You work as an actor at the Örkény Theatre and also participate in various independent productions. You write lyrics, rap and do whatever is necessary to reach out from the traditional bricks-and-mortar theatre. Why do you have such diverse interests?
Before college, my childhood friend Attila Gigot Galambos invited me to the amateur ensemble Ad Hoc Group which was headed by Viktor Bodó. I already wrote lyrics there and scenes in hexameter. I temporarily stopped these during college where I studied acting.
Did you never do this earlier?
During secondary school I participated in some performances but I was not so interested that I would have wanted to join the theatre. My interest really only developed in the Ad Hoc Group.
Was it also during this time that you got interested in rap?
Yes, the idea came with Ádám Scönberger. Of course, being two skinny spectacled guys we did not want to sing about the ghetto, drugs, weapons and prostitutes. We wanted to express our opinions in our own way. When we started, at the start of post-communist transformation, we already had some personal experiences. Of course I had some experiences because I was the type of teenager who would smoke and drink and hang out in the local park. I really started enjoying rap when I figured out that I could use the usual aggressive style of the genre to explain something like a quadratic equation.
Many students would be happy to do that.
We wrote such songs on several subjects and performed them in a few schools. Most recently, in a vocational school in District VIII, where they were understandably not that enthusiastic. At the end, a kid asked for the mike and performed a number in freestyle which made me realise that he was doing it much better than us amateurs.
Rap is primarily not about music, but perhaps touches on it. What other links do you have with music?
I am a self-taught trumpet player because I have always wanted to be really good at playing an instrument. I can play it really softly now but that?s not what I?m really after. It?s strange that the things that appeal to me most these days are connected to music. It inspires me when a composer also wants to move away from the academic traditions.
One can also say that about your acting. I remember several of your roles that were slightly more reflective in certain situations than the others around you. Did the directors specifically ask for that?
When they give me a task, they mostly allow me to decide how I do it. But quite often I get roles not so much because that character is really me but because they think I can solve this character. My all-time favourite is the character of Zsombi in Attack. He did not actually say anything. In that character I could really be me.
You have been involved in several different things and I was thus not that surprised that you are directing a play based on a film. What interested you in that?
If I want to use some big words, I can say that I?m looking for a room. This was actually the motto of one of our shows in the Ad Hoc Group. This always interests me. Just like it occupies Viktor Bodó, I think, who directed in the Katona József Theatre, was a Hungarian film star, then became a renowned director on the Austrian and German theatre scene, but in the meantime there was still a Sputnik Shipping Company and Behaviour Study Institute. And Andor Lukáts has the same attitude. I had been interested in the Sanyi and Aranka Theatre in the past but then they closed it for lack of financing. But when they reopened, I decided to join.
Many who work in the theatre are looking for a room but what does it actually mean to you?
I want to live the way I live: the money I earn, whether in Örkény or anywhere else, I want to use to create small performances. That?s my hobby. I don?t want to apply for funding because it involves so much uncertainty and stress that it?s not worth it for me.
What are these small performances anyway?
I can only talk about them using commonplaces: they are plays without restrictions. And if the audience is interested, that?s great. For instance I find it very easy to write lyrics, they just come forward. And if I perform them at a concert, that?s a certain feeling. I really enjoy it now that as against one or two songs, I can write a whole performance worth of songs.
And how about acting? Does it come by itself or do you have to make an effort?
It involves more work, I do have to work hard.
Are you not interested in other types of musical theatre? How about the operetta?
We?ll soon see. I had the first personal experience with it when I was in The Count of Luxembourg in Szolnok and Bori Kállai was the primadonna. Dániel Kovács will direct a contemporary operetta at the Katona József Theatre soon, with music by Tamás Matkó, text by András Vinna and songs by me. It would be exciting to revive this genre because it has become outdated, yet it is very much part of the Hungarian spirit.
Going back to Thelma and Louise: the film involves music but the first impression of the viewer is that this is not a musical. How did the idea come about.
As with many times before, it started with the actors. There were two actresses we wanted to work with and the film just came up. I do not have any links with it, I just saw the film when I was still a kid. They also liked the idea but then the performance did not materialise. Now we have started working with two opera singers I know from the theatre.
There are not too many theatre pieces where actresses can give a diverse performance. Why would that interest a young man who has worked in theatre in many different ways?
These two girls are witty, virtuoso and talented and I hope the performance will demonstrate this. I believe women have a different understanding of the world. I had to realise this because of the actresses and other theatre staff around me, and even as a child, I used to have many female friends. That?s why I thought it was important to have the Two Old Ladies, When They Set Off performance at the Örkény because it showed women in a universal way. It bothers me that this only appears in theatre randomly and as an exotic feature. I became aware of this when at the question and answer session following an Arturo Ui performance, someone asked Sándor Zsótér why he had picked a women to play the leading role. And he replied that in the company Éva Kerekes was most suitable for the role.
And does that not bother you that it feels a bit like an agenda? That?s what puts many people off.
I do not think of it as an agenda but as practice. One simply realises that when a man plays a woman, there is something ticklish about it. But in the other direction, women seem to be able to bring out more from male roles. I generalise when I?m saying this, because an actor can always show something unique regardless of whether being a man or a woman.
Strange, many men do not think of this in a similar situation.
I don?t know how it is, I simply have had some experiences that made me draw such conclusions. It?s not the only truth though, and not an agenda, it just worked out this way.
Interviewer: Lilla Proics / Photo: Bence Kovács
