"A director has to make his mark in his very first performance: if he doesn't succeed at first, he won't look for it later."
The Maladype Theatre is now celebrating its tenth birthday. Instead of celebratory honorifics, should we start with saying "maladipe"? Because sometimes you say "maladájp" and others "maladip".

- It should be pronounced "maladipe", but as a joke I also say "maladájp", as it is pronounced in English at international festivals. In Gypsy, for example, "malagyipe." For me it can be "maladip" or "M.D." also - anything is good. Back then we needed a name that accurately expresses the essence of the spontaneous encounter between Gypsy and non-Gypsy actors during the company's first work (Jack, or the Submission). Maladype means meeting in Gypsy, and since the sound of the word is also very beautiful, we kept it.

- The pictures in your performances are also beautiful. You used to talk a lot about non-verbal theater as your ideal. Somehow, I've always felt that between visuals and text, the latter is secondary for you, for example in Leonce and Lena...

- However, there is a lot of text in Leonce and - although powerful movements accompany the different scene variations - the backbone of the performance is still the precise and clear interpretation of the written material. Regardless, we also have non-verbal solutions, but dramas are not only baroque tangles of visual worlds or acoustic pleasures. There are many conditions for image, text, movement and music to meet, but they are only interesting together. Mostly, everything depends on the condition, readiness and creative energy of the actors: how fresh their brains are. The team has changed over the years, partly because as the leader of an independent troupe, of course, financially I cannot maintain families. If we talk about the leading of the actors, Egg(s)Hell is our most special performance, where there is no text, the actors have to improvise, and I can no longer help them during the performances. Everything is their responsibility. Actually, non-text-centered performances based on non-dramatic material are better for conditioning the actors.

- Then you also say that sometimes the image and text match, other times not. Can you give an example of both?

- It happens that I see something as very good, but others think it is not. For example, "too beautiful" - this is often blamed on me, and I don't really know what to do with it. The clarity, orderliness and discipline of the iconography mean perfect harmony to me. Striving for this is essential in my stage compositions. Such was Pelleas and Melisande, which I consider one of my most beautiful works. Over the years, I realized that if I had left enough time at the beginning after Pelleas... or The Blacks, then over time not only the spectators but also the analysts would have learned to decode each language, but Maladype and I had always changed the language. When they would have said that it was good, we understood, then we jumped to another type of performance, for example Empedocles, in which practically nothing happened while the actor got from one side of the stage or the table to the other, only the whole world turned around and with him. The Man was at the center, around whom everything is constantly changing. I've been directing this ever since, as it's what I'm most interested in: this is what King Ubu and Inferno is about, that's what School for Fools was like, Theomachia and Empedocles.

- And from your point of view, what didn’t work out?

- I do not know. Sanyi Zsótér and I still have a little argument about Acropolis (Wyspianski's play was directed by the two at Bárka - N. H.). He is convinced that it was too big of a task because we did not assess enough what the team at the time could handle. I agree with that, but if we didn't do it then, we would never have gotten to Leonce and Lena, which is now running its eighty-fourth performance. Our first few works were sent to heaven by the critics, then some of them didn't find the handle after that, because our pace changed: our internal development required a different rhythm.

- You mentioned that as an independent it is difficult to support the families of company members. Politics also has a big say in this.

- Of course, but not only politics. Taking care of a company is also a matter of concept, strategy and cooperation. Obviously, the situation of the independents is the most difficult, but I must add that if the selection comes sooner, and in addition to the many small companies there are some that receive guarantees, we would hold it elsewhere. In Poland, for example, they say: you get five years, my friend, in that time show what you are capable of! If we see that you have enough talent, perseverance and perspective, we will give you another ten years. Think about what it's like to work without accounting for everything you've spent operating money on when you know no one is looking. So what's up? Who you know. This is not normal, this is infuriating; and the most infuriating thing is that we can all do something about where we are.

- I've never heard you talk about public affairs, especially not on stage.

- That's why we reflect to the news, even if we don't do “news theater”: in King Ubu, the dailies randomly fall into the hands of Ákos Orosz or Ádám Tompa, but of course everything is always a bit arbitrary with us. Kornél Mundruczó is really interested in this form of theatre-making, and he does it well, but we and I are interested in something completely different, and I'm afraid it wouldn't go well if we turned to it. Many timely ideas will also arise in Don Carlos, but in the meantime the actors are still expressing Schiller, and then Goethe in Egmont. I would never do documentary theater because I am not interested and because there are directors who are really specialists in this. Today's theater is a little too compassionate for me anyway. Too forgiving and conflict-free. A “friendly” rehearsal process became somewhat mandatory.

- You also always say about your company that it is above all cheerful.

- Of course, it is cheerful, but this cheerfulness is given by energy. The real, nerve- and brain-consuming, flowing energy. We still grind and argue with each other.

- And others don’t?

- Others too, but there are many "theaters of love", where the main thing is that the actors do not come into conflict with the partner, the director or the material. Least of all with themselves. Art itself is a conflictual genre. It is not worth trying and playing conflict-free, at most only lightly.

- Then let's take a conflict: your production of The Duchess of Malfi was removed from the program of the National Theater after a few performances. It turns out that it is visually identical to a performance of Oedipus the King...

- I wasn't talking about that kind of conflict. When Mari Törőcsik was accused of embezzling the assets of the Művész Theater, she said that if she had a whole hour on a TV channel where she could talk about all this publicly, she would do it, but not in three minutes. This is too complex, complicated and ugly story for that. I think she spoke about this for the first time in fifteen years on “Záróra”. Here, I would only note that the history of Malfi can be searched in all my directions up to this point. A director has to make his mark in his very first performance: if he doesn't succeed at first, he won't look for it later. Those who have really followed my career know that I have been dealing with the same problem (individual versus collective) and the same signal system for years. From the first moment, opera, puppetry or exotic, Asian, African art are present in my works. Why would I need to copy anyone when I can work from authentic sources?

- The problem here was that Malfi and King Oedipus’ visuals were the same.

- How would it have been the same visually? One depicts an atavistic, Beckettian end-world based on decayed, raw and rough materials, while the other presents a bright gothic visual world woven with oriental minimalism and aesthetics, elaborated in details, in connection with a didactic play such as Malfi. That is why the stage lacked the blood and filth that Hungarian traditions would have "required". Julie Taymor, who directed that Oedipus, borrowed this huge, large-handed, double-headed solution from the Kwakiutl Indians around Vancouver Island or the Eugungun Flali masks from Ivory Coast. It's not her invention, just like it's not mine. These were made for various tribal ceremonies, from which Taymor most likely drew as we did for Amalfi. But (theatre) renewal cannot work without learning about the cultural traditions of humanity. This affair was a nasty trap into which we all carelessly walked. And the worst part is the procedure itself: it was as if they were renovating the performance, and then there was no word, no speech, I found out from somewhere else that it was taken down. I learned from it. I consider Malfi to be one of the most important performances of my career, and I always think of the actors playing in it with great affection, because they took a risky and unusual path with me during the rehearsal process. László Sinkó's portrayal of Bosola was the greatest acting performance of the season.

- Then let's move on. You are no longer only directing rarely played authors, and of course you are looking for your own way, but you are also using recipes. Do you usually watch other directors' interpretations before your work?

- Yes, I think it is very important for a director to be informed and prepared. I read everything I can.

- Aren't you afraid that it will bind your imagination?

- No way! Just because I read Thomas Mann, I don't start writing and speaking in his style. And I don't need to take pictures from others, since I have my own dreams and independent visions of the world and myself. I had good teachers who believed in the continuous development of association skills, and I live according to their guidance.

- Orsolya Kővári conducted several interviews with you. You told her you knew exactly where you are heading to.

- That's right, and I'll tell her. I promised, because for a long time she’s been trying to get out of me what that piece is that I'm really interested in.

- But why don't you do that right now?

- Because I'm not there yet. This is the lesson of the Acropolis, you can't rush the things.

- And if you were to experiment over and over again the perfroamnce that interests you the most?

- No, you can't store the jam five times either. New piece, new challenge. If I’ll be alive, I will do it. I have great actors, but they have to get there with me. Anyway, there are several things holding it back, we perform a lot, we travel a lot, I also have foreign directings waiting for me, who knows when there will be time for that. I would also like to write a book, and that would also require a quiet semester.

- That's what I wanted to ask. You reflect quite a lot on your own work.

- Which is perhaps not typical for directors in Hungary. Now for the anniversary, after crazy work, a book about ten years of Maladype has been published. We also organized a birthday gala, which finally brings people together not against something, but for something. But nothing ends with the holiday, we keep working. We're still alive, I think an independent company can't show more than that today.

Noémi Herczog, Revizoronline, 2011

Translation by Zsuzsanna Juraszek