I was no one's protégée - Interview with Sándor Zsótér / 2016
Sándor Zsótér isn’t interested in portraying Richard III as an identifiable dictator, just as he does not stage a bloodbath in Maladype Theatre's production. He fights against superficiality with a nearly 200-year-old translation. We talked to the director-actor about Son of Saul, audience reactions, and why he went to direct at the Hungarian National Theatre.
In Son of Saul, you played the Doctor, a character based on the life of Miklós Nyiszli, who worked as a pathologist alongside Mengele in the Sonderkommando. How much did you gain from the film's success?
Like the light of a firefly. As much as I deserve. Trigorin says in The Seagull, “If it's praise, I feel good, and if it's a scolding, then I'm in a bad mood for a couple of days.” I've experienced both. I would have liked to see the Oscars in Los Angeles, though.
I didn't think you'd be interested.
Why not? Of course I'm interested. Who wouldn't want to be at the Oscars if they were part of a competing movie? Two years ago, I was in Cannes with Mundruczó's film, and it felt really good. László Nemes and his team invited me last year too, but I couldn't go. I'm glad the film won. I was also happy when László called me for the casting. In every film, I experience what it's like to taste your own medicine. László also said what I usually tell actors: don't let emotion modulate a sentence, let its meaning do it. Because people start to chirp, wanting to elicit sympathy out of a desire to conform.
You haven't directed a stage play on the theme of the Holocaust, have you?
Brecht's plays—The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui and Fear and Misery —are about how we create dictators, how fear and mistrust paralyze people, and why we believe that this cannot happen to us.
You also directed one of Brecht's plays at the Hungarian National Theatre this season. You already directed Life of Galileo 14 years ago in Szeged. Isn't there another Brecht play that interests you?
Of course there is. One of the actors, Zsolt Trill inspired me to direct this play. Dramaturg Júlia Ungár suggested it, feeling that it was important how generations teach each other, as I have been doing for twenty years. In the play, Trill teaches a twenty-year-old, and Trill is taught by Mari Törőcsik.
Did Mari Törőcsik really ask you when you finally wanted to work with her?
I played in Gyula Maár's film Töredék (Fragment), and both Gyula (Mari's husband) and Mari were satisfied with me. I felt I had worked hard enough to be able to invite her to play in Zoltán Balázs's Maladype Theatre, in the production of The Marriage of Figaro. When Attila Vidnyánszky asked me to direct at the National Theatre, it was only natural that I wanted to work with her. Her energy is invigorating. She tells young people tricks that a director doesn't know. How to enter and exit, sit down and stand up, where to pause in the text, where not to rush.
Did the theatre scene's reaction bother you when you went to direct at Vidnyánszky's National Theatre two years ago?
They don't see it as me doing Ibsen's Brand, which had never been performed in Hungary before, but rather—how can I put it—they see it as a betrayal that I'm working at the National Theatre. I envisioned that from then on, no theatre in Budapest would ever invite me back. But I don't think that's the only reason they don't seek me out. I've failed, I've fought with people, I've given things back, I haven't accepted impossible conditions. Last year in Budapest, I did Othello at Studio K, and now Zoli Balázs has called me to Maladype. I've always been on my own, I've never been anyone's protégée.
Your performances are divisive. Do you care about how the audience reacts?
Success doesn't build me up, I can't store it up, I can't accumulate it in my pantry like fat. Failure cuts the ground from under my feet. At the premiere of Der Freischütz at the Erkel Theatre, a group of audience members booed loudly, and I stood there wondering what they hated about it. Were they expecting something that they didn’t get? And what could they have expected? I want them to love it. But I don't know what is it that they will love. Perhaps a bird walking in a green forest and blue fields. It's an open question. Now we're rehearsing Richard III at Maladype. It's a play that everyone "knows": a hunchback, some woman, "My kingdom for a horse." I know I should put this in the prime minister's mouth, but I won't. Why shouldn't people be trusted to find the relevance of a 400-year-old play today and be curious about what the creators are thinking?
And what are they thinking now?
First and foremost, I am interested in how the environment contributes to the rise of a dictator. I am interested in language. I dug out Ede Szigligeti's 150-year-old translation. I'm counting on the disciplining power of language to make the words believable. Precisely because this archaic language is an obstacle, it forces us to convey the message in a way that is not superficial.
The thing you're leaning on looks like an autopsy table. Are you preparing for a bloodbath?
Set designer Mária Ambrus found this baker's table, made of tin, with flour stains on it. I don't do autopsies; I can't handle blood very well. I wouldn't like all the cleaning up. The inner blood of people, the actors and the audience, is enough for me.
Katalin Szemere, nol.hu, 2016
Translated by Lena Megyeri
In Son of Saul, you played the Doctor, a character based on the life of Miklós Nyiszli, who worked as a pathologist alongside Mengele in the Sonderkommando. How much did you gain from the film's success?
Like the light of a firefly. As much as I deserve. Trigorin says in The Seagull, “If it's praise, I feel good, and if it's a scolding, then I'm in a bad mood for a couple of days.” I've experienced both. I would have liked to see the Oscars in Los Angeles, though.
I didn't think you'd be interested.
Why not? Of course I'm interested. Who wouldn't want to be at the Oscars if they were part of a competing movie? Two years ago, I was in Cannes with Mundruczó's film, and it felt really good. László Nemes and his team invited me last year too, but I couldn't go. I'm glad the film won. I was also happy when László called me for the casting. In every film, I experience what it's like to taste your own medicine. László also said what I usually tell actors: don't let emotion modulate a sentence, let its meaning do it. Because people start to chirp, wanting to elicit sympathy out of a desire to conform.
You haven't directed a stage play on the theme of the Holocaust, have you?
Brecht's plays—The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui and Fear and Misery —are about how we create dictators, how fear and mistrust paralyze people, and why we believe that this cannot happen to us.
You also directed one of Brecht's plays at the Hungarian National Theatre this season. You already directed Life of Galileo 14 years ago in Szeged. Isn't there another Brecht play that interests you?
Of course there is. One of the actors, Zsolt Trill inspired me to direct this play. Dramaturg Júlia Ungár suggested it, feeling that it was important how generations teach each other, as I have been doing for twenty years. In the play, Trill teaches a twenty-year-old, and Trill is taught by Mari Törőcsik.
Did Mari Törőcsik really ask you when you finally wanted to work with her?
I played in Gyula Maár's film Töredék (Fragment), and both Gyula (Mari's husband) and Mari were satisfied with me. I felt I had worked hard enough to be able to invite her to play in Zoltán Balázs's Maladype Theatre, in the production of The Marriage of Figaro. When Attila Vidnyánszky asked me to direct at the National Theatre, it was only natural that I wanted to work with her. Her energy is invigorating. She tells young people tricks that a director doesn't know. How to enter and exit, sit down and stand up, where to pause in the text, where not to rush.
Did the theatre scene's reaction bother you when you went to direct at Vidnyánszky's National Theatre two years ago?
They don't see it as me doing Ibsen's Brand, which had never been performed in Hungary before, but rather—how can I put it—they see it as a betrayal that I'm working at the National Theatre. I envisioned that from then on, no theatre in Budapest would ever invite me back. But I don't think that's the only reason they don't seek me out. I've failed, I've fought with people, I've given things back, I haven't accepted impossible conditions. Last year in Budapest, I did Othello at Studio K, and now Zoli Balázs has called me to Maladype. I've always been on my own, I've never been anyone's protégée.
Your performances are divisive. Do you care about how the audience reacts?
Success doesn't build me up, I can't store it up, I can't accumulate it in my pantry like fat. Failure cuts the ground from under my feet. At the premiere of Der Freischütz at the Erkel Theatre, a group of audience members booed loudly, and I stood there wondering what they hated about it. Were they expecting something that they didn’t get? And what could they have expected? I want them to love it. But I don't know what is it that they will love. Perhaps a bird walking in a green forest and blue fields. It's an open question. Now we're rehearsing Richard III at Maladype. It's a play that everyone "knows": a hunchback, some woman, "My kingdom for a horse." I know I should put this in the prime minister's mouth, but I won't. Why shouldn't people be trusted to find the relevance of a 400-year-old play today and be curious about what the creators are thinking?
And what are they thinking now?
First and foremost, I am interested in how the environment contributes to the rise of a dictator. I am interested in language. I dug out Ede Szigligeti's 150-year-old translation. I'm counting on the disciplining power of language to make the words believable. Precisely because this archaic language is an obstacle, it forces us to convey the message in a way that is not superficial.
The thing you're leaning on looks like an autopsy table. Are you preparing for a bloodbath?
Set designer Mária Ambrus found this baker's table, made of tin, with flour stains on it. I don't do autopsies; I can't handle blood very well. I wouldn't like all the cleaning up. The inner blood of people, the actors and the audience, is enough for me.
Katalin Szemere, nol.hu, 2016
Translated by Lena Megyeri