You Can Never Be Lonely on Stage - Máté Mészáros

Máté Mészáros

After graduating from acting school, you purposely looked for work opportunities away from Budapest and you have repeatedly stated that the more intimate working environment and important roles you received in Eger make up for being away from the capital. Is your optimism still unchanged?

 

If what you are asking is whether I would make the same choice once again and whether all young graduates should follow this example, then I say yes. I think it is very good if you start your career this way. What's important, actually, is not being away from Budapest but the fact that due to the current structure of theatres, one only gets the opportunity to play frequently, continually and in a great variety of roles outside Budapest. If a performance is slightly unsuccessful then it is taken off the programme much earlier here. In Pest, you may have to live with a performance, a role, for years. It is a terrible burden when a young person feels that he or she has not been truly successful in a role and it may negatively affect their future career if they have to keep experiencing this one evening after another. A performance usually runs for just 2 or 3 months here. Of course, this may hurt if it happens to be a good one. From time to time, I would quite like to try returning to a role after two years. Despite this, I still think it is not bad that I am here, at a place where I perform a lot. This might of course change after a while. One might want to perform less but always something great, instead of standing on stage every day and rehearsing continually.

 

 

I now feel that I have come to a turning point, which obviously did not happen overnight. I feel that with The Pillowman I have arrived at a checkpoint, a milestone in my development as an actor. I think what I have achieved in this role is an accumulation of all I had done before. Since this, I have started wondering "what else is there that I can do now," which way is it that I should move on. Since The Pillowman, I have been unable to find a role that fully occupied me. I feel as if I am full of unused energy. With The Pillowman I thought it would be so great to play only such roles, to work with texts that are on the same level, in terms of volume and character.

 

Are you perhaps taking into consideration that this type of theatre is more common in Pest, whereas theatre in Eger is still dominated by traditions? Does this not draw you to Pest?

 

I do not think this is so, or at least I hope it is not so. True, it would be different to play for instance The Pillowman in Pest. Yet, at the moment I would still be wary of working as an actor in Pest. It is not about not being good enough. Most actors play there every evening but rehearse much less. I rehearse every day because I have 4-5 premieres a year and by the time one performance runs out, another one is starting. I am not saying that rehearsing is better than performing before an audience, but I find it interesting. I might become apathetic if all I had to do was perform every evening and not rehearse. It is the rehearsals that keep my nerves alert and put my acting skills to the test. Especially good rehearsals with a good director, that one can really learn from. I do not think of Budapest as the perfect place to be. I think Hungarian theatre is currently in a state of crisis and even the theatres in Pest are not good.

 

 

If you want a short answer, then the trophy is not on my shelf. As for the role, I consider it as a summary of my earlier work. I managed to achieve a level of simplicity and focus that was partly the result of performing on a studio stage. I perhaps managed to show that this was not a realistic play, a realistic story. This role was very important for me personally because it was a professional synthesis. A little life, a little career, the acting school...in the first two years I felt that everything I had learnt was just settling down. Two years are needed just to understand things. Actually, all your performances during this time fall victim of this process because there will be something missing from each performance, but at the same time, you will start understanding things. I somehow managed to catch up with myself in The Pillowman. My age, my character and my experiences so far, everything I had learnt, are in this role.

 

In March you also received a Jászai Mari award. Did that make a change?

 

I consider both awards as some sort of an acknowledgement of achievement. I managed to get the POSZT award because I had moved away from Budapest and played all those many roles over five years. Some of them I played well, some not so well. But the award was a sign to me that I had made the right choice and this was the right path for me. The Jászai award may be another message, to all actors who are young graduates, showing them that it is worth leaving Budapest to work. This award is perhaps also an acknowledgement of my work in Eger, where I have been over the past few years.  

 

 

Some of them were agreed upon, because Andris (director András Dömötör) for example always had a problem with the ending and so we made some changes. But the only thing that happened was that the performance "got its own life," like all good performances should. Someone all of a sudden comes up with a new emphasis, they stand further behind their role and then something also happens in reaction. Or when someone unexpectedly makes a new discovery. For instance in Pest, during a performance at the Kamra, I almost put out Gergő Kaszás' eye with a pen. What happened was that I pushed a pen against his eye with my forehead and he shouted out and fell on the floor, with his eye bleeding. For a moment, I did not even know if I had pushed his eye out or not, This obviously influenced the next few minutes of the performance but also made it better.

 

Before attending the acting school, you planned to be a rock musician and you are still an active member of the actors' band Hegedűs Az Áruló. Do you ever regret that you eventually chose a different path?

 

No, there was actually no other path because I was not practicing enough. It is more like a hobby that I take very seriously. But for instance when we did our usual annual performance from the songs of Ádám Dévényi at Zsámbék, I had to play the guitar quite a lot. That was very good, I felt like a real musician. It felt very good to play with my classmate Iván Fenyő who is getting increasingly immersed in piano playing. Music is a wonderful thing. "One can melt in it" much better, it is clearly a strong sensation of finding each other. In the theatre there is always some who says "listen people, I did not like that." Whereas when musicians go up on stage, they agree in "what key, what rhythm and what pieces" they would play and that's it. Actors cannot do that. We need those six weeks during which we sweat blood to achieve the "right sound" for the play.

 

 

The fact that we know each other well had a good influence on working together. I understand what he is saying, not that his sentences would be difficult to understand (laughing), but because there is no standard descriptive language, which I believe is a problem in the Hungarian theatre today. Every director uses a certain set of expressions, a style, and for the actors to understand the message it is helpful to know his or her vocabulary. It is very good that I already know his way of thinking and he also knows all the silly details about me as an actor, so we can handle each other.

 

The performances of The Kitchen and The Ambitious involve almost the entire troupe from Eger. The former even has invited guests and, if I was counting correctly, there were as many as 28 people on stage. Can any individual actor stand out in such a large cast?

 

(laughing) It's not about standing out, that's not the objective. The Kitchen is an ensemble play where playing together and creating a common atmosphere are very important. Just like in music or in a composition where every chord is important. If you leave one out, it will not be the same. Different actors must coordinate their playing in a way that the text should have the same effect as a musical composition would. It is very interesting that I must pay attention to people on stage with whom I do not even have a scene with. It is very difficult to rehearse, but once it all comes together and you feel "my God, this really worked!" then it is great joy and audiences will also appreciate this. Just like in the circus: who is the main performer, the one who is doing somersaults or the one who catches them? Who has the most difficult role and who are you clapping for? In such plays it clearly shows that theatre is also team-play. In the best cases, it always is. You can never be lonely on stage, like for instance in a saxophone solo where the instrument plays on its own after a certain point. Whereas during a Shakespeare monologue, you must pay attention to the others just as if they were all standing around you.

 

Interviewer: Éva Kelemen / Photo: Máté Nándorfi