. It turned out that as a child he had scalded himself with hot milk, leaving part of his skin marked like frost patterns. After much persuasion, in the spirit of Jacques-like self-acceptance, he agreed to reveal this uniquely beautiful texture of his skin. Yet afterward, relatives and friends who saw the performance reproached him for exposing himself and “behaving like a whore.” The stigmatizing and exclusionary reactions directed against every independent creative aspiration of the Roma actors eventually escalated to the point where their own community regarded them as traitors. We could no longer work the way we once had, and the extra time and energy required to help the Roma actors catch up began seriously hindering the professional development of the company’s other performers.

Over the years, the company has changed completely several times. To what extent were these turning points driven by your own inner needs, and to what extent by external circumstances?

The composition of the company changes cyclically, usually every seven or eight years. This is natural both in terms of my internal needs and external circumstances. It is also natural that Maladype became recognized both in Hungary and internationally thanks to the talent of those artists and collaborators who worked with us over the past twenty years, whether for shorter or longer periods. What connects the different eras is the constant redefinition of the concept of the “human-actor.” It quickly becomes clear which actors, through both their humanity and talent, are capable of giving new momentum to ensemble work and of participating flexibly in the realization of our artistic ideas. Long-distance runners and the artists of tomorrow stand out immediately. But over time, one must also take into account the everyday considerations that inspire actors’ desires for family, apartment, and car. I have always been driven by the new and the unexpected, and therefore I often forgot the importance that human factors — stability and security — hold for others. I had to learn to accept and let go. The entire Maladype phenomenon emerged from a natural and powerful will, and its end will probably be equally organic. I never intended to lead a theatre company, nor did I imagine survival would be such a struggle, but I owe Maladype extraordinary encounters, remarkable works, and remarkable artists.

Young actors and beginners clearly idolize you because you opened an entirely new world to them through circus, physical theatre, and improvisation. Those who left perhaps grew tired of your methods, which demand the whole human being.

Perhaps. Or maybe they simply longed more strongly for the additional joys of family life or fame. Nevertheless, I do not deny that I am a determined and conceptual director; I know what I want. From Robert Wilson I learned that a director must leave his mark with his very first production, because if he does not, he will not be able to do so with his tenth. Perhaps I demand more work from actors than an average director does, but my experiences so far confirm that this is what moves the company forward. Impulses lying outside the comfort zone must always be worked for. Safe play eventually softens and becomes cowardly. Theatre-making, in any form, cannot become comfortable.

Can one define where Zoltán Balázs and Maladype are heading now?

We would like to finish what we left unfinished and realize our plans for the 2020/21 season. We would like to make up for our canceled foreign guest performances and host internationally renowned masters who, in connection with our Five Gates theatre-methodology concept, will hold workshops for our actors. But as before, in everything we seek human and professional renewal. The “reimagined worldview” formulated in Tankred Dorst’s work has gained especially strong relevance in light of the pandemic situation, and translating it into theatrical form represents a complex task and new challenge for all of us. I was also deeply struck by Péter Haumann’s statement that he considers the psychology of silence to be the most valuable aspect of acting. In future works, I too would like to pay greater attention to the changing qualities of silence. And regarding the petty human behavior that has exploited the negative events of recent times, I would like to rise above it with generosity.

Rita Szentgyörgyi, Színház.net, 2020

translated by: Zsuzsanna Juraszek

Zoltán Balázs, artistic director of the Maladype Theatre, agrees with the world-famous Japanese novelist and playwright Yukio Mishima, who stated in the mid-20th century that the time has come for artists to return to art. We spoke with the founder of the unique theatre workshop, which came of age last year, in connection with their new production, Yvonne.

– Witold Gombrowicz’s absurd drama already demands a particularly open creative and receptive attitude, but as a director you went even further by making the audience the absolute protagonist: the silent Yvonne, whose mere presence disrupts the refined façade-life of the royal court, is played each time by a randomly selected spectator. Has the boundary between the two sides of the stage disappeared completely?

– This is not the first time we have experimented with this form of “crossing boundaries.” Since the beginning, our company has considered it important for the audience to play an active role in both our performances and rehearsals. In 2005 — for the first time in Hungary — we also undertook to open the entire rehearsal process of King Ubu to people interested in our creative methods. Thus, from the first table read to the premiere, fifty people each evening could experience firsthand how we collectively grappled with Jarry’s challenge. How the complex textual structures were organized through the creative play of our actors, where those already glowing moments disappeared to, and what additional abilities were needed to rediscover them. I could also mention Leonce and Lena, where the audience could choose that evening’s variations from a hundred scenes, while our actors selected the evening’s Leonce and Lena. Since we have always regarded the audience as equal creative and performing partners, with Yvonne we ventured even further.

– You staged Yvonne with the young actors with whom, two years ago, you embarked on a rather unusual experiment: after creating Bruno Schulz’s August together with the graduating class of the University of Târgu Mureș, you brought them to Budapest, where they are now participating in a three-year theatre methodology program tailored to their generation. What exactly is the method you developed under the name FIVE GATES?

– The FIVE GATES program is a kind of proposal package for the renewal of theatrical art. The most important task of this theatre-methodology experiment — which aims to “rewire” the nervous system of theatre — is to free theatre from those false reflexes and blocked creative processes that, over the past decades, have embedded traditionalism into the structure itself while also appointing their own “protective” theatrical overseers. These people no longer seek a personal relationship with theatre — merely the illusion of one...

– Meanwhile, the creative forces of the genre are slowly being devoured by the destructive influence that allows theatre to be used and exploited in the name of selfish interests, political goals, and business considerations. Is there any place at all for politics in art?

– Day-to-day politics certainly has no place in it. I think we should take Mishima’s statement from the mid-1960s seriously: It is time for artists to return to art! We should try to bring theatre back closer to the society of everyday life — to people, to audiences.

– Are many people capable of doing that?

– I think many are, but only a few make their voices heard, because true greatness does not boast of its talent or put itself on display. The defining artists I had the privilege to work with, both in Hungary and abroad, were modest and humble. They understood that courage also includes moderation, and that a courageous person knows what they want to achieve, what tools they possess, and for what purpose they step into action. Thus, when their profession came under attack, they responded with extraordinary professionalism, but also passionately and in solidarity. What would be worth learning from them is how to present one’s opinion in the proper tone. Our theatrical community should be spared the militant and accusatory tone of self-appointed prophets and the dominance of arbitrarily imposed standards of conformity.

– Originally you started out as an actor, then became a director and, by chance, the leader of a company. How easy is it, as “the most independent among independents,” “admirably solitary,” as Péter Molnár Gál once described you, to keep Maladype alive for almost two decades?

– The fact that we are still alive and able to work is itself a miracle. Especially considering that last year, due to the negligence of our neighbors, we had to leave our “base” at Mikszáth Square, where the sets, costumes, and props of our repertory productions were also destroyed. The three pillars of our survival are: strong internal belonging, the support of various patrons, and numerous invitations to international festivals. To relate openly and generously to change means for us not allowing conformity born of reduction to triumph. Strong support for this extreme undertaking comes from the creative relationships we have built within the Hungarian and international theatre scene, as well as the continually renewed attention of the international theatre world toward our work. It is a great joy and recognition that one day we may perform in Vietnam and the next in Albania, yet it creates a strange situation that we perform more around the world than at home. Although many people in Hungary are proud of us and recognize our role in strengthening diplomatic relations, to this day we still have neither predictable funding nor a permanent venue. Our company was hosted by the Fészek Artists’ Club for the 2019/20 season, for which we are very grateful, but if we could find a permanent venue worthy of our needs, we could perform a hundred times more often for Hungarian audiences.

– There has been debate for years around support for independent theatre companies. Most recently, Attila Vidnyánszky proposed establishing three or four so-called incubator houses and allocating the state funding intended for independents to them, so that they could distribute it among themselves at their own discretion. Is that not a solution either?

– Certainly not for us. Within this country’s independent sphere, there are five or six companies that have already achieved enough to deserve permanent, priority funding. These theatre workshops, with their serious history and accomplishments, are named by the curators every year during the evaluation of operational grant applications. Yet nothing happens. For young emerging artists, the future incubator houses will surely provide excellent opportunities for creation and visibility, where they can prove themselves according to their knowledge, talent, and resilience. It is important that they be able to apply for projects, receive a basic framework for their ensemble ambitions, and eventually demonstrate what kind of artistic and operational strategy they can establish, how they envision leading their developing company, and whether they possess a long-term artistic concept or the human resources behind it. That is why I believe incubator houses are for emerging talents — not for me or other recognized artists like me, who, in terms of professional background, are at a very different stage. As for the suggestion that Maladype should also move into an incubator house, I can only respond with what the actress Irén Psota once said when a theatre director called to offer her the role of a pigeon seller. Irén listened silently, then shouted into the phone: “Listen here, I am not a pigeon seller — I am an eagle!” Maladype and I are eagles too! Our flight requires space, a horizon, and air.

Anita Farkas, Demokrata, 2020

translated by: Zsuzsanna Juraszek

Born in Cluj in 1977, Zoltán Balázs studied Acting and Directing in Budapest at the University of Theatre and Film Arts. He continued his training through workshops with world-famous directors and choreographers, such as Anatoli Vasiliev and Josef Nadj in Avignon, and studied with Robert Wilson in Paris. He then graduated the course in directing of the Union of European Theatres in Stuttgart. In 2001, he founded the Maladype Theatre in Budapest, one of the most important independent theatres in the Hungarian capital, and he continues to be its artistic director. His company and the productions he directs are regularly invited to festivals all over the world. He has directed productions in the United States, France, Germany, Slovenia, Slovakia and Romania. His work is versatile and multi-faceted. His productions, which experiment with a new theatrical language, have received numerous awards. The Romanian public knows him for his productions in Timișoara, Sibiu, and Târgu Mureș, and for the two plays he has directed at the Odeon Theatre in Bucharest: Gardenia by Elżbieta Chowaniec (2018) and For Your Own Good by Pier Lorenzo Pisano (2019), both staged as part of the European project Fabulamundi Playwriting Europe.

Tamara Susoi: You are an actor, a director, and a theatre manager. I have heard you say several times that you didn’t choose these professions: they chose you. How did this come about?

Zoltán Balázs: It just happened, by accident. I was born in Cluj, but I spent my childhood up to the age of twelve in Sighetu Marmaţiei. It was like a very remote island that offered me the possibility of immersing myself in adventure. I was fortunate in my family. Even if there were rather complicated situations sometimes, I saw in the family that problems can be solved if you want with humour, with attention, with care. Maybe things are not the way you want them to be from the beginning, but you have to find the solutions and the most suitable methods to reach the goal you have set yourself. That comes to me from the philosophy of my parents and grandparents, who had some unpleasant experiences on my account. For example, one time I got annoyed, ran away, and didn’t turn up for two days. I came back home because I was hungry and cold, but not to my own room, to the cellar. From there I could hear them searching for me, and I was pleased that they cared about me. Then I knew what value I had, and that they missed me. And because, as I walked around in the cellar, I made a noise, my grandfather found me. I’ll never forget the look on my mother’s face. She didn’t know whether to beat me or hug me. The expression of a complex emotion could be read on her face. Equally, I can’t forget when my mother decided we were leaving the country, and I couldn’t understand why, because it seemed to me that we had everything we needed. We went to have our passport photographs taken. My very complicated emotions show in that photograph too, because I was furious and I couldn’t believe what was happening. In one moment a lot of emotions are captured. The complexity and colouring of my childhood were repeated later on. As Sufi philosophy says, up until the age of twelve you have the opportunity to understand the world and how you can live in it. You are born with an energy more inclined towards fear, towards fury, or towards love. The sort of energy you have puts its stamp on your life. I know that I am more inclined towards fury, with an elementary curiosity to understand the anatomy of the world, of humanity. After a while, I realized that art offered me an unseen opportunity, and if you are aware and attentive, it can become seen too. Once I understood that, I found my destiny, but only after I had left Romania, had left Maramureș. Then I felt that I had lost everything and I had nothing more to lose. This situation relaxed me completely. I hitchhiked across Europe, and various drivers, men and women, gave me lifts. In Switzerland, one women offered me soup in her home, and then she found me another car to take me further, and so on. Then I understood the mechanism of possibilities. Don’t panic. If you’re stuck for a night in the rain, in a gas station where there’s no one to take you, someone is sure to come the next morning. It’s much easier to make the right calculations if you don’t panic and use your head.

T.S.: Experiences like that taught you something.

Z.B.: Without talking further about personal events, let me just say that these things showed me the concrete road not only through life, but to the centre of art. That means to seek the basic values, already known by the masters or by our parents, who have discovered things before us, who have made their path and gathered the fruits. But it also means to somehow find your own personal, modern, contemporary values and to be able to cast an eye towards the future, to somehow let the past, present, and future guide you in a natural, organic way. You don’t have to always want; sometimes you have to let things happen to you. That doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t be prepared and aware of the moment. If it comes, it needs a strong presence on your part. Continually preparing myself for this moment is a mental condition. This necessity is the basic baggage that I acquired in my childhood.

T.S.: How did you discover the theatre?

Z.B.: The theatre discovered me. In the eighth grade I had to choose which direction to go in. My literature teacher told me that, from what she knew of me, it would be good for me to go to an art high school, where they did drama too. I passed the exam, and indeed I had a good time there. From the high school teachers in Szentes, I received guidance, and a strong calling for art and especially for theatre. They weren’t aggressive. They just showed me creative methods through games, exercises, the way of thought, in a relaxed and reflexive manner that made you attentive to the changes around you. I liked that very much. Theatre coloured my life.

T.S.: It sounds as if you started to do theatre before you saw theatre.

Z.B.: I had already seen theatre when I lived in Romania, in Cluj. It’s true that it didn’t impress me. Because it was somehow—and this is something that bothers me today too in some theatres—like in a shop window. It was displayed, interpreted. In general, before expressing themselves in words, actors play too much with mime, with various gestures. There’s not much room for minimalism and economy of means. It wasn’t the theatre that attracted me in my childhood. I was attracted by the circus. Because it involved risk, freshness. The artists were a bit naïve, a bit demonized, lost, with something of the original magic, and immediately attracted me when I was a child. When I went to the circus for the first time, at the age of six with my grandfather, what impressed me was a chubby snake with a tired-looking woman who did some primitive tricks. But for me it was wow! There were other artists who didn’t do their job very well, but when I got home I said, “How great it would be to be part of that world, as an acrobat clown, at least to have a taste of it!” Very early in the morning, I made myself a sandwich and went back to the tent. The carts were already loaded. From Sighetu Marmației they were going on to Baia Mare. They took me with them without asking, “Who do you belong to?” or “Why?” or just saying “Go home!” When my family got up and couldn’t find me, they started to panic, but somehow my grandfather, from the look on my face the evening before, guessed the answer and went after me to the circus tent, which was no longer there. He called the police. They caught up with us when we stopped for a break. I went back home and for a month I didn’t speak to my family, because they had “stolen” my future. The circus, with its magic, the profane and the sacred of that world, attracted me very much. Then in Szentes, through my teachers and the situations I encountered, I found something like that again, in the theatre.

T.S.: There are a number of directors who were initially actors, but who gave up acting the moment they started to direct. Why is it important to you to carry on as an actor too?

Z.B.: For me, it’s only important to act if I have something to say. If the theme or the thought in the text can show themselves only through me, than I have to say so. This was the case of Victor Kravchenko’s I Chose Freedom. It’s the manifesto of an officer in the communist regime in the Soviet Union, under Stalin, who from his childhood pursued an outstanding career as an engineer, but who, when he saw the inarticulated things that went wrong after a time and Stalin’s terror, realized that this was not the world that had been promised. He began to consider the idea of defecting to America and helping the Russians from there, with his voice. He wrote a book and he spoke on various TV and radio stations. He was killed like Trotsky, but with a pistol. His life was very complicated, but there are certain elements in common with mine. He was thirty-eight when he defected to America. When I was thirty-eight, I made a two-hour resumé of his 866 pages. Leaving a country had a very personal meaning for me. That’s why I felt the need to express myself. Especially as the book has the title I Chose Freedom. All my life I have sought freedom. Personal freedom, as a man, as an artist. And above all mental freedom.

T.S.: You’re often invited to work with students of acting. Have you detected a certain characteristic or an area of interest in the new generation of actors?

Z.B.: For me, the greatest joy is to find a partner with whom I can exchange ideas. Our opinions may be different, but the desire to get to know one another, to concern ourselves with the problems or adventures of the world brings with it a great appetite for life. And this I find very seldom. Especially among my colleagues. Because many of them arrive at greater success with less work. That’s the way of the world; you have to be clever. Drama students learn to be clever faster than they learn their lessons, methods, or about the profession of actor or director. This bothers me, and for this reason I teach very little in drama faculties. I just can’t see the students’ development. You throw water one way and it flows the other way. In a way, I can understand them. That’s the way of today’s theatre world. Everyone has to quickly find the right place in which to show themselves. Apart from that, they have a lot of teachers with different tastes in theatre and each presents their profession through their own personality: “I would do it like this... I did it like this...” Very few are capable of different styles of being present on the stage as an actor or, as a director, of guiding a company towards unknown or unfamiliar areas: “Look, this is how Wilson would do it, this is how Vasiliev would do it, or Nadj, etc.” As a student, I had the opportunity, both in Hungary and in Paris, where I studied in parallel, to meet more integrative, more open masters. I was very fortunate in this.

T.S.: You are very fond of the word meeting. The name of your theatre, Maladype, means “meeting” in Romani. I’d like to ask you which meetings have marked your artistic and human trajectory.

Z.B.: My first important meeting, as I became aware only after many years, was with a nun, in a church where I went with my grandmother. There I saw a nun who was praying. I went down on my knees too and tried to provoke her. How deep in prayer was she really? She would be sure to notice me and to open her eyes. And I liked the idea of provoking a nun. She opened one eye, winked, and shut it again. And long after, I understood what that meant: “You see, dear child, I know you’re looking at me, but I’ve got business right now with someone very important. After I finish my business with the Lord, I’ll attend to you and we’ll play.” And indeed, after she had finished her prayer, she gave me a little icon.

T.S.: In what way was this meeting relevant for you as a man of the theatre?

Z.B.: At the time it was just a silly game, I might say, but a long time after, I realized that it had had a great importance in my life, because I understood what it meant to be present as an actor on the stage, in two different dimensions, one subjective and the other objective. It showed me that priority always goes to the basic problem that the character you are representing with your presence, with your acting, is dealing with. But you can never forget the public who are looking at you. In other words, the public is me and the actor is the nun. The actor as a character has to resolve an important matter with his partners, a dialogue with “God”. He always has to know that he is seen by a “child” who expects his very personal reaction, after the “prayer”, after the problems unfolded in front of him. This was a very important meeting in my life. After that, there followed many others, with very intelligent people. For example, there was one special man, perhaps the greatest theatre critic in Hungary, Péter Gál Molnár, who was there from my very first production until his death a few years ago, understanding where I was going, analysing, helping the audience to understand. He followed my progress as an actor and a director, which is something I don’t much find nowadays. I was fortunate in some of my teachers in Hungary and especially in the teachers in France that I had the opportunity to meet and to learn from, such as Robert Wilson, Anatoli Vasiliev, Josef Nadj, even Isabelle Huppert. Different worlds. Each had their role. For example, from Robert Wilson I learned that a director doesn’t show which way he’s going after ten years. His first production is his identity card. He shows himself and it’s immediately clear whether he believes something about the world or not. If he doesn’t have a strong opinion about the world then, he won’t have one after ten years either. There may be more or less of this or that, but your first production as a director must show your face. As I told you, I didn’t want to be an actor, I wanted to be an acrobat clown. I didn’t succeed, because my family found me and brought me back home. I didn’t want to be a director, but that’s how I ended up out of love for the theatre and personal love. When I was a student of acting at the Academy in Budapest, they asked us what we did when we weren’t rehearsing. Each of my classmates said something: they went to the cinema, read a book, made love, and so on. In my case, because I was alone in Budapest—my mother was in America at that time, and the family was scattered here and there—I took an interest in the figure of Pessoa, the Portuguese poet who had eighty-three identities. I liked his world and his way of thinking so much that I read his books, and for my own pleasure, I began to write a sketch, a play, I don’t know what, very fragmentary, about how he meets his identities. I told my professor of drama that that was what I was doing. The professor seemed very interested, and insisted that I give him what I had written. Reluctantly I gave him the pages, and the next day I was phoned by Tamás Jordán, a great actor and at that time director of the Merlin Theatre, a very important experimental theatre in Hungary. I was amazed that my pages had got as far as him. “I really love Pessoa. I’m director of the Portuguese-Hungarian Literature Club and we really need such plays and directors.” I told him I wasn’t a director. “It doesn’t matter. You prepare your plan, your conception, we’ll pay the actors you want to work with, and in the autumn you’ll put on the production.” That was the first discussion. And I said to myself why shouldn’t I try? I put on the production. And I don’t know how and why, but it was a success. Actors, directors came to see it.

T.S.: And so you became a director.

Z.B.: I’ll never forget how I became a director. I was at university in the second year of acting and my drama professor told me that after three o’clock they would come to the class and take me for the directing exam. I said I didn’t want to go, that I wasn’t prepared and I had a rehearsal. They insisted and in the end I went, very annoyed that I had to be in a situation I hadn’t wanted to be in. On the board there were great directors. They asked me why I wanted to be a director. I answered that I didn’t, that I didn’t know how I had got there, that I hadn’t wanted to, but I’d been told to come. I told them I wanted to be an actor, although at first I’d wanted to be a clown. “You like the circus?” they asked, and I started to talk enthusiastically about the world of the circus. After thirty minutes, they said, “Thank you.” I went back to my rehearsal happy that I had closed that discussion. Shortly after they informed me that I was to go to the directing section. And so I ended up there, without wanting to. But a lot of people worked for me to have the joy and possibility of becoming a director.

T.S.: How did you come to be a theatre manager, at the age of twenty-six, when you founded an independent theatre, Maladype, in Budapest?

Z.B.: A number of theatres invited me, because I was interesting and unusual. It wasn’t yet the period in which theatre managers would be afraid of those who are different, more progressive. And because I was unique, I was attractive. I didn’t like all the offers. I knew that if I accepted them, everything would shut down at two o’clock, because the actors had to be allowed to go to TV or radio. And that’s not the way I envisaged myself working. I wanted to rehearse with an actor ten or eleven hours a day at a stretch. Because I couldn’t really find that deal, and they invited me back to Paris, I accepted an invitation from the Barka Theatre, which had been founded then in a very imposing building, with a mobile space. The manager invited me as an actor, but also as a director. I made my debut as Romeo, and at the same time he allowed me to direct my first production, Theomachia based on Sándor Weöres, a rather abstract writer. After seeing it, the manager said, “I’m sure the production won’t have more than two performances, but if that’s what you want to do...” For the principal role, Cronos, the role of a barbarian man, I chose a great Hungarian celebrity, Ilona Béres, an actress who was then sixty-four. And in the second part of the play, in my conception, she had to speak backwards. I mean, to say not “great black storm” but “mrots kcalb taerg”. There was a lot of text, but she accepted. She said to me, “Look, Zoltán, if I have to do something, I don’t look back.” I learned a lot from that statement. I was fortunate to be able to stage that play with that actress and with a very good team. The production was a great success. That was the start of my basic career, as an actor and director, at the Barka Theatre – where, some time later, I had the chance to work with Tim Carroll, who, at that time, was artistic director of the Globe Theatre in London. I worked Hamlet with him, with a lot of improvisation; every evening the conditions were different.

T.S.: In what way?

Z.B.: The audience brought objects and music. My partners didn’t know what roles they were to play in any particular evening. I knew I was Hamlet, but I didn’t know who I would have in front of me. A lot of questions, risks, expectations, a very strong mental condition and a state of readiness for change - that’s what my encounter with the role of Hamlet brought me then. For you to understand my trajectory as a director and the extent to which my acting experience helped, let me tell you about a situation that arose in one performance of Hamlet. The heart of the play was about to follow: the monologue “To be or not to be”. My partners had spoken their lines and it was time for me to enter too, but I realized that I had nothing, no effect, no object. I stopped there and I felt completely empty. I told myself that I was a professional actor, that the audience were waiting. “Open your mouth and speak. You can say the monologue, you have a voice, you know how you should construct it, but you’re not present. Open your mouth; a minute has passed already. But you’ll lie. Open, don’t open.” After that confusion in my head, I said to the audience, “Excuse me, I need two minutes; I’m tired.” I don’t know how I could say that; the audience hadn’t heard such a thing before. After a minute, I began to say the monologue, word for word, and the public was witness to a very personal moment. We finished the performance, and I went home thinking how many of my partners must have hated me at that moment: “What’s that boy doing? He’s an amateur. He’s stealing the scene.” I was really ashamed. I thought to myself, “How did I get here? In the morning I’ll go to the manager. I’ll give in my resignation, apologize, and that’ll be it. This is dilettantism.” But then I thought about why I had done it. And I realized that indeed I was tired. But why was I tired? Because I had really given all my personal attention to Hamlet’s problems. Hamlet has a problem, whether his father’s spirit exists or not, and if it does exist, whether or not it is permissible to kill Claudius. This wears him out. By setting Hamlet’s problem to myself as a person, I had worn myself out. When I got to the monologue, I was no longer capable of getting together the proper energy to speak. I had got mentally tired. Just as Hamlet gets tired, continually going round and round a problem. But an actor must always be ready, like a Duracell battery and... “The rest is silence.” Then I understood that it is not for nothing that such things happen to an actor, if he is really attentive. But not all theatre situations and not all performance conditions offer this possibility. You have to find the company, the appropriate parameters, where you can construct a language over these movements. I had already had the Maladype company for seven years. I made a new change both to the actors and to the conception, and I staged Leonce and Lena. There are twenty-five scenes in the play, and we did each scene in four versions. We had a hundred versions, and when we started the performance, the actors didn’t know which version we would play. Because each version had a title—Mission impossible, The Czech robot, etc.—I would say the title and the actors knew what was coming. We worked only with bamboo on a tatami mat. Like a white page of paper, on which we drew well constructed situations with bamboo.

T.S.: How did the performance proceed?

Z.B.: I announced to the audience the version I offered, and I asked them to choose one of the other three. So we were supposed never to give the same performance. There was an infinite variety. Most interesting was the ending, where Büchner wrote that Leonce and Lena finally meet before King Popo, but masked. And when they take off their masks, they recognize one another. Each sees the other’s face for the first time, but associates it with the voice and the smell they have already encountered at night in the forest. I knew that if I did this with two actors, the gesture would be a lie, because the actors knew each other well. How could I capture that moment, for it to be absolutely fresh and fragile? I realized that if I put the audience on two sides, those sitting face to face surely wouldn’t know one another. So each evening the actors would choose a man and a woman from the audience, would guide them, and would make them Leonce and Lena in the last scene, where their human, simple, organic reactions were exceptional. From Hungary to the Netherlands, from America to Iran. If I hadn’t had very personal experiences with Hamlet, under the guidance of an extraordinary director like Tim Carroll, and I hadn’t had the chance to choose the Barka Theatre, where these possibilities were fulfilled, and I hadn’t been grateful for the chance, if I hadn’t had a constant discussion within myself and hadn’t drawn conclusions, if I hadn’t had the chance to work with a company of my own, where the language was displayed, changed, constructed, then I could never have become an artist as free as I wished to be. And it doesn’t depend on the country, on the theatre, it depends a lot on me. And if I can really be free, then I can help artists, my collaborators in the countries, in the theatres that invite me.

T.S.: How would you describe the sort of theatre you practise?

Z.B.: The theatre of curiosity. I am very curious, very motivated to find glimpses, personal moments, verbal or non-verbal gestures, to have a continuous collaboration with the text that is offered and especially with various styles of art. I am inspired a lot by the related arts: different styles of movement, of music, the art of the circus and of film. I’ve done opera too, and puppet theatre. The complexity of the arts gives me the stamina and the appetite to deal with the situation on the stage in a much more relaxed and free way compared with other directors. Many directors put on two or three productions in the same style. By this choice, they offer the audience and the critics the chance to get to know them well. After two or three meetings, I know that if I go to see a certain director, I’ll see a production in his manner. Those who, like me, are more attracted to risk, to changes, to different themes, forms, and content don’t offer this possibility. When the public starts to get accustomed, I change my style and they have to learn it afresh. And then I change my language again. I don’t want to stage Jean Genet’s The Blacks the same way as I staged Maeterlinck’s Pelléas and Mélisande. And I have no wish to stage an opera in Rennes, in France, Le vampire, the way I staged Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Mikado in Budapest or The Master and Margarita in Sibiu, or Gardenia at the Odeon. It’s not the same company, not the same area. The writer, the story, the language, the dramaturgy, the rhythm, none of these are the same. And of course all the threads have to come together through me. It’s a gamble. But it has to be creative and to keep moving. That’s my wish, to remain curious, just as I was in my first twelve years.

T.S.: The musical component is very important in your productions. Why did you choose to use opera arias in Gardenia?

Z.B.: Simply because it adds another layer, another dimension to this story about four generations of women. Their relations receive a different value if they can be also be expressed through extracts from classical arias—duets, tercets, etc.—from Mozart to Strauss, Puccinni and Wagner. Of course it depends on the ability of the actresses. And because the cast consists of four actresses, Antoaneta Zaharia, Paula Niculiță, Simona Popescu and Mădălina Ciotea—in fact now five, with Ioana Mărcoiu—, who are very talented—physically, mentally, spiritually, and vocally—it would have been a big mistake not to take advantage of this fact. My conception met with their talent, but I was also very much encouraged by the fact that they entered into this game, related well to it, and used it.

T.S.: What in particular inspired the idea of the scenery for the production For Your Own Good?

Z.B.: I was in Tel Aviv, at a festival, and I was going towards the sea. But I didn’t get as far as the sea. On one street I saw a house, and in its yard there was a broken-down boat. Beautiful, black, patinated, with a story from the past, abandoned. It attracted my attention so much that I photographed it. This photograph was my inspiration for the scenery. I realized that the saying “We’re in the same boat” fitted this family. Hence the hierarchy in my conception, vertical, horizontal, in depth. Immediately their relations and the points of change in their relations, seen and unseen, became visible. There is a personal dramaturgy in the scenery, as in the music, the text, the lighting. A complex, but minimalist art. If I had to define a style as far as Gardenia and For Your Own Good are concerned, it would be minimalist-monumental. A monumental theme, but in a minimalist form. A reduction in which everything seems motionless, but gives the possibility of a strong inner movement, in the souls and the minds of the actors.

T.S.: How do you see the Odeon Theatre in comparison with other theatres where you have worked?

Z.B.: I’m very subjective and it’s easy to say that I like being here. It’s not for nothing that I keep coming back. When I know I’m coming to Bucharest, to the Odeon, it warms my heart. I’m not afraid of what I’ll find: “How will they receive me? Where will we start from?” I know the theatre’s actresses and actors. I know that we respect one another’s talent and energy. The management’s wish to stage something else with me, a guest director from abroad, to add to the theatre’s repertoire, inspires me and frees me a lot. I haven’t been disappointed regarding the artistic and technical team and the people who make the personal connection between me and the theatre. A company that has the desire to do something unusual, new, of quality. This attitude is very precious for a creator like me. Given the chance again, I’d be very happy to come back, not tomorrow or the next day, but I’d start at the beginning again with all those who have a taste for atypical adventures with me. And I’d produce something on the big stage. Perhaps even the play I talked about with the management when I was invited for the first time to the Odeon.

Tamara Susoi, B-CRITIC, 2020

“Lockdown is also good for turning inward and taking stock”

Zoltán Balázs, recipient of the Jászai Mari Prize, actor and director, was born in Cluj-Napoca. He was twelve years old when, after the Romanian Revolution, his family relocated to Hungary. He is the founder and director of the internationally renowned Maladype Theatre. Recently, his production of Gombrowicz’s Yvonne premiered at the Fészek Artists’ Club, but the coronavirus pandemic affected them severely as well. We also asked the artist whether, in the current crisis situation, new forms of rapprochement might begin within the deeply divided theatre profession. Is there any chance for positive change?

– When we arranged this interview two weeks ago, we were still living in a different world. Since then, the coronavirus epidemic has exploded here as well, and the government was among the first to close theatres. How has this affected the Maladype company?

– In January we premiered Gombrowicz’s Yvonne at the Fészek. We do not know when we will be able to perform it again. Several domestic and international guest performances have been canceled. Moreover, I was supposed to fly to Chicago now to direct Witkiewicz’s The Water Hen in the American stronghold of avant-garde theatre. But that too has been postponed.

– How long can you survive without income?

– We have already received our additional subsidy from the Ministry of Human Capacities, and we also had a small amount of savings left, so we can survive from our reserves until the end of May. Until then, the salaries of the company members are secured. What will happen afterward, I do not know. During nearly twenty years of Maladype’s existence, we have almost always been in financially grueling situations. We have grown used to needing various backup plans. But the ability to solve problems quickly is also essential if we want to move forward. Theatre must always be prepared for change.

– Yet misfortune has been hitting you repeatedly lately. Last April you lost your permanent venue, your base on Mikszáth Kálmán Square. What happened?

– We had rented a bourgeois apartment there for eight years, where we could host fifty spectators. Last April I was directing abroad while the company was on tour. They came home to find our base flooded with water; all our sets, costumes, and technical equipment were destroyed. Officially, the flooding was caused by “the negligence of another resident.” Since we lost everything and essentially became homeless, we could no longer perform 70 percent of the productions in our repertoire. Unfortunately, we also had to part ways with some of our actors.

– I imagine that was the hardest part.

– That is always the hardest part, though by now I have become experienced in letting go. The first time it truly affected me was in 2004, when we had to part from the Roma members of our company. To understand this, one has to know that Maladype was founded in 2001 after Dragan Ristic, a Serbian producer, approached me about staging Ionesco’s Jack, or the Submission at the Roma Parliament with Roma and non-Roma actors. Before that, he had asked several directors, but no one accepted because of the task’s “exotic” nature. At the time, I was still a university student studying acting and directing. They told Ristic that I would be his man because I was willing to take on any kind of madness. And so it happened. Our first production was such a success that we immediately embarked on the next one, which brought further acclaim. Suddenly I realized I was directing a theatre company, even though I had never had such ambitions. I very much wanted our Roma actors to remain with us because they were incredibly talented, but their own environment pulled them back. They were accused of “becoming white,” “turning gadjo,” being traitors. They were forced to choose between their families and Maladype.

– Currently Maladype consists of six young actors who graduated in Târgu Mureș. How did you find them?

– Two years ago I was invited to the University of the Arts there to direct a graduation production for the acting class. During the rehearsal process we grew so fond of one another that after they graduated I signed the entire class. Earlier I had already developed the FIVE GATES theatre-methodology and pedagogical system, which can help rediscover the foundations of acting creation. The Târgu Mureș group also became my permanent test group.

– Budapest mayor Gergely Karácsony promised assistance to troubled theatres in the capital, but he did not mention independent companies. Do you think that is fair?

– Not at all. We too are one of the defining companies of Budapest’s theatre life. Our international reputation extends from Asia to America, and everywhere we represent Hungarian progressive theatre culture. We do this without permanent state or municipal support. Although it has often been emphasized that there would be broad professional consultations with independent companies, this has not happened so far — or at least I know nothing about it. Spiritually speaking, we are absolutely independent: we have committed ourselves neither to the right nor the left, we are under no pressure to conform, and we do not follow fashionable trends. At the same time, within the theatre structure, the term “independent” has no real meaning. We are in fact highly dependent on grants, decision-makers, and current government regulations.

– Another thing has shaken our theatre life recently: yet another scandal involving abuse of power. Several former and current colleagues accused Enikő Eszenyi, director of the Vígszínház Theatre, of psychological abuse and physical aggression. What do you think about this?

– Enikő also asked me to support her application for the director’s position, which I did before the scandal broke. I supported her because I consider her an exceptionally talented artist, and her efforts to renew the Vígszínház are undeniable facts. It is also not insignificant for us that when our company was in trouble, she was among the first to offer us help — something very few others did, and if they did, it came with conditions attached. Like Gábor Máté, I do not wish to participate in Enikő’s lynching, but I agree that the matter must be thoroughly investigated, because neither psychological nor physical abuse is acceptable in any environment, including theatre. If these things did happen, there must be consequences. Enikő resigned, and the Vígszínház will soon receive a new leader. Yet there is another aspect to this issue as well: the responsibility of the company itself and of professional advocacy organizations. It is incomprehensible how, parallel with the rise of the #MeToo movement, such serious professional and human grievances could remain hidden for so long.

– You know as well as anyone that advocacy organizations do not function properly. What should an actor do? Confront the director? The next day they probably will not need to come in anymore.

– We too were members of the Independent Performing Arts Association, but in 2005, together with other companies, we withdrew because we felt they did not represent our interests. However, we never remained silent about the grievances we suffered. Ilona Béres once told me that in the most vulnerable moments of an actor’s career, proper communication and style were their most important weapons. That is why it matters greatly by what means a director achieves that an actor extends the director’s creative intentions on stage. Through force and violence? Or through professional preparedness? And what is permitted in a theatre also depends on the given social and cultural environment.

– You have traveled widely around the world. Did you find that abuses of power are rarer in theatres in more democratic countries?

– No, in fact perhaps they are even more common. Many people think artistic freedom means they can allow themselves anything. But, for example, professional advocacy organizations in Romania and France are much stronger.

– You also studied in Paris under theatre masters such as Robert Wilson and Anatoly Vasiliev. At Budapest’s Bárka Theatre, the renowned British director Tim Carroll invited you to play Hamlet. Were these great masters aggressive too?

– I never heard them shout, nor even raise their voices. Yet they were fully capable of realizing their artistic intentions. All three were highly conceptual creators who knew exactly what they wanted. As both an actor and a director, I received the greatest freedom from them.

– You also lead a company. How would you characterize your own leadership style?

– You should really ask my actors about that. Ever since the #MeToo campaign, they constantly “photograph” me during rehearsals. They mean it as a joke — but not entirely. They observe me more sharply now, and I too have to pay greater attention to what I say and how I say it. I am not an aggressive director, but I am determined and energetic.

– Lockdown is also good for turning inward and taking stock. What should theatres use this forced pause for?

– We should rethink those bad professional and moral reflexes that seriously hinder the unfolding of artistic innovation. One of our biggest problems is the lack of professional investment. Students at art universities are not very interested in learning the traditions of their profession or understanding the storm-raising achievements of earlier great masters and stage innovators — let alone developing those ideas further. Above all, they learn how to maneuver and succeed. Whom it is advantageous to befriend.

– Do not be unfair! Most beginning actors are not welcomed with contracts, and due to overtraining they rightly fear that anyone can be replaced at any time.

– I do not blame young people at all, but facts remain facts. The theatre profession has many old debts and sins that finally need to be confronted. Because, as Poirot says in Agatha Christie’s novel: old sins cast long shadows.

– What sins does the theatre profession have?

– For example, ignorance, the lack of fundamental professional knowledge, and the indifference of actors and directors. I once met an actor already active in the profession who not only did not know Zoltán Latinovits, but had never even heard of Mari Törőcsik. Few know who Antal Németh, György Harag, István Paál, or Erzsébet Gaál were. Directors do not read enough; most of them — with due respect to the exceptions — have dramaturgs tell them the plot of the play, and then they project that onto the stage. I also consider the absence of true masters a sin. Artistic training classes are often led by teachers who, because of their own work, barely have time to attend classes. In reality, the students are taught by assistant instructors — professionally still boys and girls in their twenties and thirties. Yet students would need experienced masters who continuously support their development.

– You have already spoken about your foreign masters. Did you have Hungarian ones as well?

– Role models, yes. Before the Academy of Dramatic Arts I was a studio trainee at the old National Theatre. I could observe up close how actors like Gábor Agárdy, Ferenc Bessenyei, Ferenc Kállai, Margit Lukács, or Klári Tolnay rehearsed. At the National Theatre it became customary to subject young actors to initiation rituals. For example, during a performance, one of the great actors would try backstage to throw the self-conscious young extras off balance or make them laugh. Nine out of ten laughed back in order to win the favor of the giants. I told myself: “If I can endure this without laughing, I will stay in the profession.” It was not easy, but I endured it, and they respected me for it. As an actor, I always hated being exploited. If I enthusiastically improvise during rehearsal and show a director various versions of a scene, and then ask which version should remain, and all the director can say is: “Hmm, I don’t know.” That “I don’t know” is the death of cooperation between actor and director. A director must know what the goals of their concept are and what acting solutions serve them.

– And what can a young director do if the theatre manager comes in and rearranges the production?

– For example, refuse to allow the production to be presented under their name. If someone had done that to me when I was starting out, I certainly would have stood up immediately and gone public.

– Many people would accuse you of victim-blaming now.

– I merely claim that we are always capable of making decisions, and if we give that up, that is when we become victims. There is no contract obliging a director to agree to someone else rearranging their work. The problem in many cases is that creators are afraid, they want at all costs to seize the opportunity offered to them, and they do not know their rights. Just as audiences are not aware of their possibilities either — for example, that they have the right to artistic performance based on real knowledge and quality.

– What should a spectator do if they do not like a performance?

– Nowadays there are many forums where they can publish their opinions and tell acquaintances not to watch a bad production. Of course, it is not that simple. The spectator finally gets to the theatre, pays for the ticket, and sits down thinking: “I have five minutes — now show me catharsis!” Then they note with disappointment that it did not happen, but never mind, maybe next time. Yet in theatre there is no “next time.” There is only here and now. That is why every moment should be treated according to its own value. This is why we consider it important that spectators play an active role in our productions and that we talk with audiences after performances.

– In Yvonne, for example, someone is selected from the audience, invited onto the stage, and suddenly realizes they are the title character of the play. Is that not tricking the spectator?

– Why would it be? The spectator has countless opportunities to decide: whether to come onto the stage or not, whether to sit back down or remain there. They participate only in what they want to participate in. Perhaps the fact that no one has regretted joining the game so far, and no one has accused us of violating them, proves us right.

– Returning to lockdown: in this crisis situation we also see many examples of professional and social solidarity. In the deeply divided theatre world, is there a chance for rapprochement and positive change?

– There has to be. But in order to reorder our relationships and common tasks, all of us must give up something: our egos. This ego feeds within us the feeling of superiority and the temptation to judge others. In the name of theatre and in its interests, many things can be committed. Even humiliating and exploiting others while saying: “We are serving the sacred cause of theatre.” Or accepting that some people designate mandatory ideological points of orientation for others. Or accepting that the self-appointed Kelemen Mikes’ of our age send us messages from their voluntary exile about how we should behave properly. Or allowing narcissistic commentators to arrogantly make declarations in the name of theatre. We tolerate the fact that some feel entitled to call the actors of the nation cowards. Even though these wonderful artists — our national treasures — stood firm in historical eras we cannot even imagine, and still preserved their professional and human credibility. We should learn from them. If we truly want to reach common ground, we must not act out of anger or hunt for momentary success. We should rethink where we come from and where we are going, what values we wish to represent and convey in the name of theatre.

Zsuzsanna Sándor, 168 Óra, 2020

translated by: Zsuzsanna Juraszek

The opera director jumped out from Zoltán Balázs in full armour, with a samurai sword on his side.

Similarly to the other operas, which take part in the Mezzo competition, the opera house of Rennes could find an opera, which „does not exist” – at least in common knowledge – it is Der Vampyr by Heinrich Marschner, a romantic frightening story. However, it was not always that way: after its premiere in 1828, the opera was performed in many places in Germany, then it arrived to France, and it was even played sixty evenings in London too! So in its own time, Heinrich Marschner’s play had a great success, but to understand the reason, we should watch the date. The opera, which was inspired by John Polidori’s The Vampyre text from 1819, could match to the vampire mania, which went through the XIX. century, and reached its top in 1897 by Bram Stoker’s Dracula (and became slowly faded at the same time). The contrast between the world at daytime and at night, the unwanted or very desired contribution of unearthly powers, especially between the beautiful girls, who were about to get married, the incomprehensible deviance with “normal thinking” between the mental and soul – all these are topics, which are analysed even today with pleasant shivering by those who are a little bit attracted by the transcendent.

The choice of the topic is perfect. Marschner – the powers of the other world have come up from time to time in his other plays too – felt the soul of the era perfectly, and after knowing these facts above, the listeners have not had many problems with his music too. It is true that it depends on the viewpoint, that the glass is half full or half empty, as however, the successful story can step over borders too, Marschner has entered the group of fallen authors, not for nothing by today.

Maybe he was unsuccessful, that he was born between Weber and Wagner: the first one performed his first opera in Dresden, the later one especially likes him. The music historians have pointed out the effects of Marschner’s music in Lohengrin, in Tristan and even in Ring. The enthusiastic ones are proving that our hero is the missing part between the two giants, those who do not like him, have found Marschner bombastic and pathetic. The truth is obviously in the middle: it is great and powerful music, there is drama and love in it, and yes, with our contemporary ears it sounds many times too much, but maybe we have listened to too much of Wagner.

Marschner put the wandering motive of that time of the marriage, which is stopped by supernatural powers, (for example: from The Magic Hunter until the Twilight of the Gods and so on) into Scottish surrounding, where Ruthven, the main character has to afraid doubled from the sunlight of the daybreak: he gets twenty-four hours from the Vampire master to solve his own life with the sacrifice of three virgin girls. After the turning turnouts of the plot, which is a little bit over complicated, and has many folk elements in it, the result is three dead people – two of them are women and one of them is a vampire.

Zoltán Balázs with a brave idea put the Scottish vampires, who can speak German, from Scotland to the other side of earth, into the country of the rising sun. The Japanese frame, which is chosen as a background, is well over-thought, it becomes the part of the conception of the director, which cannot be experienced on its own at once. Zoltán Balázs, who works again with his proven group, has brought up nothing interesting in The Vampire, knowing his earlier career, the doubling or even tripling of the roles, which indicate definite interpretation, and require increased concentration from the viewers, (dramaturg: Judit Góczán) or the mirrors and reflections, which the director likes very much, can become important organisers too. And really, the two (later dead) brides can be easily played by the same singer, as well as the three girls’ three mothers can be given by one singer – the important dramaturgical intervention can regulate the story, which goes towards many ways, and can lead definitely our attention towards the general lessons.

The easy, but majestic vision (set and costume: Judit Gombár), the usage of the place, which sees creatively and bravely over the edges of the stage (at last someone realises that we are sitting in a huge, neo-baroque theatre building!), the precise moving of the few main characters and the choir with major number of members (choreographer: András Szőllősi), all these can make the performance in Rennes in its greatest moment, similar to Robert Wilson’s great theatrical ventures: Zoltán Balázs’ performance, from any point of view, is mature, it is a work, which can talk about great theatrical sensitivity. The result can be an important confirmation to the director too: in The Vampire we can see, that singers, who must be used to other things, can do the unusual orders controlled and punctually. The movements, which are slowed down, but can express tension anyway, the frightening turning of samurai swords and the gestures on the stage, which always mean aesthetic experience, many times easy, but they are not easy to translate, require an extreme concentration from the performers and the viewers too. On the singers we can see sometimes the heroic fight, but they deserve all appreciation, as they are obviously much more than well-behaving fulfillers.

Judit Gombár with the giant white wall, which dominates the stage, with the gates, which are cut in it and can be pulled aside, and with the low stairs in front of it, and with the well-chosen lights and with very few tools can show Japan to us. As the country of the far east is important only as a surrounding of the tale: the performance concentrates on the archaic motives of the ancient culture, on the phrases of Love and Death, Fighting and Friendship with capital letters, and with it, it can remain surprisingly honest to the original play.
As love and death are hands in hands here too: after the premier in 1828, one of the critics of the play condemned in Ruthven, that Marschner does not treat him as an absolute negative character, but he draws an ambivalent picture instead, and creates a creature with feelings from the monster. Nabil Suliman’s Ruthven – even after the illness, which was announced after the break – could be more than convincing: the power of his voice, he has exciting and really demonic aura, he is perfect for the main character. Marc Haffner, who performs the friend and the vampire master, is a competitor performer too, because of his average performance, the top points of the fight between the two men, cannot warm up the air. Helen Kearns sings the victim of the vampire: after the less captivating Janthe, Emmy’s more nuanced sounding must have been a refreshment for her too. The third girl’s role, Malwina, who has escaped successfully from the vampire, was absolved in a perfect form by Vanessa le Charles. I am convinced about the fact that the vampires also need sometimes laugh, by the clever scene of the second act about the pleasures of drinking, which Karine Audebert, the “sumo geisha” can make memorable, not only with her considerable sizes.

Tamás Jászay, Revizoronline, 2008

(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)The opera director jumped out from Zoltán Balázs in full armour, with a samurai sword on his side.

Similarly to the other operas, which take part in the Mezzo competition, the opera house of Rennes could find an opera, which „does not exist” – at least in common knowledge – it is Der Vampyr by Heinrich Marschner, a romantic frightening story. However, it was not always that way: after its premiere in 1828, the opera was performed in many places in Germany, then it arrived to France, and it was even played sixty evenings in London too! So in its own time, Heinrich Marschner’s play had a great success, but to understand the reason, we should watch the date. The opera, which was inspired by John Polidori’s The Vampyre text from 1819, could match to the vampire mania, which went through the XIX. century, and reached its top in 1897 by Bram Stoker’s Dracula (and became slowly faded at the same time). The contrast between the world at daytime and at night, the unwanted or very desired contribution of unearthly powers, especially between the beautiful girls, who were about to get married, the incomprehensible deviance with “normal thinking” between the mental and soul – all these are topics, which are analysed even today with pleasant shivering by those who are a little bit attracted by the transcendent.

The choice of the topic is perfect. Marschner – the powers of the other world have come up from time to time in his other plays too – felt the soul of the era perfectly, and after knowing these facts above, the listeners have not had many problems with his music too. It is true that it depends on the viewpoint, that the glass is half full or half empty, as however, the successful story can step over borders too, Marschner has entered the group of fallen authors, not for nothing by today.

Maybe he was unsuccessful, that he was born between Weber and Wagner: the first one performed his first opera in Dresden, the later one especially likes him. The music historians have pointed out the effects of Marschner’s music in Lohengrin, in Tristan and even in Ring. The enthusiastic ones are proving that our hero is the missing part between the two giants, those who do not like him, have found Marschner bombastic and pathetic. The truth is obviously in the middle: it is great and powerful music, there is drama and love in it, and yes, with our contemporary ears it sounds many times too much, but maybe we have listened to too much of Wagner.

Marschner put the wandering motive of that time of the marriage, which is stopped by supernatural powers, (for example: from The Magic Hunter until the Twilight of the Gods and so on) into Scottish surrounding, where Ruthven, the main character has to afraid doubled from the sunlight of the daybreak: he gets twenty-four hours from the Vampire master to solve his own life with the sacrifice of three virgin girls. After the turning turnouts of the plot, which is a little bit over complicated, and has many folk elements in it, the result is three dead people – two of them are women and one of them is a vampire.

Zoltán Balázs with a brave idea put the Scottish vampires, who can speak German, from Scotland to the other side of earth, into the country of the rising sun. The Japanese frame, which is chosen as a background, is well over-thought, it becomes the part of the conception of the director, which cannot be experienced on its own at once. Zoltán Balázs, who works again with his proven group, has brought up nothing interesting in The Vampire, knowing his earlier career, the doubling or even tripling of the roles, which indicate definite interpretation, and require increased concentration from the viewers, (dramaturg: Judit Góczán) or the mirrors and reflections, which the director likes very much, can become important organisers too. And really, the two (later dead) brides can be easily played by the same singer, as well as the three girls’ three mothers can be given by one singer – the important dramaturgical intervention can regulate the story, which goes towards many ways, and can lead definitely our attention towards the general lessons.

The easy, but majestic vision (set and costume: Judit Gombár), the usage of the place, which sees creatively and bravely over the edges of the stage (at last someone realises that we are sitting in a huge, neo-baroque theatre building!), the precise moving of the few main characters and the choir with major number of members (choreographer: András Szőllősi), all these can make the performance in Rennes in its greatest moment, similar to Robert Wilson’s great theatrical ventures: Zoltán Balázs’ performance, from any point of view, is mature, it is a work, which can talk about great theatrical sensitivity. The result can be an important confirmation to the director too: in The Vampire we can see, that singers, who must be used to other things, can do the unusual orders controlled and punctually. The movements, which are slowed down, but can express tension anyway, the frightening turning of samurai swords and the gestures on the stage, which always mean aesthetic experience, many times easy, but they are not easy to translate, require an extreme concentration from the performers and the viewers too. On the singers we can see sometimes the heroic fight, but they deserve all appreciation, as they are obviously much more than well-behaving fulfillers.

Judit Gombár with the giant white wall, which dominates the stage, with the gates, which are cut in it and can be pulled aside, and with the low stairs in front of it, and with the well-chosen lights and with very few tools can show Japan to us. As the country of the far east is important only as a surrounding of the tale: the performance concentrates on the archaic motives of the ancient culture, on the phrases of Love and Death, Fighting and Friendship with capital letters, and with it, it can remain surprisingly honest to the original play.
As love and death are hands in hands here too: after the premier in 1828, one of the critics of the play condemned in Ruthven, that Marschner does not treat him as an absolute negative character, but he draws an ambivalent picture instead, and creates a creature with feelings from the monster. Nabil Suliman’s Ruthven – even after the illness, which was announced after the break – could be more than convincing: the power of his voice, he has exciting and really demonic aura, he is perfect for the main character. Marc Haffner, who performs the friend and the vampire master, is a competitor performer too, because of his average performance, the top points of the fight between the two men, cannot warm up the air. Helen Kearns sings the victim of the vampire: after the less captivating Janthe, Emmy’s more nuanced sounding must have been a refreshment for her too. The third girl’s role, Malwina, who has escaped successfully from the vampire, was absolved in a perfect form by Vanessa le Charles. I am convinced about the fact that the vampires also need sometimes laugh, by the clever scene of the second act about the pleasures of drinking, which Karine Audebert, the “sumo geisha” can make memorable, not only with her considerable sizes.

Tamás Jászay, Revizoronline, 2008

(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)

It is wild romantic – they usually summarize with this word Heinrich Marschner’s opera, which was once so popular, but nowadays it is cultivated in places of German language, more with historic respect rather than with enthusiastic admiration. In reality, the main character’s, Lord Ruthven’s story, who has to kill three girls within close deadline, during a short day, (the ancient origin of his story he found in the company of another lord, Byron, more closely in the Doctor Polidori’s horrific imagination), with its frightening turns, extreme figures and charmingly confusing leading of story, can face up with the expectations of the wild romantic genre.

It is wild romantic – they usually summarize with this word Heinrich Marschner’s opera, which was once so popular, but nowadays it is cultivated in places of German language, more with historic respect rather than with enthusiastic admiration. In reality, the main character’s, Lord Ruthven’s story, who has to kill three girls within close deadline, during a short day, (the ancient origin of his story he found in the company of another lord, Byron, more closely in the Doctor Polidori’s horrific imagination), with its frightening turns, extreme figures and charmingly confusing leading of story, can face up with the expectations of the wild romantic genre. The Hungarian opera visitors can learn about it now, thanks for the programme of the Opera Competition and Festival in Szeged, because in contrast to the statement of the program, the performance of the opera troupe from the town of Rennes, from France, cannot be seen as the Hungarian premiere of the play (as it has happened in the year of the birth of the play in 1828). The Vampire cannot be taken into consideration as a well-known opera here. So the first moments of the performance on Saturday, were about the hesitant meeting, which was together with interest, Marschner’s music has shown its confident mediocre virtues during the overture. It is nicely familiar, the music of The Vampire is an opera with shallow depth, as it was written by Carl Maria von Weber not long after his death, and probably it is much more than the audience would have expected from it in advance.

For the pleasant disappointment, Zoltán Balázs’ performance offered further surprise, which stylized the plot into a Japanese fairy tale. Either it wanted to update the exoticism, which is necessary for the working of the story (for which Scotland from the end of the XVIII. century would hardly have been enough), or because he wanted to put into his performance in France, those world of picture, gesture register and illusion with puppets, which are liked by his hearth. Zoltán Balázs solution, according to our feelings is proved right and effective beyond all arguments. The opera, which does not have neither any strictly fixed tradition in connection with its performance, nor any intellectual content, which the staging could miss, could live happily in the banal Japanese surrounding. The ritualized movements, the moving of hands (choreographer: András Szőllősi), the pure colours and the unstressed, modest sets (set and costume designer: Judit Gombár) could help well the opera, with vulnerable tale. The ideas, which were put in the story, could raise the entertaining value of the performance. That way, the main, evil character and the tenor, who plays the good boy, so Lord Ruthven and Aubry’s figures can be introduced as the alter egos of one another. The showing of the relationship, which is “schizophrenic symbiosis” according to the director, could become so much didactic, that even those viewers could accept it without negative feelings, who are hypercritic against these kinds of ideas. And even if the reappearance of the choir in the boxes on the first floor and on the corridors downstairs, seems to be an overused idea, its effect on the viewers cannot be questioned. Similarly to it we have to accept that professional knowledge, with which the director could turn the too loud horrifying music with the usage of some bright tools, into a frivol scene in the pub. We also have to admire that artistic ability, with which, the choir, which is put on stage in the finale, can become similar to a Japanese collection of statues.

Those singers, who introduce the main characters of the opera, so those competitors, who have been patronised by the Mezzo television, all of them, have made a very good impression on the viewers. The Syrian Nabil Suliman, in the role of the vampire, who has formed into a bloody samurai, both with his mimics and performance on stage, and with his baritone voice, which is powerful and demonic enough, seems to be more than illusionary. The Irish Helen Kearns, with pale white skin tone, performs Lord Ruthven’s two victims, while the French Vanessa Le Charles sings Malwina, who finally married to her lover, with modest performance of an actor, with slowed down gestures but not ineffectively. Marc Haffner in Aubry’s role, performs in a balanced way with his tenor, which cannot be called wonderful, but the mezzo soprano of the Rennes troupe, Karine Audebert, must remain more memorable than him, who in her small role, as an oversized geisha and mischievous goddess of love in her underwear, has brought up loud amusement in our lines. The Pannon Philharmonic Orchestra, who played impetuously, was conducted by Olari Elts. Even if he sometimes found it hard to coordinate the sounding of the orchestra and the choir, which was placed here and there, his performance should have been appreciated. As well as the whole opera troupe of Rennes, the hard-working members of which could make entertaining in Szeged, the viewers’ first meeting with the not so first class but tempting performance of German opera industry.

Ferenc László, Magyar Narancs, 2008

(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)

In the magnetic atmosphere of the Shelleys, the housewife of the villa in Geneva could write horror tales, but for sure, their doctor friend, Polidori wrote the first vampire story in English by opening the Byron-like idea. In the German hands, a drama, then a great opera, have been formed from it, which after two centuries long apparent death, Zoltán Balázs has created again, he has visualised the gesture language of the no-theatre, but he has given all possibilities for the modern opera performing.

The formation of the roles, the singing, the movement, anyway the lighting, the costumes, the incredible intensity of sight could resulted in a magnificent performance. The extreme story in Japanese samurai-like stylization, with the tools of the minimalism on stage, while the characters’ relationships in the performance of sign language, are realised in invented gesture language. The extreme situations are counterpointed by graceful movements, which are slowed down, the flying of the sounds by white rigid masks. The Vampire, who is not blood thirsty at all, who is forced to do terrible things by evil powers of the other world, can appear as mysterious shadow, and finally on Judit Gombár’s transparent background wall, which divides the actions with the changing of its colourful lights and holes. The choir, with thirty members, appear in the tall geometric place, they form wonderful moving pictures with András Szőllősi whirling choreography. They appear in six different special dresses, from the ghostly black through the sun-like yellow shining, with tale-like crests, which are shining purple, and finally frozen into gypsum white, which becomes dead grey in the final scene.

The singers can cover themselves into very expressing and various beauties, and make impossible to find fitting advanced adjectives for Judit Gombár’s unique achievement. The troupe of Rennes is impressively powerful, the presence of the quartet of the dissolute men with Karine Audeber, the mezzo dominant woman, who gets naked with oversized body, but sings even more flexible, it is a masterfully worked out episode, the bass, which gives frightening energies in three roles too, with shark head resonance. Christophe Fel, who has gigantic playing power, who stands out with his perfect German knowledge in his prose speeches too. It will be hard to decide between the two male competitors: Marc Haffner’s proportionally articulated male tenor is a unique rare thing on its own, above this, it comes with natural ability to play and so surging musicality, which we can admire in the aria of the masterpiece. Nabil Suliman’s lonely Vampire is a grandiose feature, his singing is suggestive, his performance is the passion, which is coordinated with conscious rationality, under the weight of the main role, which grow up to the height of mountains of the stormy clouds, with mature formation of the role. It is very characteristic for his classic nature, that he could sing all through with middle power, he sings maybe fortes and just in his dying final he sings his fortissimo with full sounding.
The wonderful choir should get a separate paragraph, which can use the exceptional possibility, and glorify Heinrich Marschner’s music with never sounding power, and become the equal part of the erupting success.

Zoltán Balázs after The Blacks, proves his extreme affinity again for the performance of interdisciplinary art of "Gesammtkunst", in his performing work, he can form a dynamic unity of the singing performance, the moving, the lights, the music and the visual side.

The Vampire is a remarkable finishing of the very effective MEZZO Opera Festival, which beyond the excitement of the Competition, has giant effect, and has become the relative event of the Hungarian theatrical and singing life.

White Elephant, Kulturális Ajánló, 2008

(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)

Let’s start with the argument: Both Lucretia’s Violation and The Vampire were not sounded to be Hungarian premieres on the Mezzo Opera Festival. The opera performing of the XIX. century in Hungary was sensitive to the new things, so much, that even in the year of the premiere, only nine months after the premiere in Leipzig, The Vampire was performed in Hungary too on 29th December 1828. In the German Theatre in Pest, in German language. One of the unexplainable anomaly of the Hungarian theatre history, that sometimes even today it does not take into consideration the theatre making in German language, which was before the constant Hungarian one, and then worked parallel with it. As it would be unpleasant, that in Pest-Buda, The Magic Flute was performed during a very long series, or that for the opening of the German Theatre Beethoven composed background music for the stage (Ruins of Athens, King Stephen). It is especially strange today, when opera has become, what it has always been, even during the high time of national schools: an international genre, which is above the nations. If the French opera house performs a piece by a German composer in Hungary, with a Hungarian director and Estonian conductor, and with singers from every parts of the world, then what kind of national pride and provincial reservedness can make us deny the happy fact, that an important opera was performed in Budapest after its premiere for the second time in the world? Especially if we are talking about a composer, whose career began in Bratislava, with the leading of Klein Henrik, who thought Erkel too, and whose plays – his first opera too – was performed in this city, where mostly German people lived, instead of Hungarians and Slovakians. We should be proud of it, even if his beginning Hungarian connections have disappeared with the growing of his career. Not all of Marschner’s mature operas have been performed in Hungary, and after his death, only the "The Templar and the Jewess" was performed in Hungary, which he composed according to Ivanhoe, the Scottish novel – in the Opera House. When Mahler was the manager, and it was performed six times.

But let’s put argument aside: we should be happy, that after a hundred and eighty years we could watch this important opera again in Hungary. It is an important opera – I am writing it, then add fast, that now it is not the synonym of a “masterpiece”. I have listened to it many times before the performance, then after I have watched it, I have been getting more and more sure, that the values of Marschner’s opera we should search from the point of view of its place in music history, rather than on its own.

Nowadays, when we talk less about the history of a branch of art, or taking smaller one, about a history of a genre, and instead of it we put against each other parallel stories, alternatives (as you can see it under the headword: The histories of Hungarian literature), especially in a country, the opera history of which cannot be written down as a uniform process, instead as a rare scale of independent accidental masterpieces – so here and now we have to be surprised by the fact that a German opera can be so suitable to the traditional, linear historical usage. The Vampire is a totally romantic piece: about the world destroying role of dark powers, about the demons that raise up inside humans, about the fight and victory of cleanliness and heroism against darkness – so it goes on with the opera historical direction, which was began with Weber’s Magic Hunter and brings on until Wagner. Almost all moments of the play can be connected to the analogue scenes of the Magic Hunter or of the The Flying Dutchman. The beginning, the appearance of the vampire master and the witches’ sabbath can be connected to the scene of the Wolf’s glen and Samiel’s appearance from the Magic Hunter. Emmy Vampire-ballad at the beginning of the second act can be an obvious preview of Senta’s ballad – not only because of the text about the legendary creature, but because of that dramaturgical sudden ending, that the summoned person appears soon on the stage too. But this associational net can be continued and widened to the operas before Weber too. Aubry, Malwina and Sir Humphrey – father, daughter and the dismissed groom – their trio makes us remember not only the trio of Fidelio Leonóra–Marcellina–Rocco, but of Pamina–Tamino–Sarastro from The magic flute – all of it points towards the quintet of The Mastersingers of Nuremberg. Everything is connected to everything: the long scale of familiar situations and characters place The Vampire into the partly knowing context of the German opera history – at let us improve our knowledge about the story.

Anyway, in The Vampire everything is only similar, raises up or refers ahead, and makes us remember something else – between the many parallel things I cannot really find Marschner’s real character. His music is wonderfully worked out, it has high standard, but it is lack of true originality and sound inventions. He writes melodies, but they are not characteristics, they do not remain in the ear of those, who listen to it once or many times – and it is not independent from the fact, that the characters of the play cannot become real characters. Marschner raised up very difficult questions with his play (between others, about the problem of acceptance and acceptability of difference on social and face to face level, which we can see again in the Dutchman), but I think, that he could not put them into a perfect artistic form - The Vampire is more like an interesting try, searching for way, which – fortunately – could find wonderful followers, like Wagner and his career.

But these problematic plays can become the basis of a really exciting performance. Partly this happens now: Zoltán Balázs’s performance is an extraordinary sophisticated and inventive work – an indisputable talent of an opera director marks his place here. The inventive nature, which is more technical now, cannot cause a real catharsis, it can be the reason of the mistakes of the play. The fact, that he puts the story, which originally happens in Scotland to Japan, can easily solve the biggest problem of the staging of the opera, which has many empty places, that way he can fill the empty place to make them natural. The Japanese theatre has more stressed ritual in it than the European one, so it makes natural and even necessary the fewer and more characteristic movements – for example Lord Ruthven’s, the vampire’s play with the samurai sword too, which can cause horrific moments to the viewers without any outlook forming, horror-tools (while the listeners can listen to the sweet-melodic aria about the beauties of drinking of blood). The doubled and tripled roles are important elements in the performance. Many singers have one role (the most important one is the connection of Emmy and Janthe, the two victims), but there are more scales of parallels: we can learn from the director’s statement that Zoltán Balázs accepted Ruthven and Aubry too as inseparable characters – the positive and negative heroes are similar to Jin and Jang. The raising of the problem is excellent, but the play does not give real material to it – if Aubry appears as a Vampire master in the first scene, so he controls the lines from the beginning, and machinates the actions to get Malwina finally, then at the end there is only the possibility to prove it with a silent scene. And in reality: Aubry here takes the pearl necklace slowly out, in the performance, with which Ruthven has made the early two sacrifices – Aubry has reached his destination, he gets Malwina for himself. However, the music, anyway it is not so important, is punctual, and here composes a happy end – the characters are grateful for God because of their survival. I let myself not be calmed down by this ending, as similarly to The Magic Hunter, here a deus ex machina prevents the catastrophe – anyway I feel a little bit dissonant the ending of the performance and the moments, which have led there. But all these are little things, and I would repeat: the problems come from the drama itself, they have not been solved, and they come from problems of questions, which have not been worked out yet. It cannot change the fact, that Zoltán Balázs’ performance is the most memorable theatrical experience from the five performances of the festival.

Unfortunately we cannot tell the same about the musical solution. I have not been impressed by the performance of the Pannon Philharmonic Orchestra: while in case of The Witches of Salem, they had performed with beautiful sounding, uniformly and in concentrated way, but in case of this performance they gave the impression of a more chaotic production, their sounding was not with such a high quality with this more elevated score, as in case of the performance of Ward’s mostly post-romantic music. Olari Elts, the conductor was more hard-working and dynamic tactic, it was less about the creature of the atmosphere of the play, and even about the creature of form.

Nabil Suliman, who plays the main role, rises high from the cast. His voice does not special colour, but it is powerful enough, and his singing technique seems to be reliable – from the point of view of his figure, he is perfect for the role.

Helen Kearns performs Janthe and Emmy – she is a perfect victim, her voice is fresh, youngish – but she does not have the ability to make the Vampire-ballad really frightening.

Vanessa Le Charlès’ voice seems to be too powerful and sharp for Malwina’s role, and her speech has been weaker than the other characters’.
Marc Haffner’s Aubry, if I want to, can be written dawn as the introduction of a young man, who has Wagner-tenor-like voice – but his ability to deal with the voice is missing from the performance, above it, except for the voice, many elements of the material do not promise an international career for the young tenor singer.

The artists of the Opera of Rennes have worked humidly, on a great quality level for the competitors’ production and the success of the performance. Anyway: the fact that a troupe from the “countryside” can solve a high-standard performance on such a level, that they can fulfil the scenic, which requires such a meticulous punctuality on such a level (set- and costume designer: Judit Gombár), it makes us thinking.

So with The Vampire, an important opera can be watched again in Hungary – it is an important opera but is not a masterpiece. It was good to know it – but it has become more painful, that there is not any Hungarian theatre, that feels enough courage in itself to perform gracefully The Magic Hunter.

Gábor Bóka, Opera-Világ, 2008

(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)