That carefulness with which Zoltán Balázs, the director shows us to our seat is conspicuous and he does it one by one in the narrow amphitheatre of the Bárka Theatre. The writer as a white one, wrote his play-ceremony to the whites, which, according to the original instructions, has to be played by black actors.

The ceremony in reality is a grotesque, distracting operation: while we, the viewers are watching the replayed ritual of a white woman’s killing by the fake white ones (in reality they are just wearing white masks), by the court, then the fake lawsuit, by the sentence of the killer, besides the set the real revolution has started. Until we get there the world has turned a lot with us. In Genet’s glass maze we can never be sure that who is the real victim, whether we see the ancient original story or the invoking rite. While we are listening to the writer baroque-like prolific poetic text we can suddenly lose all the Archimedean points, which can be some help to us: as in front of the two mirrors opposite to each other, the only thing which would be missing is the subject of reflection, everything is affected, everything is played and everything is virtual.

Balázs has composed a classical, precise score: the geometrical system which follows all elements of the play can perfectly counterbalance the poetic “overreaches” of the text. On this rich scale which the chronicler cannot express the actors can play easily. Which is the most conspicuous for the first sight is that: in the holes of the amphitheatre we can see the picture of members of the “white” and “black” group opposite to each other. (The whites: Kamilla Fátyol, Rodrigó Balog, Kristóf Horváth, János Balog, Zoltán Oláh; the blacks: Balázs Dévai, Nóra Parti, Judit Réka Kiss, Erzsébet Soltész, Éva Bakos), their identity is signed only by the colour of their clothes (the fashion of the clothes, the fan in their hand, the movements from flamenco, especially on the side of the blacks raise Spanish allusion).

Opposite to the original instructions given by writer, here in the non-homogeneous Maladype group the Gypsies play the whites, while in the black dresses are the non-Gypsy members of the group. Meanwhile it is not enough too: all actors of each group are synchronized by opera singers, who are presented in the area and dressed like monks (the music which can be called a capella opera was composed by László Sáry who is Zoltán Balázs’ permanent partner). Their number is the half of the actors’ that is why a singer of a sound can give singing voice for two characters at the same time. (Beatrix Fodor, soprano, Apollónia Szolnoki, alto, Zoltán Gavodi, countertenor, László Böröcz, tenor, Szabolcs Hámori, bass).

The tools for the actors are their punctually created movements and the mute but even more expressive articulation of the text. People feel that the sounds given by the singers would become the acoustic masks (“roles”?) of the moving characters. That is why the sentences, which the actors tell in prose on their own voices, become so strong: through these the real personalities losing their masks can “be sounded” from time to time. (It is very characteristic that Balázs Dévai, who plays the Village and tends to do the killing, confesses his love to Nóra Parti, who plays the Virtue, and gets naked physically. It is even more painful when turns out that it is only a cheat, so that the audience can find out the appearing real feelings of future fulfiller.)

The fact that the actors and singers tell the text as others’ mirror images – we do not know for sure who are the leaders – gives us the opportunity for a real new interpretation: between the two opponent groups music is like a mediator (for the same sounding the characters are connected in pairs): and the appearance, the vision can cheat us, as the white and black figures, at least, acoustically are mixed. This mixture is widened as the director gives the role of Archibald, of the Master of Ceremonies to himself: he tells leanly the instructions into a microphone to the players, while he is sitting there between us in his ordinary clothes. His presence with his pure voice connects him to the acoustic part, but to the players too, but his appearance makes him similar to us: his figure has double meaning, (mediator and shaman) with his help the stage and the auditorium can form a world together (in a circular area where the players and viewers can melt into each other on the level of vision too).

Balázs merges the role of the sacrificing and victim which is a braver action than it is, so he gives meaning to the mixture on the level of the dramaturgy too: Hermina Fátyol and Artúr Kálid are changing the roles of the city of Saint Nazare and the role of Diuf, and their positions in the area. In the middle of the arena, on the top of the box of the victim we can see the girl for a long time, while the man is going around on the highest floor of the amphitheatre, above us. Then at the peak of the performance, during the rite of the victim, we can see Artúr Kálid in the middle, he is dancing like a female victim dressed in red (his dancing, movements, red dress quote the bullfighter and the bull at the same time), than the girl in concerto is rising up into the air and looks down to us from the point of view of the gods. Sándor Weöres’ lines from the Third symphony come into my mind: “You are the hunter and you are the wild one...”.

There we can understand that Balázs thinks over and makes universal Genet’s message: in the two scales of the balance there are not the whites and the blacks, the oppressors and the oppressed – the performance (as in the case of the director’s earlier work, in the Theomachia) reveals the manipulation which keeps itself by tricky takeovers, which laugh behind the empty duality of our days. They are measured and found to be too light according to the scale, from the point of view of the divine optic. And we are measured too: “you are all pink”, said Diuf, Hermina Fátyol on her naïve, childish voice in the clothes of a nun. Another question again: what is going to remain at the end of the two hours long insanity of virtualities that put out each other. Who are going to remain?

The running pair of the more than two hours long performance, the teenager Village and the Virtue have reached their destination, above the victim they push their foreheads to one another and confess pantingly their love to each other. The blonde girl and the Gypsy boy. Maybe they will step out of the constant whirl of the mix(tures). They give meaning to the mirrors too.

Gábor Pap, Kritika, 2005

(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)

(Jean Genet: The Blacks; Maurice Maeterlinck: Pelléas and Mélisande – Bárka Theatre)

Two characteristics of Zoltán Balázs’ performances appear at the first time. One is that they show more and more similarity with the modern opera. It has its undeniable history of course, as with Balázs Kovalik and Sándor Zsótér’s directions the operas can become theatrical experiences in Hungary too. Somehow similarly as Wagner thought about it, when he wrote about Gesamtkunstwerk – the ensemble of the text, music, the presence of actors and the world of vision can form a totally new language and word. However those performances which I am talking about are not definitely operas, Zoltán Balázs has created the fusion of theatre and opera – we can say that he uses many elements of opera, the language of opera according to the needs of his theatrical visions. The unit of ration, design and the emotional power of music melt into each other inseparably.

Another Speciality of the performance is that the creators with the help of symbols and rites build a net of meaning which works consistently as a sacral language all through the performance. For it the punctual use of the text is necessary, which Judit Góczán knows well and a vison is needed which can raise the place over reality – with the help of Judit Gombár’s designs of set and costume. The actors learn again every time with all their movements and words the language of the actual performance. The words, accents, movements of vision and melodies form together that world full of meanings in which the mostly pragmatic story can go on slowly.

Without our common sacraments and rites these are artificial words – their construction can be written down with the help of mathematics - , but the highness of music and the ceremonies release the foreseeable logic.

Jean Genet: The Blacks

Jean Genet’s play The Blacks is said to be clown act – of course it is not, meanwhile it is tragic as well; mainly because it would like to reach the catharsis with the help of repeated ritual actions. The definition of the genre of the performance goes on: black mass. If we like, it is a pun (a mass celebrated by the blacks, it is the mass of the blacks, it is a mass for the blacks), if we like it can be what it is literally: a ceremony that brings death and decay, which approaches the sanctity from the side of the Evil.

The audience arrives to an area similar to a stadium. The rows of the auditorium are going up sharply: the arena in the middle is just some steps wide. Our look falls back here all the time: there is something like a coffin there, and a white girl and a black boy in the beginning. Because of the small size of the “arena” and the steepness of the auditorium suddenly we realise that we, the viewers have become the part of it, the players of the game. It is supported well by the fact that the white and the black clan are standing on the upper part of the arena in front of each other: they simply close us into this magic circle. Perpendicularly to the white-black bi-pole, where we entered the area before, a boy and a girl are running in nude dresses, their faces are motionless, they schedule their power up until the end of the performance. They are the Running Village and the Running Virtue – so the pandans of the characters who will play the role of doers of the sacrifice (or murder) and the victims. Their colourlessness and physical effort seem to be the abstraction of the two characters – they are those figures who go into fight with their own body, being, power, and finality.

Of course, the two confronting groups take the main part of the action. Some of them from time to time gets into the arena, the others are similar to two opponent groups, they abuse each other and support the fighters like the supporters of a bullfighting or gladiator competitions. One of them is dressed in black: they are showing off on their side with black, tightened to their head, curly hair, with black lipstick, in black dresses – they are mostly similar to flamenco dancers as they are playing with their fans, with energetic movements. In front of them the whites are shining. Their dress has mannered baroque style, as well as their white wig and lips, the flying of their fans. The difference seems to be enormous, but if we have a second look the two sides are differed mostly by the black and white.

We are part of a ceremony: it is the ceremony of conflict, where victims are searched again and again, in a ritual way, with the hope of getting rid of loathing that way. It is a multi-complex, a play in the play, the game master – according to the play Archibald Absalon Wellington – gets an interesting role during the performance: the director himself sits there between the audience, in his civil clothes, with a microphone in his hand and he complicates and moves on the actions according to the supposed system of the ceremony. The game, which puts him inside and outside the performance at the same time, is similar to Tadeusz Kantor’s theatrical presence, to the role of conductor or ceremony master which is accepted by the director during the performance. Now he is working only with the help of words.

If the skin tone becomes an attribute which can be put on and taken off, then the genders and voices can be changed too, they can move freely in the area. The Sounds have their places in the highest part of the stadium (I gave them this name by myself), who come down at the beginning of the performance and sit down into the first row of the auditorium. The actors get the characters’ body, movements, gestures, all movements of their faces – and the movements of their mouth. The singing voices are given by the opera singers – László Sáry has written the score with the needs of an opera.

All elements of the performance are connected to this thought-provoking deconstruction. The sounds in the area – many times counter tenor or bass is connected to a female character and soprano to a male one. There are whites and blacks in the area – their roles can be changed, they can play each other’s role. The victims and doers are in the area – where the one who has to kill can become the prisoner of his victim. At the peak of the performance the Village who wants to kill, stops before the killing of the Virtue. Instead of killing the hated “white” girl, he confesses his love. He gets help to fulfil the ceremony: Artúr Kálid, who plays the ruler of the city of Saint Nazare in red shoes, red skirts, tries to make the desperate boy kill. Every circumstances are there to support the murder: the transvestite shining in red, the side who encourages the Village, and the dance between the flamenco and bullfighting. During these Nóra Parti who plays the role of the victim – Virtue – are hanging from above, swinging. It is a visionary, broken up world. Before the moment of stab suddenly complete darkness covers us.

Then the closing scene of the performance: the opponents change costumes, colour and role. And the chasing the ceremony of loathing starts again. It is unimportant whether the whites chase the blacks or the other way around. The sample is the same. Sounds, genders and roles are wondering in the area. The rite mostly automatically repeats itself circularly, changing up the roles and killing endlessly.

Maurice Maeterlinck: Pelléas and Mélisande

I cannot avoid to compare the two: the French daredevil, Genet, the hero of thieves, who combines the steam of brothels in his cruel but somehow raised, symbolic stories, was one year old, a pitiful one who had been already in orphanage when Maeterlinck the francophone, sophisticated, who was favoured by gods and grew up in a catholic family, got the Nobel Prize. But the dreamy world – interpretations which are coded in mostly mystical sign-system – whether because of the fury of exile or the fragility of over sophistication – in both cases have a very similar result.

The story goes in circle in the case of Pelléas and Mélisande by Maeterlinck too. The performance starts and ends with act of killing of Mélisande because of love. The other archetype is the repeated gesture, which is the girl’s saving from the lake, on the sticks of which Mélisande gets hung up by her long and blue hair. In the performance it is not obvious that who saves who, Golaud or Pelléas, and which one of them kills her – as both of them love the strange girl from another world. Both of them do it: they save and kill her. It is not obvious too if Mélisande wants to be saved and finally she is afraid of death. The only thing which is sure, that the weird girl brings love and jealousy into this palace. She brings to life fainted falling and power beyond (or under) humankind.

It is an easy, mystical tale; a soft system of symbols, which are grown up under a glass shade. The set can entrap cleverly our sight, senses: from one side it quotes the orthodox iconostasis in two dimension – which do not show things realistically, but they can sign, send message of saints here, in to the three dimension of everyday life. From the other side the flat motifs of arch are there on three levels – so it creates a playing area of three layers - , and they are connected by stairs in a way that we can see it on the drawing by Escher. In that way it opens secretly the two dimensions, even connects the ups and downs, makes it circular. And there is another invisible one, a secret downstairs: the bottom of the lake, from where the girl has risen.

I do not have to tell that the characters are moving as an icon comes to life: they know only two dimensions, they can only move in this flappable eternal legend, in this sacral area, which is alien for their everyday life but deep in their feelings and thoughts it is familiar – sometimes they are similar to the Egyptian grave drawings which can be naïve, but made by punctual observation, to its two-dimensional style. Nothing can happen which is not significant. The tremor of the sword, the throwing of the giant ring, the blue hair which appears in the window – all of them have existential weight, have effects on the characters’ fate.

Now the singing and the spoken language are divided strongly. On the program those three bass singers are signed as servants, who are walking on the floors as a Slavic polyphonic choir from time to time (if I remember well they will not appear on the highest floor). This small choir is the background of mood and feelings for the performance in reality: for us it is strange, but its attractive and harmonic sounding suggests that world, which is far from reality, as the set does, and the playing method and the costumes which are similar to caftans. Their song and slow movement put the story into this undefinable, mythical place and time, into this exaggerated and more swirling emotional trap, which can surprize the characters too. From the point of view of intensity the speech is not behind the songs: pictures and unconscious repetitions are there with the help of words – it seems like the characters are talking on the same register where the elevated choir is singing. Mélisande’s manner of speaking is brought up to the extremes: she answers to the others with the click of her tongue, as she would be too weak, too outsider, too abstract to speak the others’ language. She speaks articulated only when declares her love to Pelléas, to the half – brother and rival of her husband – and of course Pelléas is shocked by the speech itself not by the declaration as well as the audience is shocked by it. It could not be a light burden to compose the music after Debussy and Sibelius, who composed the opera version of the play. Látszló Sáry can compose melodies again, which are perfect for this performance; they do not cover aggressively the world of the performance which is divided into prose and songs according to the decision of the director, but they are strong and characteristic enough to overgrow the frames of theatrical background music and become live characters.

The set has its own role too, and the gestures of actors, which project like shadows the actors’ movements: constant power of concentration which never lower can be felt on the stage. The audience gets the feeling that priests are celebrating: life, love, death, with such physical and emotional punctuality as all of their moves would affect the whole world permanently.

They treat the dream carefully; the place where all of us can find something saint.

Rita Sebestyén, Ellenfény, 2005

(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)

A bell is ringing, a chant can be heard, we get tiptoed into the devotional area. Gypsy actors who are dressed in mystical, poetical white dresses by Judit Gombár are facing with the “white” ones, who are playing backs in black. They are singing: monologues, dialogues, with fantastic gestures. suggestive mimics up until the infinity...

Since Theomachia we have been waiting for that the brave, incredibly inventive Zoltán Balázs can fulfil completely his genius ideas, and he has not been prevented by the inappropriate group. Only his own group, the Maladype can make it possible!

They only sometimes declaim Jean Genet’ dramatic text, the actors are doing play-back, with the usage of their singer partners recitativo, parts of their arias, and they imitate it with all their heart and soul. László Sáry, except some effects by percussion instruments, creates almost an a capella opera, to show congenially the dramatic fights and the smallest moments of the text too. The amazing singers solve a heroic task: with their continuous presence during the more than two hours long performance, with excellent singing, and with synchronicity which needs enormous concentration. We must write down their names with great ovation: Beatrix Fodor, /soprano/, Apollónia Szolnoki /alto/, László Böröcz /tenor/, Szabolcs Hámori /bass/ and Zoltán Gavodi /countertenor/.

Zoltán Balázs builds the gigantic vison of the “black mass” with unique sense of proportion, we are surprised by unexpected movements in every moment, he finds expressive visual gesture to almost all phrases, he creates a performance which is full in itself and can explain itself. Vision and word, sound and light, ostinato movements and explosive outbreaks form a gothic structure: it is unique, frightening, impressive!!! The group work together in a heroic way to fulfil the director’s ideas, everybody is an independent character one by one but they can form evidently the uniform style of the performance. We must emphasize the virtuoso, explosive character by Balázs Dévai, we could not imagine that he would be able to do something like this!

The echoing area of the Bárka Theatre is useful for the performance, its size makes it possible for the generous building of the auditorium. The Maladype and Zoltán Balázs’ wonderful performance can get civil rights to the Bárka Theatre between the real theatres...

White Elephant, Kulturális Ajánló, 2004

(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)

It overwhelmed me for the first sight.

Unimaginable things happened in visions, sounds and style.

On the height of the godlike Genet fly together Zoltán Balázs’ genius, the fantastic concentration of the singers, virtuoso playing of the actors of Maladype, and the gigantic construction of the whole drama. After many performances deeper and deeper surfaces of the wonderful performance can be seen we arrived more and more excited to the performances one after another. Because: What we like more and more that is beautiful... and this unique performance fulfils this requirement entirely.

During the last, the Sixth time the catharsis was firing with blinding white glowing. Maybe it was even thicker, even more tense as ever, we could only walk away silently, and then we could remember endlessly in the future these unforgettable moments.

With The Blacks Zoltán Balázs has made a theatre history: however it was taken down of the program, but its effects and memories will live on forever.

White Elephant, Kulturális Ajánló, 2006

(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)

The audience can go into the fencing hall of Bárka Theatre after seven. We have never felt it so cathedral-like wide before, thanks to Judit Gombár’s master knowledge, who knows thousands of ways so she can choose the easiest one. Half-light. We can hear instead of see. We may arrive to a performance directed by a speech therapist: vowels are sounding, consonants can be heard, they are snarling, growling. Ominously. Mysteriously. From above, under, near and far. From the working gallery and the cellar. Figures and forms can be seen. Which is the set, who are the actors? They are merging in the shadow. There are red columns from clothes rolling down. In front of black painted walls there is a giant black (Aztec) disc. In front of it, the most important part of the set: Ilona Béres with Japanese-like, white painted face. She is a barbaric idol on a small, black podium. She has black wig of a samurai. She is Kronos the father-killer god. His dying father, Uranos cursed him, that one of his son would do the same with him. Because of it, Kronos has eaten three of his daughters and two of his sons. Ilona Béres is a male god. Nowadays she, the very feminine actress, plays men characters brilliantly. She leaves the pleasant feminine theatrical behaviour of the decades. She uses the pure strength of her personality. She uses her deep alto, which is against all vocal cords, and deeper than any alto before. It is like a voice of a machine. She is creaking vowels. She is stressing syllabically. She controls the bloody actions to keep the power. He is a motionless, cruel god. He is motionless all over the performance. His emotionlessness is terrifying. To cheat him, he is fed by bundled stone instead of the new-born baby. In his madness, the loser Kronos is tearing out his hair. He is standing there with crumpled (tinker), bald wig. He is tearing up his clothes. (Velcro can be heard). Then the man idol like Niobe, Béres climbs up onto the platform. Above him instead of Eros, there is the Boy: the new power (Zeus). It is a victorious ending. They beat the tyrant. The flags are falling down one by one. The draperies are not teared down by rebellious hands. They are just getting on the ground. Howe many falling flags form gables, demolished emblems have we lived over so far? Is a happy ending coming? Will better times come? Meanwhile from the beginning of the performance, on the left side of the place, on an iron spiral staircase, a faceless, genderless, creature without personality is going up and down. (Judit Réka Kis) It is an enigmatic perpetual mobile. She is just going up and down. She does not have a rest even at the time of apotheosis: the historical circulation is going on: against the old killer rebels the new one. Zeus will be frightened to lose his power by his child. “Then he will be pushed into the shadow by a better one.” The continuous bloody soap opera of humankind is going on.

The 25 years old, Sándor Weöres wrote Theomachia (The fight of gods) oratorio-drama in 1938. It was published in 1941 in Pécs in the first copy of Sorsunk magazine as an extra issue (the title is by his uncle, the newspaper editor and science historian, Nándor Várkonyi). In 1970 István Keleti (who did not hear or see the drama, but read it) directed it in the Szkéné Theatre. This was the first play by Weöres, which has been put on stage. This was the poet, the Vörösmarty-like saviour of the Hungarian drama literature and this was his first appearance in public. István Keleti experiment is explained by the genre given to Theomachia. The oratorio drama was fashionable in the 70s. In the 20s Ödön Palasovszky, Jolán Simon Kassákné, in Székelyföld Antal Szakács worked with it. The oratorio drama is the rebellion of words against the over used naturalism. Instead of anecdotes, it is asking the cosmos. But not only working choirs or choirs of churches can sound, many of them on the same voice. And it is not the Man, Man!’ cry, who calls to account the Neue Sachlichkei. The romantic Byron used this melody above in Manfred who is fighting with power over man. (The motto of the oratorio is by Shelley for The freed Prometheus. Weöres would translate the whole play in 1961.)
Theomachia is smouldering in Bárka Theatre as a divine war of succession with cannibalistic resolution as a modern political poet.

The direction is childishly innocent and full of charm like an Albanian mountain burglar. (to use the nice statement by Kálmán Nádasdy). Wondering innocence is together with theatrical intrigues made by strictness. The sound system of the performance is from crying babies by cherishing babbling through inarticulate sounds, which are suppressed by anger and enchanting magic rhythms to wild noises and cries of deep alto. The baby crying of the stolen pretender is hidden from Kronos by the noise crowd of supporters: “Baby of water, baby of fire, / do not torture us! / baby of water, baby of fire, / save us! / hey ho, hey ho” Where the raised noise it earsplitting: there is always a political crime.

In the performance, Weöres the poet, Zoltán Balázs the director, Gombár the designer of sights, set and costumes, László Sáry the composer, Kornél Mogyoró who plays the percussion instruments, Zoltán Gavodi’s singing, Adnrás Szőllősi who shows the rhythm of poems, and he is the choreographer of movements which are in connection with the story of the drama, Károly Lendvay who designs and creates the light, Éva Kolontáry’ s masks and the actors who made concentrated the physical and mental movements, with unusual talent in our theatrical life, with their common aim, create this extraordinary artistic experience.

In his earlier works, Balázs played Ionesco in Gypsy language, Ghelderode in Hungarian, Latin and Gypsy. They recital Weöres in rhythm, breaking it up into sounds, sometimes backwards. The text is used mainly to express feelings, be musical and rhythmical, it does not need to tell a story or to teach us. The choir changes rhythm. The rhythm of dancing is coming. Because here not an oratorio choir, as we know it from our theatrical knowledge, answers to the antagonists if the drama, but a singing, dancing, ranting crowd.

The working of the director is not arbitrary at all. We have known since the nursery school the rhythms by Weöres, and his breaking of sounds apart from “understanding”. His poetical knowledge, which aim is the dream-like reality, and ununderstanable by ordinary people. Weöres left from time to time the ordinary phrases. He did not want to shock with it, but to bring up rhythms, which chase the curse, and magical texts, which can get closer to reality. (Zoltán Balázs also got into the repetitive trap of the staging of plays by Weöres. He cannot leave the poets overrunning poems, they are magical in books, the flow of words, which are too hard and slow us down in a performance.) László Sáry’inspired music not just warns us because of the Hungarian-style Sándor-poems, of the changing dancing rhythm of the poems, but he decorated the performance with ancient mourning and folk song imitations, where Rhea, who is worried about her new born child (Andrea Spolarics) is a tragic opera-like singer, Okeanos (Rémusz Szikszai) is similar to an implacable ronin, and the daughter of Uranos who got white haired as the accessory of killings, the Mother of Earth, Gaia (Gabriella Varga) is moving during her virtuoso vocal actions, as she is coming from a no drama. The dancing demons, who have saved the child, the Curates: Róbert Kardos, Attila Egyed, Róbert Lucskay, Erik Ollé and Balázs Dévai are sounding from Weöres’ early drama experiments, from the Scythian. The barking Boy in loincloth (Kristóf Horváth) is coming down from the dome of circus as a fabulous acrobat, hanging on one of his hand like a god from any Egyptian tomb. Typhon appears as a god from the Balinese island (Erzsébet Soltész), he is similar to the monkey king of the opera drama in Beijing, (unusually) with his professional dancing. We would not connect to any other poet or author this mixture of culture of different places and eras. Weöres with a conscious simultaneity used the culture of humankind as a public value. "I do not write to myself but to others" – said the poet. "So my aim is suggestiveness. It is not important to understand it but to raise their senses, like the stretched string in the wind. "

The Bárka Theatre with the staging of Weöres creates the great treasure of the modern theatre life.

Péter Gál Molnár, Népszabadság, 2003

(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)

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

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

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

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

The divine attributes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The moment of reveal

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The philosophy of silence

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Epilogue

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

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

Gábor Pap, Ellenfény, 2004

(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)

The ancient time had problems with articulation and communication, above its characters and organised chaos Kronos is the ruler now. Kronos, the youngest of titans, who following his mother’s advice, with his sickle cut down his omnipotent father, Uranos’ genital to make himself the implacable monarch of the clan that fills the world. According to the prediction, the same kind of future is waiting for him too: one of his child will be his destiny. That is why, anytime a daughter or son was born by his wife (who is his sister at the same time), by Rhea, he eats his own children. He wants to do it again: “...I put it into myself too: he is from me / and will be one with me forever / and I will find peace...” The darkly foaming existence has been turning into a changing system of power. Rhea with her allies can save the child – his name will be Zeus - , and this new born, in contrast to his divine siblings who are in his monumental father’s stomach, is growing up to be able to create an unbeatable attack from outside against the earlier world blaster and the one to be blasted now: against Kronos.

The emergency of articulation and communication – with Zoltán Balázs’ excellent invention – is expressed by struggling sounding, stammering repetition of words, the ritual choir-like speech, the telling of some words and sentences ununderstandable or backwards in the Bárka Theatre. Sándor Weöres’ Theomachia (1938), which is signed as an oratorio drama, keeps its musical nature and lyrical character, extendedly spreads through in the place, which can get thanks to impulse lighting and darkening. Between the two shorter sides of the room appears a big span, the two longer ones – they are closer – somehow collapse because of the intensive appearance of the answer forcing – confronting debate-play. Kronos with statue-like stability rules the intersection point of the diagonals, the middle – until he is forced by the swirling, which turmoil around him, by the great amount of athletic elements, and by the rule of alive combination of movement theatre to give up his power: he is forced to take off his dress. Ilona Béres, the guest star, with majestic peace and wonderful culture of speech, now flops down, losing her black wig and royal clothes, mad and gets silenced into the loss – into the change of system. (Why does an actress play the role? Because Kronos grows in his body eaten children; because the ancient universal changing is the daybreak of genders; because next to the cannibal vision of the baked and eaten children, next to the whole scenery of the performance it is nothing. Meanwhile – if we can find some impacts – some solutions – like the changing of genders too – refer to Zsótér Sándor’s workshops and ancient interpretations.)

The choir that is played by Róbert Kardos, Attila Egyed, Róbert Lucskay, Erik Ollé and Balázs Dévai as a guest star, work perfectly. (The Curates are Rhea’s servants). They are faceless, together and meanwhile they individually move in the space. Judit Gombár’s simple, symbolic-functional set (because of small technical faults) sometimes cheats us, but they can overcome these mistakes. Rhea’s role has found the powerful and threatening Andrea Spolarics, like the mould sticks to the casting. Gaia (Kronos’ mother) who remained young prisoner, is Gabriella Varga’s sparkling, we can see Okeanos cold implacability with the help of Rémusz Szikszai punctual pace. Erzsébet Soltész, another guest star, with her strong lightness, she is Shakespeare’s Puck and Ariel at the same time, she a boy and a girl too as working out Typhon, Kristóf Horváth’s mesmerizing look, who plays the boy, could catch our attention too.

Zoltán Balázs’ multi-stringed direction has elemental power, but it is a little bit uneven. The ghost that is going up and down the spiral staircase is obviously the time – it is not thought over. Behind the spectacularly turning giant wheel of life instead of ladders, a more suitable round could be put. Putting the imperfections aside this work is worth a lot of appreciation, brings up many conclusion and wondering. The crystal but pulsating Theomachia is another argument to prove that Weöres was a play writer genius.

Tamás Tarján, Népszava, 2004

(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)

(...)

Zoltán Balázs has been a new name for me, whose staging activity is the opposition of the one by Béla Pintér, whose theatre uses the accidental things. Neither of the dramas is a light one, which have been performed by the extremely talented Gypsy group. Sándor Weöres, the poet’s dramatic oratorio from 1938, the Theomachia goes back to the Greek mythology. It is about Kronos’ fight with his children. The other one is an adaptation, in the form of oratorio too, based on The Blacks by Jean Genet. Both performances are based on László Sáry’s strong, music on percussion instruments, on Judit Gombár’s well decorated costumes, wigs and masks and on András Szőllősi’s tight and punctual choreography. Zoltán Balázs mixed all these elements, together with the perfect singing performance too, into a elevating ceremony, lasted for two evenings. The director uses all construction stones of the two different but impressive performances to get the amazing effect. Without translation I cannot decide, what are these spectacular performances about (in my opinion the one which puts on stage Weöres’ drama is based strongly on the text), but both of them can prove, that Zoltán Balázs was born to be a new, outstanding talent, who thanks to his firm and individual style can rule perfectly everything on stage.

Ian Herbert: Hallasz engem, Budapest? ford.: Jászay Tamás, Criticai Lapok, 2006

(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)

There is always someone who stubbornly breaks the consensus. Who is unwilling to praise the creation, who signs out of the divine order, who steals fire for mankind, or walks on water – who with his decision changes the absolute power of life into a relative one, so who had reigned over „gods and demons / And beyond all the souls”, could realise at once: „Except one”. His divine power is not total anymore – as Sándor Weöres quoted from a poem by Shelley, which he translated, and chose later as the motto of his early masterpiece, the Theomachia. Because the world works that way probably, from the ancient times, before history, with consensus which were bravely said, then recreated by force – and with everything that comes from it: with fight, with victory, with fall and with the memory of these to prove the winners, and the losers too of course.

The memory, sacred in mythologies, will be formed in arts over the years, which many times – mostly necessarily – repeat the compulsory rules to make it difficult to separate the occasion of speech from its method, the subject from the object and to make the breaking of consensus a thrilling experience at once, not just the possibility of remembering or a historical illustration. Because of that the vivid memories even in other forms are there to help the mythical ones, they can turn the evoked turning point into present tense by sequence of actions which are repeated ritually and placed into a sacral place: with the ceremony, the beginning and the result of which is obvious without any doubts for the members of the community, all aspects of it are ruled, it has stakes, it is serious and determining: will the wished, essential – and „provoked” transfiguration happen? We can never take it for sure, it cannot become a routine, at least for the believers not. If it had been emptied anyway, it would questioned the validity of belief and power besides it – in those times when it was still seemed to be formable. All of it is created by the young Zoltán Balázs in the Fencing hall of the Bárka Theatre.

Youngsters find each other here: self-consciousness, power, the ability of acting and recklessness hardly become synonyms, the world is not only able to be rearranged but is needs to be rearranged – and they have work here, the impulse is strong, it is nearly, hormonal. Maybe this is the reason why it is not seemed to be a careless joke, when the director mentioned his award of „Rising star” which is for the young and promising theatre creators, in an interview as the award of „Rising virility” – and identifies that way the star with the rebellious, young masculinity. It is indicated here by the fact that on the created, archaic sky of the performance there are moving genitals – for example Kronos’ -, as during these ancient times, which are the time and topic of the performance, the omnipotent testosterone would have dramaturgical – so crucial – role.

To be able to feel all of it the archaic ancient Greek time, the divine fight for life have to be evoked, which began with the histories of titans, the greatest stake of which is that whether exists a greater rule than god, because these still keep the transcendent traditions before monotheism really articulately in present time. Between them – during their long fights – only power can bring order, during the use of which incest, filicide and other selected forms of cruelty could refer to those wide gods of the sky, „ who are still not covered by the law” – with the usage of Károly Kerényi’s beautiful words – and who can feel during their fights but cannot accept that their power cannot be unlimited. Kronos’ important adventure rises up from this bloody and colourful genealogy because he – as following his mother’s advice – dethrones Uranus (Karolyn Kearny knows it, thanks to Hesiod’s, that he cut his father’s masculinity – and threw it into the sea, from which as it is well known, Aphrodite was born, and would rate by this the romantic desire with thought-provoking irony even in its genesis), but as a good despot, the usurper young god would think that with him the history gets its aim, new generations cannot take his place, and if the prediction contradicted it, then he would preclude it.

Wearer’s dramatic sense is perfectly indicated by the fact, that in the divine opposition which was the inspiration of Theomachia, the elated self-consciousness and the „spiritual need” of it to stop the terrible family massacre (it is a divine endogamy what else: Rhea and her husband were born from the titans’ incest, and was Kronos, as well as Helios, Apollón, Okeanos or Selené) and enormous desire to stop the running time – for which, we have to add it, Kronos had at least an „inborn” right, even if he had not had enough power for it, can perfectly cover each other. This makes tragically obvious, that fate is stronger than god is. The Moirais break all his efforts, and after it everything which comes in raw and bloody desire, in divine cannibalism, in fear, in dread, in fights and in destruction are just the unconditional realization of ruling fate even above him, for the tools of which there are the blasted youngsters.

It is typical for Weöres’ theatrical receptiveness, to tell it he did not choose some kind of classical-cotornus-like form of tragedy – however the history of literature offered him many samples like this, between them there were some masterpieces too - , but an „oratorio – drama”, as it is stated in the subtitle of his work: so the most ambitious one of the theatrical experiments of this period (this is the first half of the 20th century). For him the story did not choose the „mimesis” of stage or the conventions of psychological imitation, but of the drama, which is created by oration, for which naturally – and in case of Weöres this naturalness has a very determined meaning – connected the work, which is created by words, and its gorgeous musicality, the composition of choirs and solos, and the connection of rhymes and alexandrines – game and rite, magic and philosophy, that in case of the Greek pre-history all of it can talk about deep consciousness and political enlightenment, vulnerability and fate. Besides others.

Zoltán Balázs – as he said – formed very consciously an „oratorical ritual drama” from Weöres’ text, to go up against boldly the conventions that rule the stages in our country. He put into brackets not only the theatrical „mimesis” that has not changed a lot since Weöres’ young ages, the fact that here everybody „works from Stanislavski” – as the director said in one of his interview, who as an actor is also one of the disciplined subjects in Stanislavski’s empire. But Balázs also went up against that traditional interpretation of Weöres, which formed important performances during the last decades – whether we are talking about the earlier performances of The two-headed beast or the Boatman on the Moon, or the great performance of the Saint George and the Dragon in near past.

This breaking of the consensus will gain much importance: because Weöres’s talent, spirit, sensitivity and brilliant play-writing bravery with his own naive self-consciousness put into brackets – because he thought them to be invalid – everything, which could be really worthy and suitable on these stages. The meeting of talent and institute could happen then. Now – maybe –yes. For it, we needed the Bárka Theatre of course. Maybe we needed the seven seasons too with their crisis, fights, successes and disappointments, which could not be felt at its „launching” – we may have been afraid of it superstitiously, when the champagne bottle did not break on its wall, Árpád Göncz had thrown it, then Dorottya Udvros did it too, but it still did not happen. The past seven years, as well-known, „magic” numbers can test human relationships as well as the human organisms can change all of its cells: it is the same during its changing – and seven years after its opening the Bárka Theatre can make this performance after all. For it, they mostly needed Zoltán Balázs, with his artistic self-consciousness and humility, which makes him not only unusual but hardly scandalous too – but thanks to his experiences and attitude cannot think about theatre any other way, only that way, and he does not care about the creators and servants of consensus, inside and out the Bárka Theatre. In the „Ceremonial play” he handled Weöres’ text as a libretto, and that way he „spread it” into a more articulated – more dramatic – acoustic space, more than it could be done in case of the script of an opera.

He broke the division of the oratio and its conventions too, it must not be strange from Weöres too – using the traditions formed by Robert Wilson, as a starting point: to ensure autonomous meaning by their sounds to each sound, verbal consonances and dissonances. He found László Sáry as a perfect collaborator, who must be the most confident one in case of acoustic possibilities of theatrical orientation. So the text not only with its verbal meaning becomes the basis of the „ceremonial play”, but it is completed and counterpointed in its sounding and sound variations too: to give sound to that which is beyond verbal expressions from children rhymes through the sound effects of archaic poetry to the ecstasy of rites. All of it is not only familiar but inseparable part of a „sounding” of world which can be accepted differently, to get the widely understandable context into its elements and to recreate it too. The performance misses Weöres’ play not only from the style of the stages in Hungary – from the division according to spiritual reasons and from the interpretation built on it - , but shows us the complete archaic inside it, and the modern one which is sounded like a concert. Sometimes we can hear the text repeatedly, other times the stressed or repetitive rising of some group of sounds makes the simple „understanding” impossible, while the songs, rhymes and liturgical-like phrases have strange meaning and they try to „play” all which is given by the story of the drama. The real actions are partly told by recited dialogues, monologues and fragments of choirs and partly by movements which counterpoint everything. In that way the world itself is „emancipated” into action – that can be heard and what happens are not separated any more.

Love „happens” through words, as the fight between Kronos and Okeanos. This theatrical recognition has great importance because it is unknown on stage – however it is very offered – this usage, show, application and great effects of speech acts. Where else can become the verb into body so evidently, if it cannot on this stage? The word gets creative power that way – and in the Fencing hall we can see gorgeously what can aesthetic logos do.

He evokes his mother with the supreme god’s words, who tries to prevent the cyclic order forwards of life – so the changing of generations - , to tell him the truth about fate, which she has given him once, and which is waited for him too according to his worrying feelings. The thin, white-haired Gaia tells everything which she cannot by her speech, with the help of her gentle and powerful dance, besides his words: that it is terrible underneath, but the tolerance is a great master, and pains have eased in the gods too by time. They, with the pride of a grandmother, who ensures his son, after Kronos’ worrying question, that „my grandson lives happily and he is getting stronger” – and it seals Kronos’ fate too, who is hardly comforted by the idea that the depth will accept him intimately too. The recognised and unavoidable fate, the great monologue about the loss of power gets its deep meaning not only by the desperation of the rebellious who lost against his fate, but it is ominous according to the new, imagined era of the world: its beginning means the end of the „golden era”- after it, mortality, fight for life, work, pain and loss come. Even the catastrophe can stop it all, which will be the form of the divine death-song: flood to destroy all creature, the earth which is stepped into mud and eradicated groups – maybe the Boy (Kristóf Horváth): Zeus too will die with them. He will not. Then the father sends Typhon (Erzsébet Soltész) to tear up his son, and the dragon-snake can measure its strength with the new god in the archaic fight of giants – who is protected not only by the Curates but by Eros too, so the ingenious and obedient monster loses finally after a horrible fight. And Kronos loses too: „The arm, with which the motionless Three-One, the Moira reaches this world: this is me” – introduces himself the victorious Eros – „I am the changing, the key of existence.”

So we can see the fatefulness of the victory as the appearance of fate: this metaphysical paneroticism gets shaped as the reason and energy of every movement. With Kronos’ failure the ancient unit breaks up: the round of entirety splits in two, and opens up with a slow movement – after the break, its plain surface can be liveable, and then the winners will settle on it. From the god, after his failure, his black shell is falling down slowly – he offers his fallible life to the winner, takes off his enormous cloak, tears out in tufts his thick hair, buckles up in front of those who get into a solid hierarchy above on the divided round – with the Boy in the middle, who holds in his hand the emblem of the beginning of the universe and of the rebirth, like a giant egg. The balanced, young body of a man (the performance started with his coming down from above) through the Boy refers to the all-time male god, to the saviour who was reborn from destruction, while the symbol in his hand, refers to the metaphysical egg cell of the mythologies. The winners, who settled down next to him – like the earlier participants of the fights – in the meaningful clothes of the theatres of the far-east and with their mythical attributes, they would suggest a universal synonymy of the story. It is not strange to Sándor Weöres – especially to this period of his life, when he published the Theomachia too in Nándor Várkony’s newspaper - , and the educated editor is not the only one who asked about the overall analogy of archaic traditions. Which can be doubtful scientifically – it can be coherent and convincing artistically, so it can be authentic. The analogies of origin myths and divine fights over traditions are not the elements of hypothesis here, but they can become moving and dramatic sight.

The performance works intentionally and boldly with many – eminently theatrical – supplies of this strange „syncretism”: the main characters’ Japanese like costumes are really different from the Curates’ red, toga-like clothes, the guard creature (a Boy), who protects Kronos’ throne all through the performance, is similar to a dog-God – maybe to Anubis - , while Gaia’s „folk” dance is similar to the ones of the archaic Hungarian traditions, while the gorgeous movements of the dragon-snake with the Indonesian motives on its naked body, shows us further areas and world-explanations, meanwhile its mask refers to the heroes of Chinese conventions, and so on – someone has to be a professional theatrical historian to give the punctual stock of this productive and ingenious eclecticism. With its overall effect the performance can make alive those theatrical traditions – in the Far-East the theatre is still closer to the rite, myth and magic, like here - , which have not been effected neither by Stanislavski nor by the other, various forces of European conventions. That is why they can talk differently in those theatrical areas both about the time, and the relationships between characters, as the well-known and „spoken” theatrical languages have tried mostly to do on European stages (besides, of course, those important experiments from which Vasziljev, Wilson or József Nagy directors, can be seen as direct sources of inspiration).

All of these can make the performance really effective because the colours „shine through” this eclecticism: the white, the black, the red (and the flaring-up fire) will have a more powerful effect and meaning than the exact object or costume could have, and as the complicated variety of the sounding can arrange complexly the acoustic space, the object, the clothes, any tool – of different source – can become entirely useful to express universal impulses of the stage. The metals will counterpoint significantly this ruler trinity of colours: the sickles and scythes which flash many times threateningly – to suggest Kronos’ fate – or they form a strange horn on the head of the guard dog. Then the golden ornamentation, in which Tyhpon dances, suggests the power and fallibility of authority at the same time: threateningly and devastatingly – and give himself to his own death in the end. The fight told by the dance, the duel between gods are the turning points of the performance with awesome power: it is heavy in its ease, Erzsébet Soltész (the great Wizard Master of The School for Fools) can move with virtuosity the body of the dragon-snake, here dances with great proficiency, she is acrobatic and dramatic at the same time, she is womanish and a predator, she is fallible and seductive. The golden nakedness is the costume and fate of the brilliant monster – nothing can stop the indifferent fate: neither the dance, not the magic, neither the fight nor the despair have effect on the Moiras. All of these are just tools in their heavy hands. Maybe that is why the woman will come up from the fallen supreme god.

This is their story: the important matriarchy’s – because besides Gaia and Rhea and Typhon the omnipotent Moiras are women too. Ilona Béres is an incredibly Kronos: she is giant, sensual and insensitive, she is power-conscious and vain, she is cruel pragmatically and sensual hedonistically. She can suggest in blood-curdling way all the attractions and abominations of this divine fate with her deepened alto, strange intonation, and modality which can rearrange the stresses; in her passion there is power, but there are faults too – and because of it the feeling of upcoming fate too. When she realises it, the world goes backwards for her – and as she exists mostly by her words, the ideas of reality will turn back with her words. She will tell everything backwards from now on. Like children, like the magicians, like the lines read on the mirror. Everything is seemed to be the same: her voice, the weight of her motionlessness, her attachment to power, only the word turns backwards meanwhile. Béres watches and shows all these expressionlessly, and when she sees that her fate has been sealed, she leaves the pedestal, and she is leaving while she is almost „breaking down” herself too.

And here something very important happens with her character again – and through it too. As Béres has meant the successful – for generations – and gorgeous femininity, she has almost become its synonym – and here this actress turns her personality inside out, she shows impressively its „awry”, to make herself the servant of a theatrical mentality which breaks the conventions, searches new ways, and really different from the viewpoint of her earlier career. And not for the first time: form the Greek by Sándor Zsótér to Borisz Godunov by Balázs Kovalik up until the new direction by Zsótér, she is presented with renewable energy, with that kind of devotion and talent on which – as it happens here too – the whole performance can be built on. Béres would remain of course the celebrated and satisfied one – but she had the power to choose the breaking of forms boldly, accepting the risks of it, and this decision could multiply her artistic power. It is also a smart, ironic gesture that this woman became the scary man god, Kronos, who as the object of much desire – whether she wants it or not – would know a lot about the features and qualities of these desires. Now she shares this knowledge with us, that all of it has some painful beauty and dignified reconciliation. The loss of power is not followed by neither lightning nor by the cosmic catastrophes of crashing orbs – but by the character’s tragic, unstoppable metamorphosis: her falling attributes and the creature that comes up under them.

That Kronos’ masculine mutilation cannot be imagined that way, it can cover some deeper – however it is hard to follow – artistic intuitions. As the inconsistency of the fact, that they bake a baby for the greedy god in the end, then they put the precisely grilled baby on a silver tray – get satisfied with it. The Curates throw fresh bread to the god’s guard dog, and this bread is really concrete and crumbling, in a performance which tries to avoid these kind of things. Sometimes the over styling of the costumes can bother the acceptance – the winner half-gods are similar to astronauts, or at least fashionable disc-jockeys, and between the traditional motives there are some bothering, more modern tools too.

From the performance we miss Eros painfully – Okeanos, who takes over his role, cannot do that, which the ancient god could: that the avoiding of power can mean the strengthen of it. Here maybe the dramaturgical consolidation of roles predominates against the importance of the drama. The two stages of the cosmic triad, which is divided punctually by the director, - just here – collapse unfortunately.

All these directness, which flash up from the thick fabric of the performance, are as bothering as the trainers are on the Curates. The performance itself can become extraordinary because of its overthought and punctual composition: gets freed of the ruler traditions and shows us this oratorical and dramatic tradition as a valid one – Weöres’ play can be a perfect example for it - , the lack of which had serious consequences from the point of view of the fate of the modern theatre.

Here at last a new theatrical language and mentality is formed easily, boldly and convincingly, which can form this place according to their ideas, after other important performances of Maladype. On the fading sky of theatre art, Theomachia can appear as a comet. Or maybe a different metaphor should be found – as comets usually disappear after their appearances. After all, as the director defined it, we should stay by testosterone. As it can mean hormones, continuity and progress, cannot it? Maybe the performance is all about it, isn’t it?

András Nagy, Színház, 2004

(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)

Visible oratorio

"We can blame for many things our theatres and the directors or care takers of theatres, but not for the fact that they have not tried more to put on stage Theomachia." Who can think that this statement was not told by a compromise seeker politician of culture, but by the author, Sándor Weöres. However, the drama, which has been deprived from the staging possibilities and probes for a long time, would have all the reason for offense, to save its hurts. Since the cunning fear has built a strong barrier against the staging of the work which was written and matured to stage for centuries. Because they did not understand it, or the opposite can be true and they understood too well those national and universal secrets which the poet’s heroes in costume are talking about.

Theomachia is an oratorio drama - as it is written in its subtitle according to the genre, which is given by the author – which is written to the stage, it uses Hungarian poems, similarly to the Greek dramas. For its presentation, the tools of performance-art can be used obviously. In contrast to it, the author has not been satisfied with any staging of his works as much as with the only amateur theatrical performance of Theomachia. From an interview, which was made by Zsuzsa Radnóti we can learn, that according to Weöres, István Keleti’s sensitive performance in Szkéné Theatre was the closest to his own aims and intention. as an author he was more satisfied with the achievement of the amateur actors than the only – enthusiastic but strict – critic, Péter Gál Molnár was, whose worth is that while he was against the performers’ romantic recitative style, some dilettantes’ feeling, at least he took this performance into consideration. In his article which was about more samples of amateur theatres, he realised not only the choir Grotowski-like performing style, the players’ behaviour which commented the happenings and the beauty of the movements, but the fact too, that the performance which was far from perfection, had the formation of a new type of theatre in it (Színház, 9. 1970.). This hope was not fulfilled neither in 1970 nor later on. Besides the writer, Weöres’ monographer, Attila Tamás absolved theatres of leaving this drama, and he said that Theomachia is a radio play, which is full of values and it is a poetic, dramatic achievement, but everything is told there by words, and the actions happen on the poles of inner vision.

I have to admit, that while I am reading the play I would connect easily the miserable fate of it to its political meanings. That in 1938 in Hungary nobody dared to perform a play, which highlights the nature of tyrannical power and the ruler’s cruelty, because the actuality of it could be too obvious. When I reached sentences like “Who is the ruler in this world? Whether the fate is or I am?” it would be evident that at the time of its birth the Hitler-like, than from 1945 the dictatorship of Stalin can be hurt by the “apolitical” poet’s clear statements.

I would not put aside the whole explanation later. It can be read on the program of the theatre, that here is a “situation of the modern times, with actual characters: Mao, Stalin, Castro, Hitler... Kronos’ cult in Theomachia cites the dreadful dictators’ dark and limited era...”

Then the performance convinced me that in case of Weöres – despite of the director’s comment, or beyond that – everything is about other and more. That the drama has an attribute, which is equivalent with its actuality and universality. The writer can validate the political part of the play with psychological motives – in connection with the Greek dramas but with their leaving too. To make the mythical drama of the fight between god suitable to stage, the tolerance of the audience, who saves the experiences of tyranny inside, is not enough, but a director is needed too, who is not prevented by the respect towards the author to use the texts of Theomachia as a libretto, which can support his own visions. In whose mind the theatre of words appears as a vision theatre too. And the young one, who has roots in Transylvania, Zoltán Balázs, between the masters of whom we can find Wilson and Vasziljev, who is Hungarian but has directed in Latin and Gypsy language too, and during the summer tries to get ready for his exercises in Budapest, in Paris, would have such an open-minded art personality. He said that Weöres’ plays attracted him because “they are over the well-known living in theatrical traditions and the intensive tools of actors and directors. The oratorio-like Theomachia, which construction seems to be with static topic, can be put on stage only with the help of rich phantasy and the usage of new and brave elements of content and form."

It is easier to make promises of course than create and fulfil a theatrical structure, which is different from the conventional one. Zoltán Balázs not just presumably but visually believes that the fight of gods – which is quoted by Weöres – is a fight above, on and under the earth. Kronos, who is afraid of the fulfilment of a terrible, heavenly prediction, eats his own children but he is just “a single part of the chain”. As a tyrant, he is exposed to the fate too, to the tellers of the ancient curse. He is the ruler of life and death, but when they show him a swaddled rock as a sacrifice instead of the child, he is unable to keep his indifference saved by power, and suffers of the feared try. He is a tyrant without any real conditions and barriers, maybe he would not tell that “it would be better if I were not”. Although Kronos knows, that who is sentenced to life, he cannot leave his marked way. There is someone who enjoys the bloodshed, Kronos suffers from it. “He has just become an axe, and the fate cut with it.” He is the owner and the prisoner of the devastating power that cannot be stopped for a while. Then, the rebellious Boy, who he tries to kill, is unbeatable too. Kronos has to realise in the end that the world falls out from his hand.

Here is the tragic and educational outline of transition... But if the chronicler had turned just this pure mythological history into a drama, the story of broken dialogues would be just the exam performance of a modest, amateur group. Which could be made more interesting and original by the poetic trick that the author put hard and crackle Alexandrines on the Greek outline. The miracle happens when the text in speech and away from that – starts to resound and buzz at once. The text of the oratorio – as the rhythmical play of children poems – enriched to be a concert of words. The dramaturgical crescendo, which is getting higher through the apotheosis of destruction, turns to be its own opposition thanks to the moments of withdraw and absolution without any breaking of style, while the poet contrasts the gods’ revenge with the vision and hope of the possible survival. By the time the flood stopped, Kronos has lost the world from his hand, and the life is going on – if it is anyway.

The story – to avoid the validity of any possible interference – is an uprising poetic metaphor but not a real drama. To get it, besides the poetic flow and pulsation of the text, the hectic pulsation of the mythological history is needed and the fact that the swelling of the lines takes and sometimes leaves on the side, the personal dramas of the characters. The curse of the father who accepts it and unable to be against it, Rhea’s earthy pain, the goddess’ who is crying because of the conception. We feel it today that for the changing of era, a sacrifice is needed both from the god and from people.

The message and the experience of the performance cannot be reduced to its verbal meaning. The director with double soul – who works professionally as an actor too – seems to get with milk the nectar of any art forms which are not always sedation, but which are mixed precisely like in a laboratory, as on three or four levels too – with text, vision, movement and music – tries to get closer to the audience. The vision is not about painted sets, or aesthetic compositions of projected backgrounds, but the Fencing hall itself, which is widened and divided into a stage. People sometimes cannot follow, because they cannot see just hear that the characters who appear on stage suddenly are talking from different sides, from above and under. From the side stages which are about to widen the dimension of the play, the waving one is the most spectacular, which is a slanted surface, similar to the sea, and the net with its big holes to cover it, which can be used well only by the acrobatic actors of the Bárka Theatre.

The designer, Judit Gombár has always been able to build on the suggestions of colours with gorgeous courage. Now the red draperies rule and divide the place coming down from above, like disproportionately long flags, which are much bigger than necessary. But these flying veils as they reach the ground (the stage) are not similar to decorative indicators of power, neither flags, but they harden into plastic, textile columns to illustrate stability. Kronos’ enormous, slow and black wheel-clock is a strange counterpoint: in timelessness it refers to the passing of time. But what does the mysterious spiral staircase on the side of the stage stand for? With the presence of the mysterious character without face, who is going up and down, I think that the director shows us the unbreakable and unsolvable continuity of life. We may not need to or should not analyse all visual and acoustic elements of the composed view. Gombár gives again, which we have got used to from her as the designer of the sights for ballets: she fills the space (and the play) with colours and forms where the actors in original costumes, who stylize their own bodies into statues, freely. But the picture which is presented in the Bárka Theatre by the director and designer, does not stop for any moment, with the help of the changing and dynamic choreography it can preserve the impressive initial speed of the performance.

An independent and large team formed the sounding of the Theomachia too. Besides the composer, László Sáry, singers, players together with the actors with the help of wonderful and magical child rhythms, drum solos, heart-breaking opera-like cries and child-cry, which is similar too in its stylisation can tear up and fill the silence. Especially when we listen to the choir’s rhythmical text, who is working properly and moving aesthetically, can be felt that this acoustic abundance is confusing. Later on when for a few moment we are afraid of confusion and sounding anarchy it can be realised that there is only some temporal disproportion and the over holding of some beats. An overthought and composed rhythm is more typical for the composed dramaturgy of each scenes. The young director with the awareness of more matured masters, can hold in hand and control the enormous instruments of this big group. The balance between the inspiration and organisation is convincing enough to accept as virtue the accidental faults of composition. Some characters have nicely choreographed, effectively performed, monologues, which are repeated and filled up until the audience’s tolerance, and they can ease off the loose dramaturgical structure of the play and give us the experience of strange concerts of words, which are coherent in themselves too.

Theomachia on the stage of the Bárka Theatre is the poet and director’s common performance. It could not exist obviously if the actors have not been formed into a troupe in time. At the head of it, there is Ilona Béres with her special performance, who as Kronos is the engine and base of the performance. In connection with her we cannot speak about the injury the sign on “man specialised” role, but it is another interesting exercise again. How can an actress solve her exercise on stage, who has to resign of the importance of her identity – of her womanhood – for the sake of the role. Ilona Béres who got a similarly honourable challenge in the performance of Borisz Godunov, nowadays, now turns towards the figure of the tyrant from different point of view. As Kronos, she is not beautiful at all, but terrifyingly ugly: her white mask deforms not only the plasticity of the actress’ face but her mimic too. Kronos’ forehead is up until the top of his head, his pale, black wig with ponytail is terrifying. Béres plays god however, the director stole her humanity until the end of the performance: she is forced to be motionlessly rigid, exist as an idol, and to rhythmical but hardly mechanical speech. It makes Kronos even more frightening than his cruelty would be shown in opened brutality and continuous yelling. It is interesting in the performance that Ilona Béres does not get the experience of suffering form the hated tyrant, and she uses on high level her only conquering tool, which she can use without any restriction, her strong organ, which can fly repressed too.

If Ilona Béres can fill alone the widen area of the Fencing Hall the hardly faceless choir of the five Curates try to do it together. The directors’ most hardly solved challenge nowadays in connection with famous and authentic Greek dramas is the showing of the choir who comment and interpret everything. Zoltán Balázs in Wilson’s theatre has learnt about or “may” have dreamt about the ceremonial movements of the Curates, the special musicality of their well understandable speech. I think that the order to each other of the Choir that is made of individual faces, personalities, the accepted adaptation and the creation of harmony can be as hard as the performance by Gaia (Gabriella Varga), who is artistic during her fury too and performs dynamic her acrobatic self-scene. The shameless conflict of the suffer and passion, the tearing and pain are good examples for how each holders of fate can fulfil artificial whole with the acceptance and refusal of their own end which is widened to the battle of gods.

That can be the reason why the director and the choreographer expand (in time and space too) Typhon’s eastern-like dragon scene. The dancer-actor or the actor-dancer, Erzsébet Soltész spectacular, sometimes surprising, expanded bravura, which is filled with acrobatic elements, remains a successful element inside the performance, the professional dancer’s self-scene, who is capable to grotesque play too. Whether I try to compare the production to a Balinese dancer or a monkey king of an opera in Beijing – as others have done it – I cannot get closer to Puck’s cousin with Greek origin, who is able to do eastern magic. We can see as the director’s generosity, who broke the rules, put the performer in risk: the applause is because of the bravura and not of the performance: the less would be more and even more effective.

Finally, according to the program we can talk about the performance of each performer: Andrea Spolarics because of Rhea’s tragic emotional outburst, who is afraid of her child, Rémusz Szikszai (Okeanos) and Kristóf Horváth (the Boy), can be applauded for their uncontrolled dynamism, with which they can move and fill the enormous place, and gradually warm up the atmosphere of the fight.

Now I am sorry not to have seen Zoltán Balázs as Romeo. Who with visible joy emerged into Greek surrounding as an actor leader, in the multiple sounding of the Hungarian language, he could tell Shakespeare beautifully. Together with his actors he admire the dance of vowels, and lengthen the text – almost secretly with humility towards the poet – with the chasing of the lines, as he (the member of the generation that was grown up on the rhythms of Bóbita) has got used to the rhythm orgy of the sounds to the musicality of the poetry.

The performance had great success in front of the young audience of the first night, and hopefully it will continue for a while. But whether this way it becomes possible to put the visual, poetic oratorio into the repertoire of the Hungarian theatres or not, I do not dare to predict. I hope that sometimes one, outstanding attempt can fill its function in the history of drama: Zoltán Balázs with the performance of Theomachia, which was born under lucky stars, with his sounding, visual theatre, which was composed by many kind of theatrical elements, can rise finally the interest of the generation, who was grown up on Bóbita, to the drama writer, Sándor Weöres’ theatrical life work too.

Anna Földes, Criticai Lapok, 2004

(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)