Balázs Eszter: Art in action. Lajos Kassák's Avant-Garde Journals from A Tett to Dokumentum, 1915-1927 - The avant-garde and its journals 3. (Budapest, 2017)

Judit Galácz: Avant-Garde Experiments Committed to Paper - the MA “Music and Theatre Special Issue” (1924)

1919. We may regard the former as a manifesto to give a synopsis of the writers and artists around the journal. In the essay, Mácza outlined his complex theatrical vision. He analysed in detail the basic elements of theatrical works (direction, acting, sets, lighting, and so on) separately, and according to his thesis, the perfect work can emerge from the synthesis of these elements, which will be unified by a new type of directorial concept. Mácza’s second theoretical text, Teljes színpad - which he termed dramaturgy - was a further development of the author’s earlier ideas.2 [Fig. 1] Here, Mácza expanded on the notion that the work brought into existence on the stage can be viewed as a piece of art that cannot be separated into theatre, drama and acting.3

NÁCZA

[1J János Mácza, Teljes színpad [Total Stage], MA, Vienna, 1921, [front cover with Lajos Kassák’s illustration]

2 The text was first published in MA in 1919, and later as a separate book in Vienna in 1921, which also included a later version of the text. The publication of the two versions of the text together also allowed for the effects of the interim period to be formulated, thus making the theoretical train of thought visible. János Mácza, A teljes színpad [Total stage], MA, 4/4., 1919, 54-56 (part 1), 4/5., 1919,103-106 (part 2) and 4/6., 1919,136-139 (part 3). Idem, Teljes színpad [Total stage], MA, Vienna, 1921.

3 Rózsa Kocsis, Igen és nem, A magyar avantgárd színjáték története [Yes and no, History of Hungarian avant-garde theatre], Magvető, Budapest, 1974,184.

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