The performance has recently been shown in Vienna.
This was the third time that we were featured at Wiener Festwochen. We played Hard to be a God in a lorry there, too. It was shown basically in the city centre, in a tram garage and it was received well by audiences. Unfortunately, in Budapest we were unable to pay for a more central location. The play has a stronger effect in such a setting because it is easier to feel that these problems actually surround us: it makes us face reality and creates a truer response.
It seems your film Tender Creature ? The Frankenstein Plan, which competed in Cannes, and the play Hard to Be a God already indicate in their titles something that characterises most of your works: exploring the limitations of human existence and the relation of man to creation and God.
What makes me curious is the experience that one can have by occupying God?s position. For instance when someone campaigns in the name of God or gains power by manipulating others and therefore rules above them like a God. This can be a person in our family, as shown in the film, or society that rules above us, like in the play. This position yields a lot of dramatic material for me and I question - especially in the play - whether one should be allowed to play God. Is it acceptable to think of ourselves as Gods and is it acceptable to think that we are the only ones in possession of truth. That?s what the performance explores from different sides. We wanted to show that each side has some truth to it and these ?separate? truths can then collide.
When people are in trouble, this can be manifested rather clearly, regardless of whether they are religious or not.
Religious sentiments get very strong in eras when values are lost and I believe there is a serious crisis of values at the moment. We can feel a tremor that follows the emptying of great ideologies and some sort of restoration: conventions and stereotypes get stronger, religions and religious crazes thrive wherever we look. And for me, who fanatically opposes fanatics, it is a difficult experience to be surrounded by so many faiths.
 |
Your works seem to present a series of different realities opening up. They are a like smaller realities in bigger ones, and one can immediately make the other relative. To what extent is this process conscious?
It depends on whether we are talking about theatre or film. Because the two genres relate to reality in very different ways. I think in theatre nothing is realistic because everything works through stylisation. But in the case of film the situation is quite the opposite: stylisation appears as reality. Despite that, in the type of theatre that I do, we use a large amount of documents, for instance in Hard to be a God we used some five hundred pages of research. Every motif in the play came from this, every single theme was unearthed and brought to the surface from that research material. That?s why I?d like to emphasise that the story itself is based on these documents, in order to maintain their simplicity and banality. Yet, in the moment they are transferred to the stage, they become part of a stylised world. Illusions that depict a situation as if it was reality.
Where do these documents come from?
We have received them from civil organisations, many of them dealing with prostitution and human trafficking. They were very revealing works.
Was your script made on the basis of these?
Yes, and a novel by the Strugatsky brothers. The play was developed using the logic of the novel to some extent, and basically mixing the two elements. In terms of directions, I would say the documents provided some 70 percent and the novel the remaining 30 percent. We mainly lifted one important motif from the latter: how an observer can enter a story and start shaping the events.
In your films you work with long edits and few words but in the theatre you seem to have a different approach to words.
I use much more text in the theatre and much more humour and irony. It is of course a special type of irony because I do not expect viewers to keep sniggering throughout the performance. But I think one can sense a lot of irony in Ice, as well as in the stage version of The Frankenstein Plan and also in Hard to be a God.
But it seems you are also playing on a balance between gravity and an ironic approach.
Yes, that?s indeed true but I think the world that surrounds us is actually like that. It has very very many layers, a cohesive world has ceased to exist and there are so many things, fragments and rubble on us. The aesthetics I try to make visible basically tries to lift this layered structure into a work of art: a horror scene can be followed by an ironic image, a realistic speech by an incredibly infantile part, which can work against cohesion because it uses aesthetic contradictions within the same piece. A na?ve viewer would quite often already possess this layered and contradictory structure because he or she sees it every day. My performances do not set out to work on the intellect in the sense that people should purely observe the world through their head. This theatre is actually a bit like a happening because I am most interested in involving people in the events. Eventually of course we reach an intellectual experience because we have recognised something. But that is already a lonely process because the control of understanding does not happen during the actual play.
 |
Some artists keep reappearing in your films and performances, including professionals and amateurs.
There is a team of some 10-18 people, but not everyone plays in every piece. It is a slightly stereotypical image that?s somehow stuck with me, that I only use with amateurs. They are actually more trained actors than amateurs. But of course in a culture where Lili Monori is considered an amateur by many, I will proudly accept the amateur status. In my eyes she is an incredibly great actress, one that has taught me most about acting.
You have also mentioned the role of fate in connection with actors. Someone who has grown up in an institute will bear an expression of fate and this can add something extra.
They are the ones who do not ask for it and they still bear their fate. Some actors do, too.
You just look at their faces and see it in their body and movement?
That?s mostly enough. Indeed, I prefer that but it?s all a matter of taste. I can express my inner world more precisely with faces like that.
You?ve said that both film and theatre are sensual genres, yet in the performance of Hard to be a God you express sensuality to such an extent that it almost turns into the non-sensual.
During every performance there are moments when theatre as a safety net disappears, and I do try to utilise these moments. A safety net that holds up the viewer and tells them that they are in a theatre and the story has its own frame. To me the question is where I can cut this up and where the moment comes when the viewer falls out of this net into another experience, another matrix. These are the important moments to me, but they can only be created with a special set of actors and a peculiar dramaturgy.
At the end of the play, a film is projected on the side of the lorry, showing a boat with a person in it, drifting on water. I could not help associating to your film Delta.
There are indeed similarities. According to the story, this scientist comes to an alien planet, which is the Earth. This is the original science fiction situation from book, when a scientist travels to an alien planet, turned the other way round. But if the Earth is an alien planet, then what is the other alien planet where the scientist comes from? There were many ideas for that and eventually Marci Ágh came up with an answer: that it should be of a very idealistic nature, and it should mean some sort of peace. And the world of the Delta is so beautiful, like being in Eden. We shot that scene along a wall of reefs on Lake Velencei.
Are you planning to make this play into a film?
I cannot tell. One thing is for certain, that it was very enjoyable in the making and that we laughed a lot, even though it?s a tough performance.
Interviewer: Márta Péter / Photo: kultura.hu
