No one should hold us accountable - Conversation with Hermina Fátyol and Kamilla Fátyol / 2008

Hermina Fátyol since 2001, her sister, Kamilla Fátyol has been a member of Maladype Theatre’s company since 2002. They will both play in Leonce and Lena, currently running in Thalia, and will be featured in Woyzeck, which will premiere on November 13 and Egg(s)Hell (December 8). The audience will also meet Kamilla in cinemas in the film Tableau directed by Gábor Dettre.

- How was the shooting of the Tableau?

- Kamilla Fátyol: Very good! This was my first feature film - it was great to work with Gábor and Kapa. I only had scenes with Kapa ... I mean with Zoltán Mucsi, I learned a lot from him.

- Hermina Fátyol: I'll be in the three-part TV version. I wasn't in Hungary during filming, but Gábor asked me to play a little role in the post-shoot after I got home. By the way, Gábor and I have been shooting another film, Antigone.

- Kamilla: Hermina will be Ismené and I will be Antigone. We filmed it all in a bluebox ...

- Hermina: ... and only with super-close settings ...

- Kamilla: ... so I have no idea what the end result will be: a lot depends on what Gábor and the visual designers will put in the background.

- Won't there be multi-actor scenes in it?

- Kamilla: There were three of us once! When in one of the scenes a guard leads me to Creon.

- Hermina: Yeah, that already counts as a crowd! (laughs) It is good to work with Gábor, he pays attention to his actors, the most important thing for him is communication with the actor.

- Kamilla, you haven’t played today’s “ordinary” woman many times before Tableau, Maladype’s performances require a completely different kind of acting. Was the switch difficult?

- Kamilla: Terribly! In Maladype, I have never said “hi” or “good day” - with Zoli Balázs (artistic director and director of Maladype - ed.) We always work on internal, difficult texts like Empedocles or The Blacks; Leonce and Lena are like that, maybe a degree freer. I learned a lot from it, especially when I saw in post-sync that such a text should be said completely differently, you should work with it differently.

- Not just text, the story was quite different from the themes of Maladype: in the story of a Roma police officer, I think, this play is different from Wyspiański's Acropolis.

- Kamilla: When I play a role, I don’t focus on what the story itself is, but on the current situation, the specific scenes. I didn’t think at all of playing a gypsy girl from Transylvania, and one way or another, because that’s me too: the same as having to play a waiter or whatever. In a scene, you don’t think about who you are, but to create that sentence in that situation and to find the truth in yourself. I think everyone has a different way of doing this.

- Doesn’t it cause tension between you if for a movie only one of you gets casted?

- Kamilla: No - but this never happens. (Laugh)

- Hermina: Kamilla wasn’t in my first film, but there really isn’t one since. Gábor also called us both to the Tableau, but I said no. But it even came out well because he couldn’t really decide which one of us he wanted. When I read from the script the few sentences Kamilla says in the cop’s car, I thought I couldn’t and didn’t want to say those sentences under any circumstances. (laugh)

- Kamilla: Not us, but Gábor felt uncomfortable. We are not jealous of each other, it is very good to work together.

- Hermina: But there’s a way to give one of us the script: if one doesn’t agree, then the other. I don’t understand that at all because we are very different. I don’t even know what they think, “those cute little Fátyol girls, or one or the other will do it”?

- In February, Maladype underwent a rather big transformation, several old members left (Balázs Dévai, Kristóf Horváth, Artúr Kálid and Nóra Parti), and the ensemble was expanded with new members (Ákos Orosz, Zoltán Papp and Zsolt Páll); and at the end of the season, you also left your previous play and rehearsal venues, the Bárka Theater. How did it all happen?

- Kamilla: It was a difficult period. We’re a small company with a small budget - everyone had to make the decision to either come into the unknown without knowing how much support we’re going to get and where we’re going to play, or can’t take it on.

- Hermina: But we knew how Zoli wanted to work: from morning to night in a workshop, with new premieres, Leonce’s ongoing rehearsals, with no money, summer rehearsals, zero free time - except on Sunday, when we’re getting ready for Monday’s performance anyway. Five people said yes to all of this (besides them, Éva Bakos, Katalin Simkó and Ádám Tompa - ed.); and it is also perfectly understandable that the others do not - a mother with a family, for example, may not be able to afford it. In that respect, what we do is abnormal, but this kind of theater can’t work any other way.

- Was it clear to you that you were staying?

- Hermina: Not for me. It really wore me out, that they were gone, I didn’t know if I wanted to continue without them. For me, the theater is Zoli Balázs: he raised me, I started acting with him. Sure, there are a couple more directors I’ve worked with already who are interesting, but by no means would I go to, say, a permanent theater - I don’t want to be an actress at all costs. I’m just interested in what we’re doing together at Maladype - if that’s called theater, and if I’m an actress in that, be it.

- Kamilla, weren't you sure you would stay either?

- Kamilla: I was sure. It was always clear to me that I wanted to do theater with Zoli and Maladype, I just asked myself what Maladype was. Zoli? Or the team we were then - or will we still be Maladype if we transform? Or do you have to stick to nothing, be open to everything? Then I stayed - though I haven’t been able to answer these questions since.

- What was Leonce and Lena's rehearsal process and the first ten performances like?

- Kamilla: We worked completely differently than ever before. Back in October last year - with the old ensemble - we got a Hot Jazz Band from Zoli, one of which we had to work on in groups of two, three or four; there was a training out of this, then we continued the rehearsals in the same way with the new lineup. Everyone plays everything, that is, all the boys play King Peter, Leonce, and Valerio, and the girls play Lena, the nurse, Rosetta, and the court — Zoli said, who’s who to pair with, and how to figure out the basis of a scene. To the rehearsal we brought a basic idea, a basic situation. The analogy has been said so far that Zoli gave us a vase that we had to fill, and then it either worked or it didn’t. But now we put the vase and the filling together.

- From the inside, do you feel the way it looks from the outside: that there has been other change besides the venue and actor exchanges? Has Maladype entered a new era?

- Hermina: Yes. Something happened to Zoli that made him start thinking differently, moving on artistically. Of course, his performances so far have always been next steps, he has never stepped back, he has always done something he has never done before - yet, the picture of his performances so far seems much more uniform than Leonce, which is quite different from anything else so far.

- Was that something that happened to Zoli that was spent in bed because of his accident?

- Hermina: Yeah, he used to say that his illness was the best thing that ever happened to him. He started thinking differently about the same things, and it did the company a lot of good.

- Kamilla: There was a kind of opening with Leonce to the audience. We used to work in a closed system, which was also evident in the performances: we were on stage and the spectators were watching in the auditorium - it was somehow so isolated. Now, however, the viewer has a say in the performance, we have had audience meetings and a truly freer rehearsal process also shows this openness.

- You will soon have a full repertoire: in addition to Leonce, you are already trying out Woyzeck directed by Claudio Collová, and in the summer you have also started the Egg(s)Hell, originally called Bolero. How different will these be from Leonce?

- Hermina: The two Büchner, despite being the same author are quite different. Claudio also works differently than Zoli, even though they say they actually do the same (physical theater). It is possible - but they approach it from the two opposite ends. So much so that in rehearsals, they are asked for exactly the opposite of what the other expects of them. Claudio has to be terribly instinctive ...

- Kamilla: At Zoli, the physical act starts from the brain - at Claudio, the physical act starts at the brain. They work the other way around, and there are quite specific clashes about this - we get ourselves from Zoli, for example, if we firmly close our legs at the end of the move, as Claudio asks; and Claudio doesn’t understand what happens to us if, as we practiced with Zoli all summer, we move like we’re walking on eggs.

- And what will the Egg(s)Hell look like?

- Kamilla: It's closer to what we're doing with Claudio. There is no prose in it. Zoli has laid down a set of rules - so far so sure. We do a dance performance that is not specifically a dance. Each dance genre has certain rules, for example, if a man in a tango does this with his hand (shows), then the woman knows she has to move. Our rules will be like that.

- Eight years ago, under the name of Vareso Aver, the team began operating as a gypsy company; a lot has changed since then. To what extent are you personally involved in traditional Roma culture?

- Kamilla: Not at all.

- Hermina: I don’t even know what “traditional Roma culture” is, and I don’t really see anything like that right now. I can comment on artists, individuals in whose art I can discover tradition or attachment to Gypsies; I have an opinion on these one by one. In general, I don't know what to say.

- Kamilla: Actually, we’ve never been in this, no one in our family speaks Gypsy, and our ancestors no longer dressed in traditional clothes. I have already been questioned as to why I do not better represent Gypsies as an actress - I think I can do no more than represent myself. If I wore traditional clothes, it wouldn’t be my life, it would be a lie. And someone wrote about Tableau that “I don’t play Gypsy as a Gypsy”. Why play Gypsy? What to play if someone is a Gypsy? Or Hungarian, Chinese? It is about a person who may have external racial traits, but has a personality that is built up through texts, situations. What a person is like as an actor can be judged - but no one should be held accountable for their nationality.

- Is that why there was such a line of Maladype performances that was still present in the beginning?

- Hermina: No - you just can’t get stuck artistically on a topic; it makes no sense.

- Kamilla: And the composition of the team has also changed.

- Hermina: Initially, we started to take something seriously, but we saw that it didn’t work: when Zoli did the Jack, or the submission in Gypsy language, in the Roma Parliament, we were still spoken out. And there’s nothing more that can be done - if anyone thinks we should put on a rosy skirt to do Gipsy theater, I can’t say anything about that.

- Kamilla: Anyway: what does it mean to be a gypsy today? What does it mean in Hungary, what in Europe and elsewhere? There is no point in talking about this in general terms: if a man is a Gypsy or an Arab - he is a man and that’s it.

- Hermina: An acquaintance of mine said about me, “poor little girl, how identity-confusing it must be, that she as a Gipsy went to a Jewish high school, and from there to Arabic, she certainly doesn’t know where she belongs in the world”. I don’t think so: I didn’t go to Jewish school as a Gypsy, and I didn’t go from a Jewish high school to Arabic. You don’t think that way - you do what you’re open to and what you’re interested in.

Bálint Kovács, Amarodrom, 2008

Translation by Zsuzsanna Juraszek