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His father was a director and his mother an actress. Why is it not resolved yet?
I’ve been wondering this for a long time, but so far I’ve felt like I don’t want to.
Just because an actor has been in the field for a long time doesn’t mean he can direct a piece.
This is another occupation. What’s more, I was able to work with fantastic directors and I always thought that I had nothing to gain from this team. Then it was time for the coronavirus. He was still playing the last day before quarantine last year. At first we said, finally we relax, tidy up, garden, etc. After about the second week, I felt good, I rested, now let’s go back to the theater.
The quarantine ended in the summer, a little push came, and then the theaters closed again in the fall.
I am already suffering, I am missing a lot. It was then that I received this request from the director of the Chamber Theater Gyula Gózon. I was so shocked that I suddenly interrupted him: okay, send the piece.
What is the location of the Gózon Gyula Chamber Theater?
Charming building from the 17th century. district. Not far from where Gyula Gózon lived for almost forty years. The legendary actor was a great local patriot, hence the Rákosliget theater, operated by Ági Szabó for twenty years, bears his name. Maybe I was his first guest artist. So I played the Lola blau a one-man musical with a string pianist at the Budapest Chamber Theater, and Ági invited the production.
When I performed with them for the first time, they still didn’t have chairs, they put benches in the auditorium.
Ági has been there ever since, she has also created many of her own productions, many actors have played with them. It’s respectable for someone so obsessed with insisting on doing theater. We know this is not the business that can make you a great deal of money relentlessly, but it does give you a lot of tasks. At the same time, Ági’s enthusiasm is not broken. They have already broadcast performances and people are watching. He remembered that if he had already started with me, and if he had also celebrated his twentieth anniversary with me, but now he called me as director.
What work are you making your directorial debut?
Peter Quilter, contemporary American writer Curtain up! I was caught by his piece titled, which is otherwise a premiere in Hungary. The author has worked on Judy also in the script of the film, for which Renée Zellweger received an Oscar.
What got him?
On first reading, it’s a proper tabloid, but not a heartfelt, uproarious comedy, and if you take it seriously, you’ll find plenty of depth.
What is the baseline?
According to the story, these five women inherit an empty and dilapidated theater building that they have had to revive for years. I thought this story came at the best time. Five actresses, not much, if I find them, I thought, I’ll interrupt.
Five actresses on stage, sixth in the auditorium. Doesn’t your heart break?
Not for a minute, not really. It should not be a coincidence that this request has just arrived. I fell in love with the piece on the first reading and felt that it was my duty to mobilize all my experience and knowledge thus far and had to start thinking differently. I also read the text with the head of the director. We started kneading the textbook with playwright Lili Fabacsovics. Lili works at the Comedy Theater, speaks excellent English, and writes herself. I’ve already enjoyed this phase to death. The rehearsals are already underway and, for a moment, I don’t feel like they’re in my place.
Who is playing
I start with Zsuzsi Szabados, I am very happy that she took it on, because she is very good in this role. We have already worked with Piroska Mészáros, Csilla Lilla Csenge, who graduated from the Cserhalmi class in Kaposvár last year, I also taught a bit. I have not yet worked with Kinga Kátai and Éva Túróczi. I am very excited that I can help you play your roles to the best of your ability.
There would be a chance to come up and show me.
Inevitably this would seem like the easiest thing to do, but I know it’s not a good thing. The way I play is mine. My soul, my body, my viscera, my arm, my voice.
Someone else has to do it differently, in no way like I would play. I try very hard not to play.
Sometimes he ran up on stage to clarify certain situations. What if you came here, stayed there a little bit, things like that? As the place is an abandoned theater, we had many opportunities to play by set designer Péter Ondraschek. I had to try it several times to see if it could really do what I envisioned from below, but I didn’t want to play it at all.
How did acting come to your mind?
I see five women in front of me who were connected to a man with very strong threads. Your daughter, your mother, your ex-wife, your widow, and a former co-worker who have stronger or more subtle conflicts with each other. Somehow, everyone loved this man very much. They must be polished together to fulfill the will of man.
Is it important that they have to come together to save a theater?
Our viewers, if we can finally play again, they will obviously understand exactly the baseline:
the theater must not be allowed to die.
This does not need to be explained. However, to fulfill Michael’s will, they must resolve a series of conflicts that can only be successful together.
This is a message that is valid elsewhere.
There are many misunderstandings around us.
We have reached the peak of communication opportunities, but we cannot communicate.
It often comes to mind, and not just lately, that people need to undergo a testing process. It doesn’t matter what the temperament of the individual company actors is, it doesn’t matter what they think about the world anyway, because they have to forge together during the weeks of the rehearsal process. A performance will only be successful if all the will and talent of those who participate in it go in one direction when the curtain is raised.
As a director or actor, do you have more responsibility for a performance?
The actor wears his own skin to the fair every night. If success doesn’t come from something, you feel like it’s your own failure. I have also experienced that after a fantastic trial period, success did not come. In such moments, one desperately racks his head about what he could do better, better. Now, however, I am lost in M3, the last time I went to Nyíregyháza, because I was thinking about what else to try, what would be better for the actress, the scene, the performance.
What role do we see again on stage?
At the beginning of May we will start rehearsing the theatrical adaptation of Magda Szabó’s novel, The door piece at the National Theater. You can then see if it’s built in, what I thought of during qualifying. It never hurts if an actor doesn’t just pay attention to himself on stage. When I started my career, I also admired an older partner because he always saw exactly the space, the situation, the other characters around him. I also tried to pay attention to this.
What do you see now, if you look a little further, in what situation do you think the Hungarian acting profession is?
It is very strange what is happening. This is a complex subject that I can only touch at the moment, and it cannot just be touched. It is true that people who think boldly in art institutions need training. University…
I read the letter when the procession started from Szentkirályi Street to Parliament.
I was also there when a hundred actresses sang a song in Rákóczi út and the crowd stood on the Erzsébet bridge. I graduated from this school. I have a million threads attached. Gábor Székely and Gábor Zsámbéki were my teachers … They are indestructible threads.
Two names from the line you mentioned at the beginning of the conversation. Masters respected so much that he refused to direct for decades. And now, if the virus and all the other powers want it, they will join your team at the end of March with its premiere in Hungary.
Yes. Curtain up!
(Cover: Dorottya Udvaros. Photo: Index)
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