Zoltán Balázs was born in 1977 in Cluj-Napoca. He spent his childhood in Northern Transylvania. At the age of 12, his mother decided to move to Hungary. He studied at the drama faculty of the Horváth Mihály Highschool in Szentes. In the fourth year, he won an award in France for a performance in French, as a result of which he has since regularly attended various French theatre courses. He attended the acting class of Miklós Benedek at the University of Theatre and Film Arts Budapest, but from the third year, he also studied directing with László Babarczy. He is currently an actor at the Bárka Theatre and the director of the Maladype Theatre.

- How did you get in touch with the theatre?

- We had no theater at Sighetu Marmației, only the company from Cluj-Napoca or Târgu Mureș was performing as a guest in a raunchy studio. The traveling circus, on the other hand, came every summer and had a great impact on me. I later understood why. The risk of the moment was which I was attracted to. I am madly in love with the circus, I consider it the most sacred art form because you can’t bluff in it. You either catch the partner or you don’t. You can’t be deconcentrated, because this could cost your partners life. So this game comes with real danger. Just as in the clown’s case, who are doing grotesque things on stage (for example they hit each other with a huge hammer). My childish imagination was attracted to the bizarreness of the clown jokes and at the same time, I was repelled by it. Yet I was so impressed by the glint of the circus, and its strange dimensions, and I felt like I had to become a clown at all costs. I was about seven years old when I thought I had enough with my little scant life, so I’ll pack my things and I’ll run away with the traveling circus. I will be a circus performer. Of course, my noble family did not accept my plan with a burst of joy, so all of this remained a dream.

- Has this longing from your “scant life” influenced your career choice process?

- When I moved to Hungary, I had a very strange feeling of loneliness. I wasn’t remote, the people here were not hostile with me, but it teared me up losing a homeland, a group of friends, a familiar environment. I didn’t understand why everything had to be left behind. I had no plans, I just didn’t know what to do. Fortunately, the children’s dance theatre started its journey that year and they had an audition. Thanks to my mothers’ encouragement - who is a very strong and brave woman even in the most difficult times - I applied. I got in and I have been commuting between Hernád and Pest for two years. I enjoyed it. When I had to choose my career, my Hungarian teacher, who considered me a little crazy, told me, that she had heard about the drama faculty in Szentes, and I should apply there at all costs. The four years spent in Szentes were the freedom itself. I got into a real creative environment where my personality became accepted - not my acting personality, but my own personality: I have recognized various strong traits and I understood what Transylvania meant to me and what it means to me now. Yemoto is a Japanese metaphor, and it symbolizes a house with roots and refers to the strongest togetherness. I felt the same thing during rehearsals while I was performing. It was as if a cataract disappeared from my eyes.

- Did you go straight to college from Szentes?

- Everything turned out very strange because I wasn’t admitted to the University of Theatre and Film Arts, but I started to attend the Academy of Performing Arts, and also at Horgas, at the Atlantis Theatre. In the meantime, I’ve also traveled to France, because things started to go well there after the acting prize I’ve won in my fourth year of highschool. The following year I was admitted to the University of Theatre and Film Arts in Pest and France. I wasn’t able to go to Paris because I didn’t have the money for it, but I was offered to take part in stages every summer, and so the year I would have attended, I could substitute for all these occasions. So this is how I’ve met Wilson, Vasiliev and József Nagy.

- They must have been important experiences.

- They were fantastic and amazing. Somehow I wasn’t raised on hungarian theatre. I’ve come from outside, so I don’t have such strong roots as those who grew up here. There is a Chinese proverb: “'Never touch your idols: the gilding will stick to your fingers.” I couldn’t touch the idols, so I don’t know what it’s like when they stick to my fingers, I still only see my fingers. I respect the great directors, it is important what they have done, but I’m not biased like most of my colleagues are, whose mother tongue is this kind of theatrical language. This is a curiosity for me. It is as interesting as what I’ve seen abroad, where I’ve seen poetry, imagination in the theatre. I’ve seen performances that are also using the fine arts, co-arts, dance and music as important components. I am less interested in verbality. It’s a huge task to perform in a way where you cannot trust the words, where you cannot accompany the text with parallel gestures, - which usually happens in our case -. You have to open a quite different dimension, you have to achieve a state of control and concentration that is also valid at the level of meta-communication. I find domestic acting very shiftless. Not because the actors are lazy, but because they are not put in a situation, they are not forced to use something from themselves differently than they routinely know. I’m saying this also as an actor, from my own experience. And from here on, the physique, soul and brain get out of shape.

- You, on the other hand, are confident about the movement, gestures and stylization in your directings.

- Because I don’t believe in the character-making we have established. An old woman can’t just be portrayed within a shabby way with a stick. Robert Wilson has an almost classic exercise for this: he asks an actor to tell a monologue by asking him to tremble his hands at every “E” sound and shake his head on every “A” sound. But only the actor knows this, the audience observes that while the actor’s posture is straight, his speech is accurate and he has fire in his eyes, he still shows signs of old age, then he unnoticeably turns into an old man. While he does not hunch, he does not change his voice, he is not doing a character, he only makes repetitive, styled movements that become real, because the actor starts to rise with them and begins to fly. He also has to be very focused, because he is doing a difficult, complex task. After a while, however, the sequence of movements becomes automatic and natural at the same time. That’s why I think the accuracy of the acting doesn’t bind but frees the actor.

- So you emphasize the form?

- Unfortunately, many people consider the form an enemy of the content. Yet, you cannot do theatre without form. We sit and talk, you lean on your elbows, I rotate this beer mat – this is also a form. Or if we sit still and watch, it’s also a form. Everything is a form. It all depends on how you use it. I see the form in the theatre not as an enemy of the content, but as a friend and complementary to each other. And all this because of the circus. What would circus do without form?

- In the end, how did you become a director?

- I was already in college when at the end of my first year I felt a strong sense of lack. You know, it is one thing to crave for the University of Theatre and another thing to go there every day. So in the evening, after the rehearsal, to my delight I began writing an imaginary journey in four parts from Fernando Pessoa’s poems – I like his poetry -. I was interested in what happens if a person before he dies, suddenly returns to the house he left from and meets himself as a child, as an adult and as an old man... Miklós Benedek, my form-master, once asked what each and one of us are doing in our free time. I told him that I’m writing about this. He wanted to see it, and then one day I found myself with Tamás Jordán, who turned out to be a member of the Portuguese-Hungarian fraternity, and he loves Pessoa, and he would be happy if I directed this in the chamber hall from Merlin, which is a very good place for this kind of experiment. I’ve never directed before, but I felt like I should not oppose it. So I jumped right into. It was a success, but now I know what the mistakes in it were.

- I’ve seen the performance and I remember that despite the poetic origination, many scenes were set up as if they were traditional situations.

- Do you know why? Because the actors came from different places, and I wasn’t experienced enough and I couldn’t carry my ideas into effect with as much strength and confidence as I would have liked. The actors didn’t let that happen either. I’ve experienced this for the first time. Only a few scenes came to life compared to what was in my head. But some of those who started the graduate director-class have seen it and suggested I should apply. Miklós Benedek also supported this idea.

- You were a sophomore in acting back then?

- Yes. I told them I won’t apply because I could not complete the two departments at the same time. But a few days later, my name was on the list among the other applicants. I told Mr. Lajos Tiszeker, that I can’t go to the preliminary, because I have a class. I’ve arranged it already - he told me. I had no idea what was happening, what I should do. And then Ascher, Kerényi, Székely were sitting in the auditorium and we had a conversation about my thoughts on the theater - they knew I’ve been abroad. And the next day I found out, I got in. All of this started, despite my will. My schedule had to be organized...

- Otherwise, you wouldn’t wanted to?

- No, because directing wasn’t a positive experience for me.

- And what convinced you that you should direct?

- When the directing major started, I made an excerption from The Caucasian Chalk Circle, which turned out to be the best from my class, Barbarczy and Székely liked it very much. There I gained a little bit of self-confidence. The child, for example, with whom Grushe crosses the mountains, was symbolized by an egg she held in her mouth. I did the crossing with two Grushe’s, one who disappeared behind the wall and the other that appeared on the other side. Thus, the dangerous crossing became a work of the moment. It is equivalent to a miracle. Then I’ve directed an Antigone in which Aunt Böbe, the porter, was the chorus of Theban elders. Back then in college, she seemed to be the best suited for this role: she was sitting in her place and was glossing about the world. There was a drama happening in the front, and in the back, the porter of the underworld was sitting bellyfull and watching how the younger ones were killing each other. I’ve also ditched the lean-fleshed, revolutionary image of Antigone. Anna Szandtner formed a sensual, feminine, minimally moving female figure, who behind her fragility, was carrying a determined and unpredictable desire for death.

- Who taught you in college?

- Babarczy, Székely and Csiszár.

- They are your masters?

- It’s hard to talk about this... I respect them, and yet somehow I feel like you are left alone. From those they’ve chosen, they want to make little copies of themselves. Everyone keeps its little treasure. And because of this everyone feels extremely lonely, they can’t exchange thoughts, they can’t honestly reflect on one another, so they don’t know what they think of them, they are just presuming. Assumptions, on the other hand, make a person insecure. And if someone does not have a strong personality, he will stumble and will try to fit in. But as soon as you want to fit in the arts, at that moment you’ve cut yourself. You have to be persistent, so you won't exist in someone else’s shadow. Because in the meantime, we have a desire to belong to someone, to able to create and think together. Everyone desires a master, but this somehow did not work out in my case.

- Not even abroad?

- A lot has happened to me after the third year in the summer. I was working with Wilson as an actor, we were doing Phaedra. And I have seen someone who treated people completely different, with patience, attention. Not with love, this is not the point. You don’t have to love me, you just have to respect my way of thinking. And you have to encourage me. Very few people know this here. Sanyi Zsóter, for example, knows this: he looks at what I’m doing, but he does not tell me how he would do it, only what he had seen and in what’s working or not. He can integrate into another’s system. He doesn’t call me to account, he formulates his thought compared to mine.

- Did Zsóter teach you in college?

- In acting. Our friendship derives from the fact that there is something related between us. To this day we tell each other our honest opinions. But he is not the master I’ve wanted to have, but rather my friend. So after the third year, in that summer, I felt that I don’t want to live up to anyone's expectations. That voice which is inside me, that I have gotten from somewhere from “Kamchatka” if it's unviable and does not work, I will destroy it myself. If it works, I let it work. I don’t want to stand in anyone's shadow. Not because I’m not humble, I am very humble, maybe even too much, but I don’t want to prove myself to others. I just want to fit somebody who is truly interested in me.

- What was your fourth year like after that?

- Terrible. I am thankful for Szolnok for surviving the last year somehow, where I was able to do two great roles as a graduate student: Paul from the Les Enfants Terribles and Rodolph from the A view from the bridge. I have learned a lot from both of these works, and I'm very happy that I got to experience the everyday life of a provincial theatre. I’ve got my degree and I was about to leave for France. I was sure that I was unable to exist here. What will be, will be, If I become a sailor then I will be a sailor, but I won’t spit myself in the face because of compromises. Then, in the last minutes, I was offered two opportunities as an actor, one of them was the Bárka. So many bad things were said about this theatre, I felt that this place was the only dicey place for me at home.

- As a director, you’ve introduced yourself in a company outside the structure, the Maladype.

- Because I may not be able to bring to effect my ideas in a state theatre. Lots of struggles would be in convincing the actors, to get them out of their routine, to persuade them to give themselves a chance at more complex acting. That’s why I’ve felt I had to accept Maladype’s invitation. I thought that the people here are not forced to do theatre. At the same time, they turned out to be imaginative people. The Gypsies are fantastically abstract creatures, very sensitive when it comes to creating. But it was also very good for this theatre, that here are not only Gypsies and amateurs, but a mixed medium. Professional and amateurs, gypsy and non-gypsy actors interact with each other back and forth. I had a feeling that this team could be shaped because they want it too. But I will also direct in Beregszász in the summer because I feel like I have to come to an end, that I have to work on the ends now. Meanwhile, Cătălina Buzoianu also invited me to direct in Bulandra.

- How did you get in touch with the Maladype?

- Dragan Ristic began to institute this company. The Blood Wedding was their first performance, directed by Zoli Lendvai. After that Dragan was looking for another director for their next work, but nobody accepted his offer. Let’s face it: it seemed an insignificant job. What could you do with a Gypsy theater? Plus, directing in a foreign language it is not a usual thing to do. And when they offered this job to Sanyi Zsóter, he didn’t accept it either, but he said that he knows somebody insane, who will accept it. I watched the Blood Wedding, and in the meantime, I was thinking, if I was to work here, what would I be interested in this closed world. For sure not folklore. Then I’ve read the piece – Jacques, or The Submission -, and I didn’t understand a word from it. This is a bluff, it’s stupid – I thought. But maybe I’m stupid, and I’ve read it again and again, at least fifty times. I was sitting on the train in complete despair, and suddenly a sentence caught my eye. That’s when I realized that Ionesco is not bluffing, but each piece of his has to be judged in its era. It is impossible to ignore who will be the performers. If Maladype is who will do the play than the whole play will be about Gypsies. I realized that only the family had to speak Romani, not the bride. Because she can be Arab, Japanese, Hungarian, anything, but Gypsy. The bride is important, not Jacques. He will become interesting only when the woman opens up and shows him a new world.

- You’ve developed this thought in a powerful formal idea.

- At first, the actors did not understand how this performance can be accompanied with a can. They’ve thought it would be a mood determining music. No – I said - this will be the metronome of the performance. The can will be an instrument and not just a pot because Zoli Oláh will be able to play on it. But he is the only one capable of doing that, no one else. Thus it’s an outrageous task and it requires a lot of concentration. The actors did also not understand why the family is moving so much. They did it if I asked them to do it, but I saw that they didn’t understand why. I made them understand, that these people are always moving much more than it’s needed. This makes the family unbearably depressing for Jacques: what they could do with one gesture, they are doing it with nine. In contrast, the arrival of the bride brings a completely different pace, because she comes from another world. I didn’t want verbality to be interesting – especially because part of the audience does not understand Romani -, but the situation, which is transformed into a scene, shows a much more bizarre, absurd world, compared to the one in the text. The “Holy Trinity” of eye-word-body is very important to me when it comes to direct actors. An actor’s performance is fascinating and exciting when he exists on at least three different levels. The emotional energy concentrated in the eye does not affect the precision of his speech but complements it, so the movement and coordination of the actor can completely slow down or become completely motionless, yet the soul is flying inside. It’s like Butoh in Japanese Theatre. The actor and the audience are situated in a different time dimension than usual. This is what I want to achieve. At the beginning of The School for Fools, I might have achieved it. Several spectators have told me that they felt that if the actors moved, the glasses on the table would have broken. They’ve felt the fragility in that scene. They’ve also told me that they suddenly began to understand Latin. They were paying so much attention, that they almost understood it, and compared to that, it was strange when Galgüt started to speak in hungarian. It is very interesting that under the influence of these sensory impressions, you start to think in a different dimension. At first, everyone wants to explain why and how is everything done, but as soon as the spectator realizes that this is not necessary, he starts watching the performance differently, because other senses start to work. In Maladype, everything I have in my brain, what I’ve seen, experienced, I could try out.

- You chose the Ghelderode piece.

- I’ve been thinking about The School for Fools for a very long time. As a fourth-year actor I wanted to do it with my class, Benedek would have been the master and we would have been the fools. We could have talked very honestly about what is happening in college. Of course, this did not come together. But after Jacques, I felt that I could do it with Maladype. The fools live in a monastery and are waiting until the last day for the secret, to be freed from the curse – just like Gypsies who expect something similar. And they constantly have a spite against Folial: whoever is above is always wicked, but if this is not like this, they panic and they can’t act on their own. They have been trying to regularize them for decades, to move them into flats, to put them in schools, to socialize them at all. But a Gypsy will have claustrophobia in a flat, he gets sick if he can’t go outside, he is simply not made for these kinds of things. I’ve been playing with the idea of what it would be like if somebody once gathered all the Gypsy children, raised them in a completely closed world as if they weren’t Gypsies at all: they would listen to operas, wear elegant clothes, they would simply get the perfection of culture, spirituality and behavior. This is what the monastery would mean to them: a sterile world in which if anyone, a municipal leader or a prime minister, put them into, it would only inflict damage on them. The problem of the social situation of the Romani cannot be solved with a drastically, central measure. They have to change themselves. And they know this, but whoever sets out on this path is already despised, banned. It’s as hard to get out of there as it is to get in there. We’ve started from this strange, closed medium, and we tried to put this on stage. At the very end, of course, fools don’t know what to expect. The secret cannot be told. That’s suffering itself. It lasts for years, as in Veneranda’s case, who plays his father after Galgüt removed Folial.

- You wrote that in the piece.

- Yes, because that’s how the ending got a different point of view. The artistic principle of cruelty is formulated in the original piece in a didactic way. Anyways, quite a few misconceptions are sticking to the Artaud concept. He meant the spiritual cruelty, clairvoyance. Ghelderode was also researching this, but since he was not a theatrical man, he sometimes overwrote the situations. That’s why I’ve thrown out the part of the two fools from the piece. I think everyone should get involved in this performance. I find it extremely important that every actor stays on the stage from the beginning to the end. This is a completely different state of concentration than sitting outside and then coming on the stage from time to time. This is how this interplay can be strengthened and maintained.

- There have been two very good performances in which this “interplay” is one of the strongest elements. It’s like being the Maladype Company. Is it?

- No, it’s not yet.

- Will it be a company?

- I don’t know.

- Do you have ambitions with this company?

- This is the most delicate question you could ask. To be honest, I am full of questions. I have a few pieces in my head that would help to go further. But I would be also interested in what another director would do with them. It would be good if they were allowed to work with someone else.

- We have already seen this in the Blood Wedding.

- That was the beginning, compared to which I went two steps further with them. They would want me to take the company on. But I’m afraid of inwardness. I’m afraid the team will devour itself.

- What do you mean?

So, if I was to take further my system, which the actors are getting used to, the question is whether after a while wouldn’t this all turn inward. Than actors could only see themselves within this system. But if someone else came, he would work with them completely different and he would get something else out of them.

- Wouldn’t you like this company to be yours?

- No. I believe they are free, creative people who have their way. It was meant for us to meet like this, at these two stations. Of course, that doesn’t mean we won’t work together again. I also have to smell a different smell now and taste a different flavor. I want to get to know other people, to exist in a different environment. Maladype could only be taken on with full responsibility. That would not work if I checked in from time to time and would direct a little for them. I know them now, I know in whom what needs to be improved. Individuals should find tasks that develop them both as actors and humans. And this is a huge responsibility. This should be taken as a way of life.

- Would you remain an actor at home?

- I don’t know. I like to perform. As an actor, the question is how I can do the two tasks that are waiting for me at Bárka, Romeo and Tuzenbach in the Three Sisters. But France is also an option, Stuttgart as well, where Zsámbeki sent me for an international workshop, where I’ve met many people. I want to work. I am full of energy and these energies can always be focused on something.

- Shouldn’t the stiffened Hungarian theatrical situation be blown up for this?

- I don’t know how to answer this question. I'm not that little young revolutionary type. If I work somewhere, I do it the way I think I should do it. Then the performance will either be a success or not. But it is not my goal to change anything.

Zoltán Kondorosi, Ellenfény, 2003/3

Translation by Brigitta Erőss