E. Ionesco: Jack or the Submission; M. de Ghelderode: The school for Fools

An important theatrical value was born again on the periphery. An occasional troupe of professions, amateurs, Gypsies, and non-Gypsies (which represents a rare level of cooperation) has shown two performances, which use a very different language than any other, which we have got used to in Hungary. Zoltán Balázs, a really talented director made both of them.

The Maladype Gypsy theatre has drawn the attention of the public with two important and really valuable performances. Zoltán Balázs – the young director with a new voice – started working out the interpretation of the play from the point of view of the characteristics and relations of the environment in which the performances were made. In case of staging he speaks about the personal and social problems of the Gypsy identity, both in Jack and in The school of Fools – in a way that he avoids the danger of any kind of didactic and publicistic aspects It comes from greatly the fact that the director’s thoughts are precisely over thought in case of both performances and they use a theatrical language which combines many kind of sensual effects.

Who tries to be himself

Jack or The submission - as most of Ionesco’s plays – is built on a series of linguistic absurdity. The banal situation - in this present case the family argument, and the purpose to make the boy to marry – is reclassified as the parable for the absurdity of existence with the help of a text, which is full of word transformations, linguistic idiocies and logical absurdities too. The family is about to disinherit Jack, because he is unwilling to state that he loves the fries with bacon. Then when they finally made him to tell his confession, they immediately want him to marry but according to Jack „his beloved one”, who was chosen by his family, is not ugly enough, because she has only two noses and not three. Fortunately, the girl’s family has another „only daughter” too, and the woman with three noses – with her vision of the foal with flaming mane – really enchants Jack.

Zoltán Balázs’s direction is not built on the verbal jokes of the weird text, mainly because the greatest part of the performance is in Gypsy language. The director searched for scenic solutions which can be associated with the linguistic effects of the play, but which can function independently of them too. He builds mostly on the rhythm, on the rhythm, which works in symbiosis with the speech and stage movements. (The basic for both of them is created by the pot – playing sounds, which come from outside of the scenery.)

The speech, which is sometimes slowed down, made faster, broken up, prolonged, is connected to special movements, sequences of movements, which in their complexity form a really grotesque and weird world.

But the director translates not only the mood of the text in to the sensual language of the theatrical effects but with the help of them makes the interpretation of the play clear too. The first part of the performance is built on the contrast between Jack and his family. The family appears as a group of amorph beings in white wigs who are – usually moving together – flickering back and forth in the area. They are making stranger and stranger movements, all of their words are followed by annoyingly rank gestures. Jack watches them calmly, essentially he is stationary. As if, his existence has a different rhythm. As if, he is closed into the shell of his minority report and resistance. We can feel it from the text of the play and this feeling is visualised by the performance too: we can see Jack mainly in a glass cage throughout the play. It can show that the only constant thing is his frailty and vulnerability, the shameless one is put on stage. At the beginning, Jack is calm, he sits on his knees, and later he reacts with different kind of posture changing and movements to the scolds, reasons, provocations. Once he relaxes and then clings to the wall of the plexiglass cage. Sometimes hands in gloves reach into the cage, as if they tried to make a harsh operation on him, then they tense strings as if they tried to pull the rebellious child as a marionette.

In the performance of the Maladype, Jack is well seemingly a Gypsy boy, who has no other special features than he tries to be himself. He does not have green hair, as Ionesco wrote it, his movements are natural, his gestures are really human ones. His defiance and anger are those too. This also forms a sharp contrast between him and his family members, who try to make him similar to them, and each members of which has something disgustingly strange in them, weirdly puppet-like something. Their lumpy, torned, repeated monotonous movements give this feeling. The mother (Erzsébet Soltész) who leads the family with energy, for example, carries a puppet child on her back throughout the play. The father (Balázs Dévai) speaks with echo. The grandfather (Árpád Bogdán) however never tells anything but many times conjures table tennis balls from his mouth. The younger sister (Nóra Parti) is pregnant. Then she lays in front of the cage with straddled legs, and the jellied, sticky rags, to which she has given birth, throws onto the glass wall, while she is repeating the word: chronometrability. The scene gives meaning to Ionesco’s weird misstatement: Jacqueline warns Jack because of the disgusting rules of decay, according to which the rebellion is as meaningless as a protest against death.

It seems like Roberte, the bride (Erika Molnár) brings the message of death too. „My basic nature is very happy” - she says it on a sepulchral voice. All through the play she speaks dry, and in that way she forms a contrast between her sentences which are full of passion and visons and her speech.

Her movement is slow mostly: weather she stands statically or moves gracefully in her highly decorated bride dress from the 19th century, and her head appears from time to time through its lower or upper cracks. (The earlier one is like an elf, who looks out onto the world.) Roberte is the prisoner of the bride dress as Jack is of his own cage. The girl’s vision about the burning horse which is galloping in the town, signals the message of death too, but in a paradoxic way it frees the strengths of life: Jack himself is galloping together with the story, then gets out of his cage, goes close to the girl, then starts ecstatically playing hide-and-seek with her: the two childish beings disappear, they are getting themselves, chasing each other through the cracks of the dress, which can stand on its own too. Finally, the lovers meet in the cage. The strange words of the Gypsy and Hungarian dialogue can meet each other repeatedly in the word of cat. Everything is cat: for the two distant people, who have got out the similar lifeless world, this would become a common language. But unexpectedly the members of the family get into the cage too, they fill the entire place there, as if they do not even let this relationship breath, which could hold out the hope to a new life.

The last day

The latest performance of Maladype goes on the way, they have begun. In case of The school for Fools the accurate (defined by the environment of the troupe) interpretation of the play creates the form which is built firmly, used consistently, but it is more complex, and plays in a wider register than in the case of Jack. The grotesque plays stay there too, but the musical forms are strengthen and scenes are fulfilled.

The performance starts as if we got into a ceremony of monastery. Beings in robes are kneeing around a glass table, there are glass plates and drawn, fragile glasses in front of them, the faces which are flashing out of the robes are enlightened by the lights, which get though up the plates, these are drawing the faces a little bit ghostly and frightening. They sing in Latin language spiritualized, with piety and otherwise for some reason strangely too. The feeling of a monastery is broken by weirds elements: first the beings in robes start playing music on the glasses, then on the cutlery too. Than as if, the showing up of the cutlery became the part of the liturgy.

The ceremony if led by the Master’s servant, by Galgüt (Erika Molnár). He is speaking – still in Latin – to the students about the dirty life from which Folial got them together and how he has been teaching them over the years. But he still owes them with the greatest secret. This is the final day in the school and Galgüt promises that the Master teaches them today the importance of any art, gets the veil of the great secret finally. However, Folial (Erzsébet Soltész) is nowhere. Finally, his head appears from under the lid of the bowl in the middle, from there comes out this strange, bald elf.

His weird appearance interprets strangely the Latin ceremony: it looks like as if, we see the last supper – thirteen of them were sitting around the table – where the Master himself was served as the main course. Galgüt and Folial’s Hungarian dialogue strengthens this grotesque parallel: the Master is talking about a bad dream, he has a feeling that his students will kill him today.

Galgüt, the eternal second one, this harsh being who is tempted by the attraction of power, is really preparing a conspiracy against the Master. He warns the students because of their origin, tries to rise up their anger because of their derogatory fates. The robes are put down, and with it the students have become naked: under their yellow-black hoods, colourful pants and bikinis are flashing up. A tin pot falls into one of their arm, which he begins to hit intuitively. A strangely moderate, hesitant Gypsy song was born from this rhythm. The performance changes language too, from now on the students are speaking Gypsy with each other (and with Galgüt too). These simple ideas make it clear that they are really Gypsies, who have not even known anything about their origin, and were brought up in a sophisticated culture which is totally different from their roots. Galgüt conjures an imaginary ball and throws it into the surprised group. Slowly they start to play with it. The grotesque chasing, which gradually starts, indicates the born of individualism in fact: who has the ball always gets out of the others, stays on his own, realises himself, but the others jump on him all the time, try to get the imaginary toy. Finally, the freed anger turns the Gypsies against Galgüt: chase him up on the wall, there each of them throw him with the imaginary ball as a weapon.

Galgüt tries to turn against the Master these freed anger. In the original play the servant provokes the Master with the play which is performed by the buffoons: tries to brake his soul with that they play again the death or his daughter. Zoltán Balázs’s direction thinks again this turn bravely. Here Galgüt wants to exposure the Master in front of the students, to show that he is not the one that he is thought to be. For the “performance” Folial’s marionette gives the basic tool, which gets into many sticky situations – walking through the symbolic stages of life – then finally Galgüt cuts the its strings. Folial cries up, frightens then: my dad! It is not a game anyway but the reproduction of a crime: earlier Galgüt killed the original Folial, but her daughter, Veneranda – to bring on her father’s knowledge – gave up herself and lived on in Folial’s skin. This exposure is shocking for all of them: Veneranda takes off her gnome dress, lets her hair down and looks down the students from the top. The secret – she begins and falls into the deep before she can tell anything else. Her fall takes the whole scene too, the stage of Szkéné gets naked too, we can see the windows, through them we have a view onto the River Danube and the city. There is no secret anyway, that is the life itself, which even though falls into death, is going on and on forever.

The group of wonderful pictures, musical flows, ceremony-like elements and grotesque plays form that complex theatrical language, which is used in the performance. But these are not the only ones which make this performance a special one. But the group, that plays with whole devotion, that gives the impression of a coherent troupe, despite of the fact that the actors come from many different places. The secret of the secrets is that: how can such an important theatre be born from hardly nothing on the periphery?

István L. Sándor, Ellenfény, 2003

I could watch the dress rehearsal of Ionesco’s Jack or The Submission the other night in the Gypsy Parliament, in case of Dragan Ristic’s production it was directed by Zoltán Balázs with a (mainly) amateur Gypsy group. I should list all (I could not) the contributors, let me emphasize from them Ildikó Gyenes’ choreography, Judit Gombár’s set and costumes.

I do not like Ionesco, I do not know this play, I cannot speak Gypsy language, I did not understand even a word, only the whole of it in its unity, that I watched theatre there. A real theatre. It is more than this. It is a good theatre.

It is a collected, humble play, a well worked out pantomime, coordinated movements at the same time!!! (The ballet group of the Operetta Theatre would envy it); the actors’ achievement... like professionals were playing together (they looked into each other’s eyes, the mimic was punctual, it came from inside, there were no falling outs), their speech technic was on a high level too. even though I did not understand the language, I can tell, that the direction is coherent, logical, its rhythm is whirling, but it can hold out the silences, the frozen movements; the director feels what is met communication is about, what can have an informative power, his style is coherent (there is no eclectics!); the set, the lighting (up to the possibilities), the costumes, the music (pot and vocality): each of them are excellent. And the humour! If people are able to laugh, even though they do not understand the language, then the humour is a real one! A real Ionesco and a real Gypsy theatre. Here they could combine the ethnic specialities with the most European culture.

This is culture – on a special level. The main part of the audience is young, Gypsy intellectuals, the pleasing descendants, it was good to see them, it was good to be with them, despite of the fact that there was no cloakroom, the place was tight and airless, only the older ones got chairs, the younger ones were sitting cross-legged on pillows on the ground. Some theatrical experts, real veterans were interested in the group too. And the Gypsies are wonderful (this is not politics, not public affairs, it is really your own business – it is up to your taste. The Afro-Americans are wonderful too, but for a long time they have not known it about themselves too, we have had to explain it to them for a long time, that black is beauty!)

They told me that thanked you Ákos for coming there. No! I thank you for the night, thank you for the invitation that I could be there.

Meanwhile in the Gara Street there was an eviction. They calmed me, that it was only the beginning, there are plans for sixty more of them. (It seems to be the Gypsy Széchenyi plan.) The Gypsy activists of civil rights were taken in bonds...

Ibolya Dávid – according to the public satisfaction - will solve somehow the Gypsies’ problem, or at least get it from everyday topics. In the evenings they have already called the popular minister of justice, who knew that there is some loophole here – she would look it up the next day. It made everybody calm. They did not take in bonds the Gypsies who were fighting against their own eviction, but the fighters of civil rights. To learn it for once and forever...

The message is clear. Gypsy, fawn to power, you can get some charity! But do not talk about your rights, it is not America here. No „civil organization” – do not play with fire! You cannot become a martyr here, like Martin Luther King; for the Gypsies no bullets remain just the bond. And a big national, conservative slap by a patrol officer. By the way: the mayor is socialist, the district leader of the financial department is liberal. Are there any antifascists in this country – besides the minorities who are affected?

And Ionesco is said to be absurd.

Ákos Kertész, Könyvhét, 2002

The title of the theatrical report could be: How can we get rid of Ionesco? Behind the church in Józsefváros, in the upper room of the Gypsy Parliament according to the actor and director college student, Zoltán Balázs’s staging Ionesco’s absurd play, Jack or The Submission was shown, which was written by the Romanic-French (French-Romanic) author in 1950. Between The Bald Soprano and The Lesson. Because Ionesco’s early plays did not get a great response, only in 1955, the director, Robert Postee could put it on stage with a modest success in the Huchette.

You cannot interfere into the art history without guilt. Ionesco, who was thrown out through the door, now climbs back through the window. The things are unavoidable. Thanks for conscientious children gardeners and aesthetic warders in the battle for the modernity of our daily bread, they have discovered again and again, from hour to hour the beginning of the XX. century. Just taking the offer from the past two weeks: one dance troupe found dadaism really relevant, another dance group performed Toklas pas de deux by Gertrud Stein and Alice B. A well-known French art dealer made for his birthday dinner Marinetti’s menu of his futuristic cookery book from 1933. Balázs Kovalik put on stage Tzara’s the Romanic-French dadaist writer’s play, which he wrote in 1918 and Poulenc set it to music and made its opera version in 1947. Last time Kovalic directed Sir Peter Maxwell Davies’ post-dadaist opera, in it the middle-class family, the government, and its institutes encrouach the representative of the new generation to cripple him to themselves. In the play, which Ionesco wrote 51 years ago, the family force the boy to tell the sentence, which forms him into a civil average: I love the fries with bacon. The old Ionesco’s ghost met up with the young theatrical person from the director course. Who is at the beginning of his career can find close to him the one semi-centenary who is in rhyme with the present, in case of the annoyance of the audience, of violation and of the wrecking of the perspective.

Ionesco’s characters who are shown in Tavaszmező Street are personalities without personality. The main character’s name is Jack. His dad’s name is Jack too. Moreover, his mother’s name is Jack. What else can be his grandmother and grandfather’s names than Jack. The offered bride’s, who has two than three noses, and nine fingers, name is Roberte, and her father and mother have similar names too. They do not have separate names. They do not have any distinguishing features. Ionesco’s antitheater is the new weapon in the fight against the antitheatrical theatre.

All of it is just a snobistic pant if the performance is not good. Besides the theoretical questions, it is more important if they were able to resuscitate from the letters the word? The performance, which was held in the Gypsy Parliament, is full of wild prank, bitter mockery, childish pathos.

It is a committed childish play. The characters with a joy, without smile get lost into their happy and tragic fun.

A mixed group who take on forming theatre was formed into a troupe. They can show the impersonality with a great inner strength and with the magic of their personality. I am taken mostly by Jack’s mother’s Erzsébet Soltész’s fierce acting, breachy malice and charming disloyal acting. Rudolf Balogh got the main role and lives his comical role with great tragic strength. Or with a lot of humour he shows the tragedy of his character. Balázs Dévai plays the role of his dad. He is in and out at the same time. He is pathetically sarcastic and sarcastically passionate. During the intimate moments of the play he is whinnying in the corner like a horse. They are playing like children. With concentration. They are getting lost in it. Of course, they know where the edge of their personality is. Nóra Parti, who is beautiful like a lay figure, has an elf-like, malicious humour. Krisztina Sárközi with her partners are convincing column-saints in the embrasures. Hermina Fátyol is the grim mother from the absurd opposition of Romeo and Julietta. Árpád Bogdán exhales colourful table tennis balls from his mouth. Dragan Ristic is the odd man of the theatre, he is the producer, the singer breadwinner of the family, composer, and together with Dusan Ristic, he is the translator of the play into Gypsy language. The performance turns all the disadvantages of the place into its advantage, because it does not cover but emphasize the drawbacks. The set (which is a multi-usable plastic cage) and the costumes were designed by Judit Gombár. Roberte’s padded bride dress appears independently on a higher level. It is a ghostly appearance. The dress moves, walks, lives and just after it, a hand, which is wearing an opera gloves, reaches out of the decollete and Erika Molnár steps out the depth of the mobile dress. She is the only one who speaks Hungarian. With it, she increases the isolated ones’ inarticulateness. Zoltán Oláh is the one-man orchestra of the performance. There is a tin pot in his lap. He sounds many ways, multiplying himself. He gives the rhythm of the wild performance. For which Ildikó Gyenes as a choreographer trained the bodies.

Péter Molnár Gál, Népszabadság, 2001

This year marks the 25th anniversary of one of the most influential theatre companies in Hungary and internationally: Maladype Theatre. Founded in the 2000/2001 season, it quickly gained international recognition and became a sought-after avant-garde creative community, whose spirit and artistic expressions embody a vision that cannot be pigeonholed into any theatrical canon. Its multifaceted creative activity is characterized by intellectual freedom, experimentation and risk-taking. The performances created under the leadership of artistic director Zoltán Balázs persistently explore the special qualities of theatre. These multidisciplinary productions, which have been met with serious acclaim and have won significant professional and public awards, have made Maladype one of the most original and high-quality companies in the Hungarian and international art scene.

The Vareso Aver Gypsy Theatre performed Eugene Ionesco’s drama, Jack or The Submission. In this statement, there is one important element, and in connection with it there is another, a less important one, it can be said to be a strange information. The important one I do not even have to mention: it is performed by the Vareso Aver Gypsy theatre. People perk up their head. For example if the name of József Katona Theatre were there, we would not even shake. Theatre, theatre. One is better, the other is worse, they have performances – this is their job. We view the Gypsy theatre from a different point of view. We raise our brow and according to our ideology, we react to it suspiciously or enthusiastically. But it is for sure that nobody stays indifferent when hears the news.

The performance of Vareso Aver had begun on its poster. A great possibility and a big responsibility. The idea of the Hungarian Gypsy theatre has already proved itself with its performance of Blood Wedding. It was not easy but although it was not really hard too. The choice of the play helped us to interpret the idea of Gypsy theatre. Lorca is passion and an inner fire. It was easier to connect clichés with the clichés in connection with the Gypsies. The play itself interpreted the existence of the theatre. Now, with the second performance the situation is different. The choice of the play generates many questions, at the end of which the last one it that: What kind of connection there is between Ionesco and a Gypsy theatre. Namely: What do the Gypsies want from the theatre? After I have seen the performance, I am sure that a heavy statement was made when the troupe chose Ionesco. Even though nobody knew properly it at that moment. But it could be that everybody understood everything. To play an absurd drama in Budapest, in the 8th district, in a middle-sized room, between big rosy curtains and Gypsy painters’ frantic, colourful pictures, counts to be a demonstrative action inevitably. To a thick and substantial action. The theatre, which began on the poster, visually has gone on before the beginning of the performance, as entering the building of the Gypsy Parliament. By the time, the performance began, we had been thinking about it for a while, asked questions of ourselves, and formed answers: the theatre has been going on in our head. Ten minutes after the beginning everything is joined to everything. Everything, which is going on in our head, is generated by the performance. The actors’ every movements, every changing of their intonation serve the logic of the performance, build the plot, and at the same time, every second is about the theatre itself, about the Gypsy theatre itself. I am watching the performance and some ideas bring me as far as only the sociologists can go.

Zoltán Balázs states his ideas about theatre so naturally and does it so definitely that people can accept thanks for him very fast (which they have thought so far) that the theatre is one and indivisible, and that the Gypsy theatre is something which is performed by the Gypsies or more specifically, which is performed in Gypsy language, but most exactly something which is said to be that by those who are inside. Ionesco’s absurd drama, the Jack or The Submission is performed partly on Gypsy language in Tavaszmező Street, but it is hardly irrelevant. The importance is that the performance forms valid theatrical thoughts, which have roots in language, but in gestures, movements, mimics and rhythm too. This is the real strength of the performance. Like a scientific experiment: we begin a process, and observe you, that how long you can follow it. And if we make all next step logically, if we are punctual emotionally and intellectually too, we can see how you follow us as long as we want it. When you have a feeling that you are without any handrails, because you do not understand the language, because you can speak a different Gypsy dialect, or you cannot speak Gypsy at all, you are still brought on with the help of the actors’ expressivity. When you feel to get yourselves lost in Ionesco’s absurd roughhousing, and you would give it all up, we show you how easily and meaningfully you can turn every moments of the play to an interpretable network of relations, which you can understand, because you live in something like this. This is the greatest worth of the performance. Zoltán Balázs has not lost his head, does not rely on likeable but unrealistic solutions but turns everything back into lifelike situations, with it he gives the possibility to the actors to work accurately, and to the audience to think it over if they liked to do it. The performance tires out only sometimes there, where Ionesco got tired too, where he repeats, the troupe stagnates too, but fortunately it does not happen often. Thankfully for the director’s and the troupe’s work the play speaks about easy but enlightening things: about the beauty of resistance against the conventions, about the endurance, about the thrashing, which is going on up until we cannot understand ourselves, and about the love. The actors work as if they had learnt the profession together. However, some of them have not even learnt it. It is a great thing. There are strength, passionate talent, work and concentration in this performance. Rudolf Balogh, Árpád Bogdán, Balázs Dévai, Dragan Ristic, Hermina Fátyol, Erika Molnár, Nóra Parti, Krisztina Sárközi and Erzsébet Soltész. They function the performance with a hard and great theatrical knowledge following the unbreakable pot-rhythm by Zoltán Oláh, in Judit Gombár’s set and perfect costumes.

It is a real production. It is Gypsy theatre. It is a valid theatre.

László Jakab Orsós, AmaroDrom, 2001

Many people said: “I wish there would be similar performances in the competition programme too!” Zoltán Balázs shows a play by Ionesco on a different way with the help of Gypsy culture.

Sometimes we cannot understand what they are telling, but otherwise every single word is exactly understandable. It was also similar to Eugenio Barba’s Troup that earlier guest starred in Szkéné Theatre. From their international language, I understood only the English and German parts. Then there was a performance, a solo one. A woman, I did not understand her single word. Otherwise, in every moment, any moment I knew exactly that she was talking about love. Because her facial expressions, the shining of her eyes, gentle movements of her hair and her physical movements translated the unknown language for me.

The situation was the same in the case of Ionesco’s play, titled: Jack, or The Submission. Zoltán Balázs decided that he could dream this play onto stage with Maladype – Encounters Theatre most authentically with the usage of Gypsy language, with the reveal of Gypsy traditions. And yes. He filled with nine actors and much life an enormous space. I do not understand Gypsy language but the movement with which the actors filled the space, was really expressive. It was impossible not to notice the most evident message, the alienation. As during the prologue, it happened on Gypsy language, then the outsider, who hardly forced Jack to assimilate, appeared.

Erika Molnár used Hungarian language. Moreover, all through, did not care about the others, she spoke Hungarian. Wonderful images, phenomenon and movements were interlacing the performance. While Jack (Rudolf Balogh) was trying to keep distance in a glass cage from the unmeasurable greyness of the world, he had to realise that everything has been grey really. While everything is rainbow-colored. In that way he is not different, just similar to the others. He has to accept it. He cannot be influenced neither by his dad’s (Balázs Dévai) arguments, which he performed anyway very convincingly, nor by his mother’s (Erzsébet Soltész) desperate beg. Maybe only his younger sister, Jacqueline (Nóra Parti) can bring him back for a moment into the real world, as she is throwing onto the wall of the glass cage the sticky remains of her miscarried child.

However, the intended bride, who has three noses, gave the final stab to the boy, who desires an eccentric life. As Erika Molnár appears, in the enormous bride dress, she has an enormous effect without any doubt, on confused Jack, who is leaving the prison of his solitude later, much later. Who provides the production with real tension and special range of emotions, is not other than Zoltán Oláh. With the help of a pot and microphone, he vocalizes all the sounds, rhythm, which can turn the Gypsy world into mine a little, that incomprehensible mythical miracle, which can be compared to nothing.

Before the performance, I had been counting on the terrace near the theatre that how many people and on which speed escaped from the sunset of the Miracle of new theatre but after it I did not remember anything else that I saw two types of faces, who came out of the Ionesco play. Those, who reflected witlessness, and others, who had a happy and satisfied smile.

Fortunately, the others were more. Some of them said regretfully, that they wished there would have been similar performances in the competition programme too. Maybe today...

Krisztina Szepesi, Terasz, 2001

There are concerts, meetings, scenic readings in the off-programme of the POSZT, these are such an exceptionally density that the events often overlap each other. A truly exciting part of this really abundant choice is the theatrical part: for example, the college students’ exam performances or the puppet plays. Moreover the Maladype or Encounters Theatre in the Service Club, in the evening of 12th, June.

The chosen play is Ionesco’s opus, titled: Jack or The Submission, which would be comfortable to sign as an absurd one. The performance, which was directed by Zoltán Balázs, and which set and costumes were designed by Judit Gombár, is similar to surrealism from the point of view of the scenery: Jack in his black fez and black baggy panties is sitting in his glass cage, settled in front of the audience. He has straight face. The others are swarming around him in their same kind of wigs, plain clothes: excitedly and indignantly because Jack does not want to join the swarm at all. The central question is of course the marriage, and besides that, Jack is unwilling to “operate” according to the civil habits. The impotent swarming of the obtuse and upset family is much more similar to captivity than Jack’s apparent exclusion, which he chose. If we said that the performance is similar to surrealism the naming of its style is not complete at all: because the virtuoso, with a pot is sitting in the first row, dictates the rhythm of the performance, with his beat guides the bustled family partly, and partly comments ironically flock-like acts. In that way the genre is completed with ritual-like elements. Besides the scenery, we can read from the musicality, movements, gestures. The text makes obvious accents, which are from repetitions, and well-known emotions, because the significant part of the performance uses Gypsy language. Later on only Roberta uses Hungarian (her enormous white dress forces her to a crinoline-captivity, but the inventive bride’s head and limbs appear from the tough foams and the most unexpected places), who tells the story of foals running abandoned, as a comment on Jack’s situation. However, it is understandable otherwise too.

Fortunately, it can be understood better and on a higher level, than the mouth-watering social critics.

Rita Sebestyén, szinhaz.hu, 2002

Viktor Kravchenko's autobiographical book I Chose Freedom is a “one-man manifesto,” tantamount to an indictment of Stalinism and the inhuman world of Soviet labour camps. Maladype Theatre published the Hungarian translation of the book, and from November 14, the work will be performed at the theatre by Zoltán Balázs. We spoke with the actor-director before the premiere.

You first encountered Viktor Kravchenko's work six years ago. Was it clear that one day it would become a performance?

It is part of my family heritage that my right, opportunity, desire, and need for freedom override everything else. Therefore, it was clear that a work titled I Chose Freedom would be extremely exciting for me. Six years ago, I read an interview with Ariane Mnouchkine, the wonderful French theatre professional, who mentioned this work among the books that had shaped her life. I had not heard of it before, but her opinion assured me that it must be a sophisticated, valuable work. When it turned out that it had not been translated into Hungarian, or even Russian (apart from the original English, it had only been published in Polish and Bulgarian), I decided to acquire the rights. At that point, it was still an open question how we would proceed. We started this expedition without me having read the book. All I knew was that it was about the political and private life of a Soviet official, and that it was published in 1947, which means that it’s an even earlier report on the Soviet Gulag and the horrors of Soviet terror than Solzhenitsyn's The Gulag Archipelago. When Péter Konok's translation was completed two years ago, I was able to read this wonderful work in Hungarian, which focuses on the extreme nature and character of Viktor Kravchenko.

What makes Viktor Kravchenko such an extreme personality?

Kravchenko, while moving forward chronologically in the work, is constantly struggling. He weighs up the character of his father, who is a very strong, dominant personality and a kind of mirror in his life, at the same time reserving for himself the right to change and redesign the moments he has experienced, his impulses, and his insights. This is why he is able to make such a big change in his life and turn against Stalinism, even if this undertaking is terribly difficult and means sacrificing his family, relatives, friends, and acquaintances. By becoming a dissident, he inevitably hurt all those who remained in the Soviet Union. Many of them, including his mother and wife Irina, were sent to concentration camps. Kravchenko nevertheless believed that by exposing an inhuman world, he could do more than if he had stayed at home, kept quiet, and become a silent witness to the Soviet system. After the publication of his book, Kravchenko was sued by the Parisian communists, who claimed that what he wrote was not true. According to contemporary statements, the Kravchenko trial was the “trial of the century,” which he later won. Kravchenko was photographed most often when he argued his case with spectacular gestures. Extreme, intense body language is not far from my own personality; expressiveness is indeed part of playing on stage. After all, Kravchenko is also very expressive, yet very sensitive beneath the surface. His quieter, softer, more delicate, more intimate moments must be created as well. He has poise and strength; he is a fighter. At the same time, he is an unpleasant, absolutely provocative, divisive figure. I am the same, so in that sense we are good friends.

Viktor Kravchenko's work forces us to confront the period of Stalinism and Communism, which are still sensitive topics today. They are taboo, dangerous, delicate, and unpleasant. What is at stake here is the processing of an era, a period and of the past. Some people are capable of this, while others are not. Some are open to it, others do not want to. Some would like to, but do not know how, while others do not want to, even though they have every opportunity to do so. There is no recipe for this. One thing is certain: by talking about it we can – and will – provide the opportunity. There is a line in the book where Viktor says to his father, “Many of us want to speak up, to raise the alarm.” The fact that people speak is a manifesto in itself. There are people among us who keep quiet, and there are those who speak up. I will speak up. That is all I will do. How spectators interpret these thoughts and words is a serious personal responsibility on their part. The viewer is the creator here. I cannot take responsibility for others. I can only consider my own responsibility.

What is your own relationship to this task?

Until now, I have consistently dealt with material that is more surreal, more poetic. This material offers plenty of opportunity for debate and misunderstanding, even though history and historians have already dealt with this period. But no matter how divisive and sensitive this issue is, I still thought: at 38 years old, I cannot ignore the 12 years that defined my childhood in Transylvania. This was the last period before Ceausescu's fall. We were out on the streets during the revolution, and I still remember clearly what happened. As a child, I witnessed the arrest of my grandfather because he was Hungarian. He was sent to prison, and my grandmother visited him regularly. I remember when the women in the family held the fort. Kravchenko writes that provocateurs can be recognized by their smell. I feel like that too: I close my eyes and I can still smell the smells I encountered during the house searches. Yet this is not accompanied by a damaged soul: although my family suffered a lot, for them dignity, the possibility of a better life, and the future were always stronger and more motivating than failure, self-pity, or accepting the role of victim. This is what I got from them, and it has had a profound impact on my life. Now, as an adult man, I have reached the point where I can formulate something about my childhood, my current life, and my possible older years. In this sense, it is very healthy material. I feel that I have a healthy approach to this performance. In this work, there is none of the idealism of stage plays, there are no heroes or antiheroes, there are no tricks, only one person standing in the middle.

Was it a conscious decision to stage the performance this year, in the Gulag Memorial Year?

My entire season is dedicated to Communism, regardless of this. There are certainly no coincidences. On the other hand, it took this long to obtain the rights, have it translated, proofread, publish the book, raise the money, prepare it, and create a performance. It's an interesting coincidence, and I'd like to say that it was completely intentional, but it wasn't: that's just how it turned out, and I'm very happy about it. However, the opportunity to explore the Communist past also comes up elsewhere for me this season. Starting in January, I'm also directing a play with a communist theme in Chicago, titled How to Explain the History of Communism to Mental Patients. It was written by the world-famous author Matei Visniec. It is a wonderful contemporary work, featuring Lenin and Stalin. After that, we will be doing a Dada cabaret here at home with Gábor Farkas and his band, because next year will mark the centenary of Dada. The performance is also based on a play by Matei Visniec, and Lenin and Stalin are in it as well. In Zurich, all the founders of the Cabaret Voltaire lived next door to each other, as did Lenin and Krupskaya. Somehow, everything is connected.

What image does Kravchenko paint of Stalin?

Kravchenko repeatedly calls Stalin a “crazy Georgian” and has a strong opinion of him, even though for a while he warranted a wonderful future for him. Stalin was one of the great prophets of his Communist conversion. Then he saw the system and Stalin himself become distorted. He sees him as increasingly stocky, fat, pockmarked, and toothless. Then there is an emblematic moment, like in a Jiri Menzel film, where Kravchenko takes the picture of Stalin off the wall, tears it to pieces, and flushes the scraps down the toilet. Watching the water gurgle, he knows that the party, the cause, and the leader will never again be the defining factors in his life. It's like a breakup, the end of a relationship. Either we end it, or we carry it with us for the rest of our lives, which is a tragedy. Perhaps the most terrible lesson of choosing freedom is that after Kravchenko arrives in America and seems to be able to leave everything behind, he still cannot find freedom. He carried the desire for freedom within his personality, inherited from his grandfather and father, although its unfolding depended on many factors. Women played a role in shaping his life, but so did his relationship with Stalin and other leaders, as well as American thinking. This will not be mentioned in the performance, but in the book he recounts how painful it was that the Americans supported the democratic aspirations of the Hungarians and Koreans more than those of the Russians. It hurt him that Stalin became a hero by effectively defeating Hitler at the end of World War II. Meanwhile, there was a war within the war, with 20 million Russian casualties.

Was Kravchenko ever able to forgive himself for having been part of this system in the beginning?

He tries to explain it to himself. Kravchenko was an engineer, a technical man, and had a successful career. He was good friends with one of Stalin's confidants, People's Commissar Ordzhonikidze. Later, he tried to convince himself that the only thing he could do, even if his family and many of his friends fell victim to it, was to open his mouth and speak out. He could never be sure that this was the only way for him to act. This is an unanswered question. That is why he never found his place again and became stateless. At the end of his book, he says that Viktor Kravchenko ceased to exist as a person and became an islander in no man's land. In my opinion, that is what he always was inside. I also think it is important to be able to portray this spiritual vacuum.

It is important to emphasize that Kravchenko was not a writer. He came from a working-class family, from which he naturally brought many values with him. The book contains beautiful, often complex sentences. When he composes his statement and writes the book, he uses such wonderful imagery that even writers would spend years searching for. Of course, this does not make it a literary work, but his language is incredibly sophisticated.

What does this performance undertake? To convey information about a particular era? Perhaps to raise issues that are still sensitive today?

In Jane Austen's novel Sense and Sensibility, one of the ladies says that what she likes in a particular person is that when they read aloud, they do not intrude on the text and its content. At Maladype Theatre, it is also an important directorial and acting instruction to let the text prevail. This does not mean that we speak in an old-fashioned, chanting, distant manner; on the contrary, we speak very personally. The text, in this case Kravchenko's work, is the real value, the content and heart of the performance: it beats, and blood circulates through it with the right energy, and the heart pulsates and comes to life. This is a very delicate matter, and perhaps not primarily an actor's task. The constant, DNA-like intermingling of the three levels of historical context, personal life story and profession requires an astonishing amount of mental work and concentration. You have to be very alert mentally, quickly formulate information within extremely long and complex sentences, and then quickly feed it back and forth through very short, staccato-like sentences. Meanwhile, you have to move forward and cover a 38-year period with the performance. This is very interesting because I myself am 38 years old.

You haven’t stood on stage as an actor for many years, which makes this performance even more special?

As an actor, I played many beautiful and good roles, so for the past 5-6 years I haven't really had the desire to perform. I still don't want to “perform,” but I do want to be able to tell these facts in the first person singular. In such a way that I do not intrude on the text, but my essence, my age, my knowledge, and my current thinking are present in the performance. I do not desire direct actualization either. This is not the purpose of the book either; rather it’s a testimony to an era. There are thoughts that are strengthened simply by being spoken aloud. People involuntarily connect things, not by reading, shouting, preaching, or forcing the great truth down someone else's throat, but simply by confronting them. And when people can read between the lines, they can express wonderful things.

Will the audience be active participants?

There are three reasons why the audience will be active participants. First, they will have to pay close attention because the material is so dense, concise, and concentrated that it is impossible to tune out. My personality and the tempo I dictate will also not allow them to switch off. Finally, although the text is a very precise score, I have the opportunity to improvise precisely because of who I meet in the audience at a given performance, whether in terms of age, cultural background, knowledge, or interests. So the performance has a very conscious, tense, precise structure, paired with an irregular, courageous, free game that responds to the moment, taking into account the audience sitting there. A combination of the regular and the irregular. It requires amazing mental work, great spiritual energy, and a playful spirit. Complicity. A wink.

The book, published under your theatre’s care, has already had its launch. How was it received?

The book made a very successful debut, appeared at the Hungarian Book Fair, and quickly became widely known. It fills a gap in the market and is being bought by people of all ages. The volume is beautiful, with cover art by Kossuth Prize-winning graphic artist István Orosz and a very high-quality translation by Péter Konok. Our colleagues invested a lot of energy at home and abroad to get this project to this point. The graphic artists who developed the concept, the team of experts... It is also exemplary that today, when there are few integrative programs, this project is characterized by wonderful cooperation. The Open Society Institute, the National Cultural Fund, the Ministry of Human Resources, and the Norwegian Civil Support Fund all considered this a common cause. In fact, this is the essence of my theatre as well: it does not divide people, but brings them together. Of course, I also thanked Ariane Mnouchkine at the beginning of the book; I owed her that. The performance is a summary of the book, and perhaps the personal tone brings the essence closer to the audience. The book and the performance complement each other very nicely. The common denominator is Viktor Kravchenko's character, personality, thinking, and mentality.

Kravchenko's son, Andrew Kravchenko, even sent a short video message to the book launch. What did he say in it?

Andrew Kravchenko is Viktor Kravchenko's only living son. He lives in Los Angeles and has very little personal experience of his father, knowing him almost exclusively from the book. For him, therefore, the main character in the book is the true ideal. Andrew had previously seen a recording of me playing Hamlet, and immediately recognized his father in it. Obviously, my personality is not far removed from this kind of torn, extreme existence. Today, Andrew can see that his father’s legacy is in good hands here in Hungary. He has grown fond of us and places great trust in all our requests. In the video message, he thanked us for everything in Hungarian. He was very happy and really liked the book. He wanted to come to the presentation, but couldn't because he also just published a book about his father. He has also reached the point where he can process his relationship with him. Viktor Kravchenko died in a room in New York, and to this day it is not known whether he committed suicide or was killed by the KGB, like Trotsky. For Andrew, his father is a complete mystery. However, knowing that we would not bring shame upon him with the Hungarian performance, he agreed that I could even perform it abroad.

So, is there a chance that I Chose Freedom will be performed abroad?

There's nothing stopping it. The performance is very mobile and easily adaptable. I could easily perform the evening in English or French. For Russia, I would have to learn Russian first, which would be an interesting challenge. In Russia, however, they don't even want to hear about the book; it still hasn't been published since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Perhaps if it were published in Ukraine, it would mean something, since Kravchenko is of Ukrainian origin. Sooner or later, the dam will break. Incidentally, this is not just a Russian trait: here in Hungary and around the world, we encounter many unpleasant topics that people don’t want to hear about. Not to discuss, but simply to hear about. If I talk about it, that's already sensitive. However, it is the job of an artist, a creator, to speak up. Not directly, not profanely, not in an actualized way, but by giving voice to a work of art.

The performance is accompanied by an educational program, the Kravchenko Case. We understand that participants have already been involved in the rehearsal process.

The Kravchenko Case is important as a multi-phase educational program because we are focusing specifically on young people. In the program, underprivileged, exceptionally talented students aged 14-18 will conduct mini-trials based on the Kravchenko trial, with the help of historians, social psychologists, Russia experts, and teachers. We are modelling Kravchenko's trial in Paris, where his own left-wing circle accused him of lying and claiming that everything he wrote was fiction. Kravchenko wrote his second work, I Chose the Truth, based on the trial he won. During the hearings, students will always have the opportunity to convict or acquit me, as Kravchenko. I consider it very important for this generation to develop personal responsibility, to be able to choose and decide, to be able to articulate differences, and to support all of this with arguments. The ability to argue—not necessarily in legal language, but in any very simple system of argumentation—can liberate the mind. Perhaps this generation will have a different attitude toward the issues of choice and civic responsibility, or even toward culture and the art of reading itself.

How does a rehearsal process work when the performance is created by a single artist?

As far as the actors' tasks are concerned, I founded Maladype Theatre 15 years ago, so I determine its spirit. The company has always strived to make the actors' presence as personal as possible, free from any kind of pose, role, adopted behaviour, or “performance.” Of course, it is very important within the actor's toolkit to be able to portray old, young, fat, thin, evil, and good characters, but the path, the process that takes the creator from their civilian self to the self that embodies the role is a different way of thinking at Maladype. It is much more subtle. In the current performance, for example, if I deal with Viktor Kravchenko's problem publicly, in front of the audience watching the performance, then my interest in the problem draws in the audience's interest, and they thereby create the possible character of Viktor Kravchenko. So it's a joint game. For this to happen, I need to be motivated, because then the issue becomes a joint issue. The point is not what I do or how I do it. If the audience sees how personal, how tragic, how true, how different, how harsh, how frightening what they see is, then at that moment we are already dealing with the problem, and then we are on the right track.

The performance also has a director, called the thought. The thought directs the performance. I direct my thoughts publicly, while also being the medium. I didn't feel the need for an external director, because if they start pursuing this very serious genre with me, then from that point on, the question is no longer what I say, but how I say it. So suddenly the content is pushed into the background and the form becomes more interesting. Of course, it is very difficult to make the thought the organizing and directing principle of the whole evening, since it is precisely the thought – or the lack thereof – that is the main question of our time. Yet thinkers were, are, and will be needed. We need to think, we need to reconcile different perspectives and worldviews. Not to remain silent, but to talk, to search, to weed out and replant.

Among other things, this performance is also a part of the celebrations around Maladype’s 15th anniversary, right?

We are indeed celebrating with work. While I’ll be in Chicago, András Jeles will be directing Three Sisters here, and later Sándor Zsótér will be coming to direct Richard III. It's a great season, fortunately there are many opportunities for us abroad. I can say that we still exist, although the future of independent theatres in Hungary is not very bright. To survive, you need good company, a sense of belonging, and a sense of humour. Especially a sense of humour.

How do you feel about the upcoming premiere?

I am looking forward to seeing what I can convey from all this. There is a lot of interest, so it would be good if my mind, my thoughts, and this opportunity were all in sync at a given moment. But that's not mandatory. It's an opportunity: playfulness makes it human, easy, self-evident. It's a story that writes itself. There are no taboos or secrets. I play in a room that can hold a maximum of 60 people, so everything that is not real will be exposed here.

Annamária Veraszto, faktor, 2015 / Translated by Léna Megyeri

On July 15, Maladype and the Qaartsiluni Ensemble will present Great Sound in the Rush, a “semi-serious” opera by László Sáry, who celebrates his 75th birthday this year. We spoke with director Zoltán Balázs about the performance, which will debut at the International Bartók Seminar and Festival, and about Maladype, which celebrates its 15th anniversary.

What does it mean that the opera is “semi-serious”?

According to Hungarian writer István Örkény, grotesque is when you look through your spread legs and see the world upside down. One should dare to clown around, have the courage to make fun of themselves and be careless. Our goal is to make the audience want to be mischievous, to look at each other, whisper something to each other, and participate in the games we offer. The whole work has a naive artistic character and a childlike spirit in the noble sense of the word. We have to somehow untangle this terribly complicated task, this incredibly demanding, rich, personal, and cunning material, and show its lightness and joy.

How did you find Great Sound in the Rush?

László Sáry introduced me to Lajos Rozmán, artistic director of the Qaartsiluni Ensemble, who is also an outstanding clarinettist. After continuous consultations between the three of us, the project finally took shape, and we decided that Maladype and Qaartsiluni would co-produce the 75-year-old composer’s piece. I am particularly pleased that the International Bartók Seminar and Festival has agreed to host the premiere, which will be accompanied by László Sáry's workshop and a traveling exhibition of his sheet music, which will go on tour in the fall along with the performance. It will be shown at the Music of Our Time Festival (“Korunk Zenéje Fesztivál”) and has also been invited to the Chamber Opera Festival of Eger.

You are basically staging your former teacher’s piece, as László Sáry is a lecturer of University of Theatre and Film Arts Budapest. What additional burden does this place on a director?

I’ve had a decade-long relationship with László Sáry; I was still a student at the university when we first had the opportunity to work together on Fernando Pessoa's play The Ancient Anxiety. Later, during rehearsals for The Blacks, Empedocles, and another work by Sándor Weöres, Theomachia, we developed a common vocabulary. Regardless, I don't want to draw parallels between our previous works and the current opera premiere, as change and the search for new paths have always defined my creative process. The long break since we last worked together was strange, but our relationship was not a burden; rather, it manifested itself as the joy of formulating shared insights with the composer, Lajos Rozmán, and the Qaartsiluni Ensemble.

The opera is based on Sándor Weöres's piece Theme and Variations. Weöres's oeuvre seems to accompany your work throughout the years.

Sándor Weöres is a creator with a vision at least as unique as that of László Sáry, inspiring me to constantly examine, analyse, and deconstruct these seemingly simple yet extremely complex universes. Weöres and Sáry advocate for irregularity, change and experimentation, which offers common ground with my ideas about theatre making.

Speaking of irregularity and change: with state subsidies reduced again this year, how much can you plan ahead?

Due to the nature of the independent theatre scene, we do not receive regular, annual, fixed state funding. We do not have a host institution behind us; we maintain our permanent venue, the Maladype Base on Mikszáth Square, and our permanent company by ourselves. We always have plans A, B, C, and Z, but that doesn't mean that Maladype, which is celebrating its 15th anniversary this year, will always just be able to “figure something out”.

At the end of the theatre season, your company left the Independent Performing Arts Association (FESZ). What exactly happened, and why did you feel it was important to take this step?

I explained everything in our statement. I have come to terms with what happened; we are working with the small amount that was allocated to us. I did not ask for the previous amount to be doubled, but if they cannot increase it, at least they should not decrease it.

The company's lineup has changed countless times in recent years. Is this all due to financial difficulties?

I think of change as a natural part of theatre making. I don't consider myself the kind of creator who does the same kind of thing for decades. Experimentation, irregularity, and new topics motivate me, and we have persistent partners accompanying us on this expedition. It would be difficult to remain creative if I was still working with the same people I started with 15 years ago.

Years ago, you said that you didn't want Maladype to become "Zoltán Balázs and Company" instead of a creative workshop. As you approach your 15th anniversary, how do you feel you've managed to keep that promise?

Although Maladype is primarily linked to my person, I continue to strive for this.

Rumour has it that after a long hiatus, you will return to the stage as an actor during the next season.

A few years ago, Krétakör Ensemble published a series of interviews with Ariane Mnouchkine titled The Art of the Present, in which the world-famous theatre artist mentions Viktor Kravchenko's 1946 indictment of Stalin “I choose freedom” among the five books that have shaped her life. The title immediately caught my attention, as freedom is a central theme in my work. Although the American connection is clear, we searched for it in the Russian-speaking world, assuming that it had been published in Russian. A two-year series of negotiations for the translation and stage adaptation began with Andrew Kravchenko, the author's son living in Los Angeles, who held the rights, and eventually we obtained the full rights. The book was translated by historian Péter Konok and presented at this year's Book Festival. The main character and the novel were unknown to the general public in Hungary, and there is enormous interest in them. We are currently working on the stage adaptation, which will be presented as a one-man manifesto in the fall of 2015.

By Zsolt Oláh, György Frauenhoffer, Fidelio.hu, 2015

Translated by Lena Megyeri

The artist, who has already gained recognition in the Western Balkans with his groundbreaking productions, will be staging the contemporary play Inhuman by Jeton Neziraj and Shpëtim Selmani in Kosovo. After several successful international co-productions – Yvonne, Alice in Bed, The Penelopiad – Zoltán Balázs, representing Maladype Theatre and METTRIN Arts Center Bánk, is working on a joint artistic venture with Quedra Multimedia production company and Bekim Fehmiu City Theatre in Prizren.