Király Nina - Török Margit: PQ '95. Magyar színpad - kép - írók (Budapest, 1995)
A változás színháza 1991 - 1995
George Banu quoted earlier is right that in recent years the myth of the European theatre has been shaken, the great social expectation surrounding theatre art is declining. Due to all that it has become an action of a minority and it behaves accordingly: it undertakes being in minority. The commercialization of certain art theatres and the change of the audience's taste in line with it has forced the type of theatre into a minority position that resolutely, with somewhat Don Quixotian heroism, insists on confronting the society with its true self through merciless forthrightness. This kind of theatre is being pushed into smaller and smaller place, in the strictly Technical sense of the word, just as the Orgon family in the famous production directed by Roger Planchon was gradually, scene by scene, forced out of its own home. It is chamber theatres and studios that provide venues for the birth of real values instead of large playhouses in our country as well. In its time the Katona József Theatre was forced to quit the National Theatre by manifold social intolerance but now we can witness how tension, excitement, theatrical action is being transferred from the venue of Three Sisters, The Inspector-General (1987), Platonov (1990] to the very studio of the theatre: the Chamber. The force of theatre existing in minority has been proved by one of the most peculiar Hungarian theatre artists Péter Halász, who has returned to home tracks after a long detour. Halász made theatre at the beginning of the seventies in Budapest. When he was cast out from the state subsidized culture homes because his operation was found too provocative by political authorities, he continued to play in private flats with his company. These 'secret performances' were visited by a limited group of friends: intellectuals, artists, oppositionists. To avoid further harassing Halász and his group left the country in 1974 and soon they showed up in New York where they rapidly earned international fame under the name of Squat Theatre. Later the group was divided into two and continued to work as Love Theatre. After the political system change Halász first visited the country with its company for a guest performance, then from the beginning of the nineties he has undertaken directing several productions at the Chamber. First he staged his own plays (The Chinese, Ambition|, then in the autumn of 1994 he launched an exceptional enterprise at the same place. Within one day he wrote, trained and played with the company a play based on a newspaper article. And repeated that for two months straight four days a week. The idea has been generated by the contradiction that theatre, be it lasting value, will perish in time. In a certain sense each performance is single and unrepeatable. With all the attempt to harmonize the concept of direction during rehearsals, the excellent reproductive talent of the devoted company, the play, while preserving its basic features, will change in detail from one evening to another. There is no perfect reproduction, actors are not machines, they are incapable of mechanically setting stresses and gestures. Always something unexpected may happen that will make that day's performance different from that of the previous day: the changed mood, intuition of actors, the different reaction of the audience, a creaking chair, laughter that bursts out at another point, a late coming set of sceneiy or some dead spot light. Frequently these alterations make performances vivid, organic; if they did not occur the production would turn rigid, cool down and die out. Many directors change details while the production is running, simply to avoid such 'freezing' of the play. These are the directors who suffer from the paradox of the eternal and the incidental. They are very much aware that it is just this uncertainty factor that makes theatre exciting, that sets it apart from canned art, films, for example. They are not able, however, to resolve the paradox itself. They may get to a stage like Peter Brook who at a time voiced his view several times that a specific performance should be performed not more than just once and never again. Others refer to Shakespeare who did not play the works of classical authors in his time but wrote pieces ’on the spot', adjusted performances to his own time and company. Halász did something similar to that. As Shakespeare used contemporary historical works, chronicles, the recently translated parallel lives of Plutarch as resources, he used daily papers. Shakespeare did not want to create poetic works of art, he worked not for eternity but for the audience that wished to be entertained; it was only later when fixed scripts were written down during performances. Halász and his company were less aspiring; they did not even make it possible that they could turn 'classical' as each performance was played once only. In the evening they picked the appropriate article from the next day's newspaper; wrote the play during the night, had rehearsal in the morning and performance in the evening. Then after using it once they discarded it like a piece of Kleenex. And made a new one. It was not improvisation. It was much less political journalism. They did not dramatize news and did not put together stories out of daily events. Nor did they hunt for sensation. Much more for the mythological element in everyday life. The case of someone's death was enough for them to start pondering upon philosophical issues of existence. If some statue was inaugurated it offered the opportunity to examine our awareness of history. Various dramatic genres were produced this way, from the Beckettian absurd to pamphlets, from vaudeville to tragi-comedy, from poetry reading to standard drama. Genuine team work developed. The role of the author, director, actor was mingled; interdependency generated easiness and elegance. Theatre was arranged into some loose play, there was no need to be afraid of it becoming daily routine or self-repetition. At certain points we would have loved to stop the moment as Faust did and beg to it to stay with us. But the moment cocked a snook at us and vanished into thin air. It left no more than bare trace in us — and that was what theatre is. Politics, in an altered form though, continue to be present in the most significant performances After the prerequisites of democracy have been established, it no longer substitutes outspokenness, it does not serve deceiving censorship through theatrical metacommunication but by its more subtle means with the help of allusions it refers to the social processes that are just taking place around us. Shakespeare's Julius Ceasar (1994) in the Katona József Theatre, for example, depicts a balkanized Rome. The most highlighted scene of the first part is the last one in which Cinna, the poet is killed by the mob heckled by demagogy simply because it mistakes him for Cinna, the senator. The second part, which is more emphatic than the first one, is the agony of soldiers slowly bleeding to death, who are wandering wounded on the ruins of the smoking city. Rome as Sarajevo. The destroyed city and the bloody slaughter-house have an effect backwards upon the precedents: it degrades the dramatic personae as politicians and statesmen. There is no such thing as heroic death, leaning into the dagger one after the other is a dire act that simply makes one suffocate. Neither is there heroic life, the colourless democratic conspiracy led by Brutus does not seem to be superior to Ceasar's blithesome dictatorship. No morals are at stake in the frantic drive for power, or power itself is at stake, which apparently means much more to Ceasar than the less ambitious Brutus. The assassination against Ceasar resembles an unprofessionally performed killing of a pig, it is from a pool of blood the murderers anoint themselves the symbol of saviours of the country. Antonius is shaking bloody hands so self-assuredly as If he knew he has nothing to fear of the hesitating democrats; he may even allow a provocative tirade at Ceasar's corpse. As if funeral orations were not trusted by the orators themselves, or as if they did not deem them that important. Brutus gives some laconic explanation, Antonius stays behind the demagogic implications of the words. And really they do not even bait people who are hanging around bored in the street and who gain force, whose bestiality arouses, once they have dismantled the orator's pulpit at an easygoing pace, not any earlier than at the moment the innocent supporting part, the potential victim, Cinna, the intellectual shows up. One who watches the performance has a strong feeling that he sees a theatrical report which is about filthy local wars waged for power. Possibly no one would be surprised if a documentary on Bosnia were projected on the filmscreenJike, sometimes unswathing sheets, that make up the scenery. Shakespeare's contemporary, Christopher Marlowe depicts political slaughterhouse rather coarse^ in his play Edward II (1993). The performance of the Budapest Chamber Theatre both produces the whims of student-like irony and renders stylistic discipline; juxtaposes the dire bloodshed of history and ritual simplified into slapstick comedy, it can both be horrified by the butcher's work burlesque of the customary carnage and be deeply moved by human victims smacked down in the power fight. In all that it is not allegory represented by images that plays the main role, the historical stage turned into a slaughterhouse is the most important where peers and lords take their butcher's apron off the gambrel stick to put them on, they water the blood dried unto the wall tiles with XI
