It has been reported in the Hungarian press that a poster for your production of Lysistrata for the Croatian National Theatre -- which shows a phallus sculpted from marzipan -- has caused quite a stir. Even the main sponsor, the oil company INA, has withdrawn its support. Is there really such an air of scandal?
The oil company only withdrew its support from this production, it will support another one. That is, no money was lost. The scandal is not that big, in fact, it is not a scandal as everybody says it is. Somebody from MTI (the Hungarian Press Agency) called a couple of days ago and asked me why there was a phallus on the poster. I asked if we couldn't rather talk about what the performance is about. It went thus far before I hung up the phone and asked to be called back if the questions are about the production. Later, the journalist sent question that were not about the poster, but the press picked up on it. I've read some great headlines on the internet. All of the tickets for all of the performances have been sold out, and nobody made a big fuss. The fact that INA did not want to be on the poster - and I stress that there are about 15 other sponsors on the poster, that is, it would not have been the only one - is a matter of their own taste. That the matter has been so blown up in Hungary is just degrading and exasperating. They don't write that a Hungary director has been invited, based on his previous work, to Croatia's biggest theatre, that the tickets are sold out and that everybody is interested in the production, but about what is on the poster.
The poster refers, rather bluntly, to the fact that sexuality, and the lack thereof, is one of the most important elements of Aristophanes' comedies.
Aristophanes wrote 2,500 years ago that enemies of the arriving men think their erections are weapons. Please read Lysistrata before anybody says anything. The idea for the poster came from this, and with the theatre's complete agreement. As there were not any graphic artists there that could do the job quickly, Ádám Árpád Szabó, with whom I have worked for years, did it. The photograph, by the way, is of a cake made by a famous Hungarian confectionary. This weekend there was a carnival here - the biggest after the Venice carnival - and every kind of costume had an artificial phallus and the people made fun of these. The Croatian press has reacted surprisingly normally to the matter. For example, I read an article in which the asked MPs what they thought about the performance. They said they were curiously anticipating it and had had a good laugh about the whole matter.
You picked the piece together with the theatre. Why exactly Lysistrata?
The theatre is having a Greek season and they asked me for three pieces. In the end we agreed on a comedy. The piece is about how to stop a war. The women try to take the men at their most sensitive point to make them carry on with their business and not involve themselves in a power struggle. There is something that can be said in this theatre piece, even today, as it is rather sad that little has changed in 2,500 years.
What is it like to work with a Croatian company?
The theatre is the same all over the world, thank God, and everybody works to put on a good performance, regardless of anything else. There are some very open, very expressive and very good actors here. I have a fantastic interpreter, Iván Tomek, who helps a lot. I can work at the same tempo and in the same way as I can in Hungary.
Any way we see it, woman is at the centre of the piece as well as the stage. Are there people who expect a feminist overtone from the piece?
Many have written about this, but I'm not in agreement with them. The women try to affect the men's masculinity with their femininity. They don't want to transform into men. They only want a return of some trapping of normality to their lives. The cohesive element in the women's being is that they try to operate as a society and end the war - which means something a little different in Croatia than in Hungary.
Interviewer: Éva Kelemen / Photo: hnk-zajc.hr, kamo.hr
