Theatrical encounters at minus 5 degrees - Interview with Erika Tankó and Ágota Szilágyi / 2016
We talked with the two actresses about critical hours, wordless exchanges of glances and shoes.
The occasion was the following: in November 2015, Erika Tankó and Ágota Szilágyi, actresses of Maladype Theatre, presented their constantly changing performance piece Out-let at the Maladype Base in Mikszáth Square. Due to the high public demand, the autobiographically inspired, personal performance became part of Maladype's repertoire and has recently been shown at the Valley of Arts Festival in Taliándörögd, in Szabadka at the Kosztolányi Dezső Theatre, in Timisoara at the Bánság Hungarian Days festival, and at the Hungarian Institute in Bucharest.
Before each performance of Out-let, you subject yourselves to various mental and physical trials. What motivates you when you test your "endurance"?
Ágota Szilágyi: In Out-let, I am primarily motivated by curiosity, the question of "what will happen to me if...". I have found that there is a kind of inertia in people that strives for calm, stability and familiarity, so I find it very exciting to see how others relate to the commitments Erika and I have made together. It's like when children play not talking for hours; I used to play this game when I was a child. It takes a kind of courage to do something that our environment is not used to: we shake them out of the idea they have had about us until now, we expand the frame of reference. We set rules for the game and stick to them strictly. The first reaction—even if people do not express it in words—tells us, "Don't do this to yourselves...", because what they see is different from what they are used to, and it is uncomfortable for them to relate to the new structures we have set up. Our trials are unusual but exciting games, and so far it has always turned out that our limits are much broader than we thought.
Erika Tankó: In the fall of 2015, we planned to present Out-let only once, since the essence of a performance lies in its unrepeatability. However, we ended up "playing" it several times, and that's how the avalanche started: we wanted to show everyone, "Look, we created this together, we expressed something of ourselves, and we want you to be a part of it!" Over the past year, it has been proven countless times that we should not repeat it, even if people we care about missed the previous events. After our "performance game" became part of Maladype's repertoire, we updated it every time, made it relevant, and surprised ourselves with new ideas, experiences, and challenges. For example, we didn't sleep for 36 hours before the premiere.
And for your last performance this year, you waited outside from noon until the start of the performance at 7 p.m., in minus 5 degrees Celsius. You placed four chairs facing each other on a Persian rug, sat on two of them, and left two free for anyone to sit on. In your announcement, you wrote: "wordless, intertwined gazes are the path to communication." What experiences did you gain from this?
E.T.: Was it minus 5 degrees that day? You see, when Ágota and I came up – in the warm comfort of the Base – with the idea of lending our attention to people in the manner of Marina Abramović, I didn’t think about how cold it would be outside in the square. The first hour was really critical: it was difficult to get used to the cold, we had to get a blanket to endure the next six hours, but the hardest task for me was to let go of the thought that no one would sit down opposite me. Then the ice broke! It was wonderful to experience the power of the first pair of strangers' eyes as they stared at me. Suddenly, the shivering stopped and time stood still. I felt recharged. When the stranger moved on, I felt the cold again as it crawled under my blanket, but later I heard footsteps again and another encounter took place! During the rollercoaster of anticipation and fulfilment, I made friends with myself.
Á.Sz.: My first experience was realizing how stupid I was. I didn't wear proper shoes and after half an hour I was in serious pain from the cold. Erika, as a Csángó girl who knows what minus 5 degrees means, was smarter than me. We finally solved this little mishap (I got warmer footwear), but I came to the conclusion that our overheated enthusiasm was putting the essence of our undertaking at risk. Apart from that, it was one of the most beautiful experiences of my life. In the first half hour, my heart was pounding so hard that it almost jumped out of my chest. Later, someone sat down in front of me, and I felt endless gratitude towards them for being brave enough to do so. It came as a surprise. I was curious to know who this person was, of whom I only saw the shoes first (we only looked up when someone sat down opposite us). I felt as if I had received a gift that was renewed again and again. The faces became more beautiful from the attention they received. At first, I always thought, "Thank you... I see you." After a few hours, my body signalled that it would be good to move, and when I managed to calm myself down and get past this deadlock, I felt timelessness and love for all those who appeared before me: they were wonderful. Sometimes people came closer and asked: why are you protesting? For world peace or against poverty? They asked what we needed and—even though we didn't ask for anything—we received coffee, jeans, business cards, money...
The most appealing feature of Out-let is that it constantly changes in terms of content and form: how was this performance different from the previous ones?
Á.Sz.: We could hardly speak; we were so frozen...
E.T.: ... We could hardly move! In addition to the seven-hour commitment, we switched roles, which meant that apart from the monologues and songs we had written about ourselves, we also passed on the movement combinations associated with them to each other. It was a reckless and risky experiment that could have gone wrong, but I think that "someone else" was watching over us that night, and I am very grateful that they did...
How do your experiences shape your thoughts, and how do you utilize what you have gone through?
Á.Sz.: We realized that one of the reasons most of the audience goes to the theatre is because they want to feel that they are being listened to and noticed. I think that a higher goal of art could be for creators and performers to achieve this.
Zsolt Oláh, szinhaz.org, 2016
Translated by Lena Megyeri
The occasion was the following: in November 2015, Erika Tankó and Ágota Szilágyi, actresses of Maladype Theatre, presented their constantly changing performance piece Out-let at the Maladype Base in Mikszáth Square. Due to the high public demand, the autobiographically inspired, personal performance became part of Maladype's repertoire and has recently been shown at the Valley of Arts Festival in Taliándörögd, in Szabadka at the Kosztolányi Dezső Theatre, in Timisoara at the Bánság Hungarian Days festival, and at the Hungarian Institute in Bucharest.
Before each performance of Out-let, you subject yourselves to various mental and physical trials. What motivates you when you test your "endurance"?
Ágota Szilágyi: In Out-let, I am primarily motivated by curiosity, the question of "what will happen to me if...". I have found that there is a kind of inertia in people that strives for calm, stability and familiarity, so I find it very exciting to see how others relate to the commitments Erika and I have made together. It's like when children play not talking for hours; I used to play this game when I was a child. It takes a kind of courage to do something that our environment is not used to: we shake them out of the idea they have had about us until now, we expand the frame of reference. We set rules for the game and stick to them strictly. The first reaction—even if people do not express it in words—tells us, "Don't do this to yourselves...", because what they see is different from what they are used to, and it is uncomfortable for them to relate to the new structures we have set up. Our trials are unusual but exciting games, and so far it has always turned out that our limits are much broader than we thought.
Erika Tankó: In the fall of 2015, we planned to present Out-let only once, since the essence of a performance lies in its unrepeatability. However, we ended up "playing" it several times, and that's how the avalanche started: we wanted to show everyone, "Look, we created this together, we expressed something of ourselves, and we want you to be a part of it!" Over the past year, it has been proven countless times that we should not repeat it, even if people we care about missed the previous events. After our "performance game" became part of Maladype's repertoire, we updated it every time, made it relevant, and surprised ourselves with new ideas, experiences, and challenges. For example, we didn't sleep for 36 hours before the premiere.
And for your last performance this year, you waited outside from noon until the start of the performance at 7 p.m., in minus 5 degrees Celsius. You placed four chairs facing each other on a Persian rug, sat on two of them, and left two free for anyone to sit on. In your announcement, you wrote: "wordless, intertwined gazes are the path to communication." What experiences did you gain from this?
E.T.: Was it minus 5 degrees that day? You see, when Ágota and I came up – in the warm comfort of the Base – with the idea of lending our attention to people in the manner of Marina Abramović, I didn’t think about how cold it would be outside in the square. The first hour was really critical: it was difficult to get used to the cold, we had to get a blanket to endure the next six hours, but the hardest task for me was to let go of the thought that no one would sit down opposite me. Then the ice broke! It was wonderful to experience the power of the first pair of strangers' eyes as they stared at me. Suddenly, the shivering stopped and time stood still. I felt recharged. When the stranger moved on, I felt the cold again as it crawled under my blanket, but later I heard footsteps again and another encounter took place! During the rollercoaster of anticipation and fulfilment, I made friends with myself.
Á.Sz.: My first experience was realizing how stupid I was. I didn't wear proper shoes and after half an hour I was in serious pain from the cold. Erika, as a Csángó girl who knows what minus 5 degrees means, was smarter than me. We finally solved this little mishap (I got warmer footwear), but I came to the conclusion that our overheated enthusiasm was putting the essence of our undertaking at risk. Apart from that, it was one of the most beautiful experiences of my life. In the first half hour, my heart was pounding so hard that it almost jumped out of my chest. Later, someone sat down in front of me, and I felt endless gratitude towards them for being brave enough to do so. It came as a surprise. I was curious to know who this person was, of whom I only saw the shoes first (we only looked up when someone sat down opposite us). I felt as if I had received a gift that was renewed again and again. The faces became more beautiful from the attention they received. At first, I always thought, "Thank you... I see you." After a few hours, my body signalled that it would be good to move, and when I managed to calm myself down and get past this deadlock, I felt timelessness and love for all those who appeared before me: they were wonderful. Sometimes people came closer and asked: why are you protesting? For world peace or against poverty? They asked what we needed and—even though we didn't ask for anything—we received coffee, jeans, business cards, money...
The most appealing feature of Out-let is that it constantly changes in terms of content and form: how was this performance different from the previous ones?
Á.Sz.: We could hardly speak; we were so frozen...
E.T.: ... We could hardly move! In addition to the seven-hour commitment, we switched roles, which meant that apart from the monologues and songs we had written about ourselves, we also passed on the movement combinations associated with them to each other. It was a reckless and risky experiment that could have gone wrong, but I think that "someone else" was watching over us that night, and I am very grateful that they did...
How do your experiences shape your thoughts, and how do you utilize what you have gone through?
Á.Sz.: We realized that one of the reasons most of the audience goes to the theatre is because they want to feel that they are being listened to and noticed. I think that a higher goal of art could be for creators and performers to achieve this.
Zsolt Oláh, szinhaz.org, 2016
Translated by Lena Megyeri