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