After the March premiere, the actors of Maladype will return to Sibiu for the first time on April 20 and 21 to perform The Master and Margarita again with their Romanian colleagues. The performance of Wolland, a young artist who was awarded the Junior Prima Prize last November, also reveals why he enjoys performing in smaller spaces.

- How many interviews have you been giving lately? Do people pay more attention to you since your awards?

- The most recent recognition, the Junior Prima Award, is very important to me. It is an extraordinary honor and a big help because it provides an opportunity for me to continue working, as independents – like us – are in a difficult situation. I hope that more attention will be paid to me and that this recognition will have a positive outcome, but I also feel that my work is being noticed professionally, and thank God, our audience is growing steadily.

- The performances at your Base are relatively "small-scale" for this audience. Have you spotted anyone from the Junior Prima Award jury at one of your performances?

- I don’t remember if they were at the Base, but we don’t only perform there. For years we’ve performed at the Thália Theater and the Trafó, and you can't really tell who’s sitting in the audience there. For example, Eszenyi Enikő – who handed me the Junior Prima Award – was extremely generous and helpful when she allowed us to hold our Maladype 10th-anniversary gala at the Pesti Theatre last year.

- You're mostly seen in studio performances. Can you imagine performing on a large stage in front of hundreds of people?

- I’ve performed on larger stages before, though less often recently, so I do have some experience. I think the important thing is for the actor to properly expand and reduce the energy field around them. It’s not just about technique, like opening your mouth wider or exaggerating gestures, but the energy conveyed by the actor must be opened in a way that even in the twenty-fifth row, the resonance is still felt, not just in the second row—so it doesn’t "fall off" the stage. On the other hand, in a small theater, you have to be careful not to overdo it with too much energy, because it becomes repellent after a while. It’s a matter of fine-tuning. The highly respected Mari Törőcsik once told me when we performed together in The Marriage of Figaro that she’s always nervous when performing in small spaces because she feels like there’s no safety net underneath her. There’s no smoke, no big costume, nothing to help my acting. Instead, I’m just there, a meter from the audience, and they can see if I'm sweating or sense whether I’m in a good or bad mood. If I’m not careful or aware, I could easily slip up. I like that, though, because you can’t lie.

- Is there any kind of training that helps you maintain this level of concentration?

- Yes, training is very important. Some of our performances require strong physical conditioning, but this is not necessarily related to whether we perform in a small theater or a larger space. When the audience is so close, it’s crucial for the actor to be in good mental shape because they need to react to things happening offstage as well. For example, if someone suddenly falls off their chair or a phone rings, you can’t ignore it because all sixty people in the room are focusing on that ringing phone. I have to decide whether it’s necessary to address it or not. This doesn’t mean I’ll shout at the audience, but I try to intelligently incorporate the situation into the performance. It’s a matter of balance and attention. It’s essential to stay open in such situations, and of course, that needs to be conditioned somehow.

- Do you get these kinds of training with Zoltán Balázs? Do you know of other companies that put this much effort into it?

- I’m not sure how others work. Where I’ve been so far, I haven’t encountered something like this, but I wouldn’t claim that this kind of training is unique to us. I think what we do is quite unique, but of course, every independent company has its own approach. The rehearsal techniques we use, for example, may not be our invention, but Zoli Balázs applies them in his own way. There have been many before us in this profession, and there’s a lot to learn from, but it’s always best if you shape the method to your own image. For example, in our process, the actors in the first month of a two-month rehearsal process usually don’t know what role they’ll play or what the final version of the play will look like. The work doesn’t begin with us receiving the script, reading it, and then working on the scenes, but we work with the entire material, improvise, and then reduce the play based on these improvisations. In Egmont, for example, we had to shorten our own texts.

- More and more non-professional people are attending your rehearsals. What does it feel like to have the audience watch you from the beginning?

- We first tried open rehearsals with an audience during King Ubu. Since then, we haven’t had an entirely open rehearsal process, but we’ve had visits from high school students, and we also often visit them. These are very important encounters, sometimes even more important than the final performance. It’s a wonderful experience to see a young person attend a rehearsal and suddenly have their eyes light up with the love of theater that they may not have even known they had. It happens because they see us struggling, and they also have a say in how a certain situation should unfold.

- Do you feel like you're giving them something good during these encounters?

- I feel that by not hiding my own stumbles when creating a character, I can establish a more human connection with the audience. I think this is liberating for them as well because it helps them love our work more, and they begin to see something more than just literature in the theater. It feels like when they watch a rehearsal, a wall comes down, and they can see that we’re not doing some abstract purple thing, but something interpretable that’s actually not that simple. Afterward, they start watching the performance differently, and for me, it’s also liberating because I get to think aloud about a role publicly before the premiere.

- Your performances are held quite frequently. Do you manage to fully develop your character over so many performances? You’ve said that you’re often more interested in rehearsals, but what is it that still excites you in a performance?

- I really enjoy being on stage. The challenge is to always be able to offer something new. I would be the first to get bored if I did the same thing over and over, but that would also be impossible. You can’t laugh at the same joke in the same way twice, and you can’t deliver the same line exactly the same way twice. Every night is different. Many of our plays allow room for improvisation, which gives me the opportunity to do something different from night to night. It’s not easy to keep something fresh when performing it so many times. If you’re bored with yourself, your audience will be too.

- They say that an actor is like a candle: giving warmth and light but consuming themselves in the process. What recharges you, and how much does this intense presence on stage wear you down?

- I think it’s more about your personality than professional ability. For example, I’ve always been this way. There are many people who can exhaust themselves, even if they’re just a shop assistant. The thing is, if I care about something, I try to give it my 100%, but if I don’t care, I won’t do it at all. I’m an extreme person, I can’t imagine my life doing something halfway.

- Maladype is eleven years old now, and the Base has been running for several years. Has there been talk of moving to the Jurányi House, where other independent companies perform?

- The unity of independents is very important, but as long as we have the opportunity to perform at our own place, there’s no point in moving. In the Jurányi, you still have to pay rent, and often multiple companies share one rehearsal space. Of course, this doesn’t mean we don’t want to collaborate with others; we’ve also tried to build relationships with other independent companies. Many companies have been forced to leave their previous venues, and for them, Jurányi is a great refuge. Luckily, we still have the Base.

- The uncertainty around funding must have affected you as well, but it seems that Zoltán Balázs didn’t really participate in the protests. Why is that?

- I wouldn’t want to answer for him. His approach is that he doesn’t like to complain. Our common agreement is not to paint the devil on the wall because complaining gets you nowhere. We’re not in a good situation; we’re in a very bad situation. Both the freezing of funds and the delayed payments have affected us deeply. But we try to keep working while we can, with good spirits, paying a lot of attention, and trying not to give in to negative energy.

- Have any state theaters approached you in recent years?

- It would be a completely different thing if a state theater were to offer me something now. I don’t want to judge whether it’s better or worse, but it’s fundamentally different. I feel that I have a place here for now, there’s still room for growth, and I really want to invest these years in a way that I can learn a lot. Of course, I would love to perform in as many places as possible, but right now I’m happy with this work. Recently, we’ve been traveling a lot, and I’m not sure if I would have that kind of opportunity in another company or a state theater.

- This weekend, you will return to Sibiu for the first time to perform The Master and Margarita again with your Romanian colleagues. What does this entail?

- This means that the three of us who are Hungarian actors in the play – Zoli Lendváczky, Erika Tankó, and I – have Romanian counterparts. There are evenings when Wolland, Hella, and Behemoth are played by Romanian actors. Apart from the essence and artistic quality, the two versions are completely different, and this is well represented by the fact that my counterpart for Wolland is a Romanian actress who communicates through sign language, while I speak English, Romanian, and German in the performance.

- What experiences have you gained from performing abroad?

- On the one hand, it was a challenge to overcome the language barriers in a way that I could use the foreign languages as my own. This will never be perfect, but I tried to reach a level where I wasn’t focusing on the exact words I had to say, but could engage with the meaning of the text. If, for example, someone accidentally skips a few lines or doesn’t deliver the expected line, I didn’t want to break character and could respond. On the other hand, it’s been a long time since I performed on a large stage, and this requires a different type of presence, which was good to refresh. Naturally, I also learned a lot from my Romanian colleagues, not just professionally, but also personally. I came back full of impulses, which I can now channel into my work.

- During the rehearsal period, the Maladype Theatre had to do without you for months. How did you manage this?

- Every month, we spent a week and a half at home, and during this time, we played a lot. Of course, we had fewer performances than usual, but all our repertoire shows were included. Additionally, we tried to supplement the Base with various programs, such as performances by Slovak ethnic dancers.

- You’ll be back in Hungary more often in May, but the season is almost over. Do your summer plans start to take shape yet?

- It looks like I’ll be performing less in June, but we’re going to several festivals, so it won’t be a vacation. After that, I’ll be working in July and August too. But before that, we have a premiere at the Base on May 4th, directed by Sándor Zsótér, and if everything goes well, I’ll also have a premiere on May 30th titled The Escape.

Várhegyi András, fidelio.hu, 2013

Translation by Zsuzsanna Juraszek