theatre Archives | Bálint Botos

Constellations

Fatherless (Platonov)

Pillars of Society

Purple Acacia

The Rest Will Be Familiar to You from Cinema

The Storm

The suicide

The Broken Pitcher

a drama about time and memory, about death and grief, playful and profound, comic and mournful

It is a high-concept romance – a Sliding Doors to the power of 100 – and many other things at once: a drama about time and memory, about death and grief, playful and profound, comic and mournful. It asks big questions about existence, purpose and free will but, like the helium balloons in the backdrop, also feels weightless and fun.

It affirms life, love and companionship even as it drives towards the death of its ending. A theatrical multiverse indeed.

Arifa Akbar

DRECTING AND SCENOGRAPHY: Bálint Botos

CAST:
Andrei Brădean, Ana Șusca

The more miserable Platonov’s situation and condition become, the more boldly Chekhov employs comedic elements.

We can see many examples of how much of the later Chekhovian dramaturgy can be found in Bezatcovscsina – the figure of the disintegrated (life) protagonist, the seemingly meaningless words not closely tied to the previous lines, but above all, the infallible sense for tragicomedy, the grotesque, the insight and depiction of the absurd, and the almost unparalleled ability to balance the horrific and the amusing. Moreover, it’s not just about the balance and proportions: Chekhov also knows, perhaps more instinctively than consciously at the time of creation, how these grotesque counterpoints should develop.

The more miserable Platonov’s situation and condition become, the more boldly Chekhov employs comedic elements. The finale, the fourth act, is already abundant with these, even though – or rather precisely because – the story is progressing towards the death of the central figure, the hero.

Tibor Déry

DIRECTOR: Bálint Botos
SCENOGRAPHY: Blanka-Alíz Bajkó
MUSIC: Magor Bocsárdi

Ágnes Gajai, István Hunyadi, Cecília Trabalka, Attila Balogh, Réka Fodor, Imre Dobos, József Szotyori, Melinda Pitz, Róbert Kardos M., Hunor Sebestyén, Levente Kovács, Eduárd Szabó, Lóránt Csatlós

Pillars of Society traces Karsten Bernick’s shift from a identification with a paternal figure to identification with a maternal figure

Ibsen’s dramatic texts focus the reader’s attention upon the protagonist’s enactment of self. These texts tend to position a central figure, the protagonist, between two other characters, each of whom represents a particular vision of the protagonist: who he is and how he should behave. Characteristically, these images of the protagonist’s self are intelligible in Oedipal terms. That is, the protagonist stands between a maternal and a paternal figure. Over the course of the action, the protagonist exchanges (of refuses to exchange) identification with one of these figures for identification with the other. For example, […]

Pillars of Society traces Karsten Bernick’s shift from a identification with a paternal figure to identification with a maternal figure, while Hjalmar Ekdal, the protagonist of The Wild Duck, does not make such an exchange. In this way, Ibsen’s texts stage the Oedipal crisis in a revised form.

Oliver W. Gerland

DIRECTOR: Bálint Botos
SCENOGRAPHY: Blanka-Alíz Bajkó
MUSIC: Magor Bocsárdi

CAST:
László Mátray, Ágnes Benedek, Márton Szőcs-Torma, Zsuzsa Gajzágó, Zsolt Fekete, Hajnalka Szalma, László Szakács, Zsuzsanna Vass, Dezső Derzsi, Gellért Pignitzky, Levente Nemes, József Kolcsár, Annamária D. Albu, Imola P. Magyarosi

For beauty itself is agitational and ultimately identical to the eternal human good.

The book is filled with images – organic images that belong to the organism of the novel – and these images strike the chord of pain, resonating in the reader’s heart. There is humor too, this charmingly smiling and smile-inducing humor, as if it had first bathed in the waters of pain.
The local values of the novel are perfect. The milieu is perfect and almost shockingly lifelike, the external lives of the characters, who have walked from the street onto the pages of the book, are perfect, the thinking and dialectical fusion of Budapest are perfect, and not a single false or deceitful note hurts our ears. Like a lens focusing sunlight, the local subject and form gather and concentrate universal human desires into a stronger light.

The fundamental motif: the pain of unfulfilled, because unfulfillable, desire. This has been the eternal motif of poetry since time immemorial and will remain so until the end of time, as the purest source of tragedy. The desire of youth, the orchestra of unfulfillable desires, resonates through the book, and at the end of the symphony, the reader clutches their heart in terror – Why do I live?
The suggestion of the beauty of art is enough to make a person – consciously or unconsciously – bow their head in ethical contemplation. For beauty itself is agitational and ultimately identical to the eternal human good. And it depends only on the stage of cultural development in what artistic form the humanly understood law of truth and beauty manifests itself.

Tibor Déry

DIRECTOR: Bálint Botos
SCENOGRAPHY: Bajkó Blanka-Alíz
COREOGRAPHY: Csaba Györfi
ADAPTATION: Sándor Guelmino

CAST:
Hunor Sebestyén, Eszter Román, Noémi Tasnádi-Sáhy, Róbert Kardos M., Levente Kovács, Ágnes Gajai, Géza Hajdu, Csaba Kiss, Attila Balogh, Anna Kocsis, Enikő Fábián, Dávid Scurtu,

If it is history we want, then it is a history of conflict.

But how did it all begin? If it is history we want, then it is a history of conflict. And the conflict begins with the abduction of a girl, or with the sacrifice of a girl. And the one is continually becoming the other. It was the “merchant wolves,” arriving by ship from Phoenicia, who carried off the tauropárthenos from Argos. Tauropárthenos means “the virgin dedicated to the bull.” Her name was Io. Like a beacon signaling from mountain to mountain, this rape lit the bonfire of hatred between the two continents.

From that moment on, Europe and Asia never stopped fighting each other, blow answering blow. Thus the Cretans, “the boars of Ida,” carried off Europa from Asia.

But how did it all begin?

Roberto Calasso

DIRECTOR: Bálint Botos
SCENOGRAPHY: Blanka-Alíz Bajkó
MUSIC: Magor Bocsárdi

CAST:
Gyöngyi Pál Ferenczi, Zsuzsa Gajzágó, Janka Korodi, Gellért Pignitzky, Bence Kónya-Ütő, Áron Beczásy, Tibor Pálffy, Dezső Derzsi, József Kolcsár, László Mátray, Ágnos Benedek, Mária Fekete, Imola P. Magyarosi, Hajnalka Szalma, Zsuzsanna Vass

a play of vivid characterization and dramatic conflict where social realism joins with lyricism, comedy with tragedy, a work rich in psychological and dramatic ambiguities which reveal that apparent polar opposites are not always what they seem.

The society depicted by Ostrovsky in Kalinov is based on his close observation of the mores of merchant communities on the upper reaches of the Volga, and is perhaps not typical of Russian provincial society as a whole. It is a dark kingdom where elements of Russian culture of the sixteenth, seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries seem to exist, almost unresolved, side by side. From this raw ethnographical material he has produced a play of vivid characterization and dramatic conflict where social realism joins with lyricism, comedy with tragedy, a work rich in psychological and dramatic ambiguities which reveal that apparent polar opposites are not always what they seem.

It is precisely because he has sensed the tragic tensions lying deep within this society and reflected in the semantic ambivalence of many of its central values that Ostrovsky has turned what could have been merely an interesting ethnographical study into one of the dramatic masterpieces of the Russian stage.

R. A. Peace

DIRECTOR: Bálint Botos
STAGE DESIGN: Blanka-Alíz Bajkó
COREOGRAPHER: Attila Bordás

Cast:
Róbert Dunkler, Tamás Jakab, Andrea Fincziski, Norbert Esti, Xénia-Abigél Nagy, Orsolya Albert, Árpád Barabás, Attila Pál, Kata László, Árpád Tóth, Gellért Szűcs-Olcsváry, Emőke Lukács, Helka Dunkler

Growing frustrations, bitterness, disappointments, and in some cases boredom, bring the characters to the brink of self destruction, but for lack of true commitment or control, they fail.

The failed suicides are mainly plot devices to either just simply keep the story line going or to allow for a change in direction in the characters’ lives. Growing frustrations, bitterness, disappointments, and in some cases boredom, bring the characters to the brink of self destruction, but for lack of true commitment or control, they fail. We as viewers of their failures respond in a humorous manner because the authors either make it clear that their characters are not capable of success or that the attempt is merely a ploy to bring about their desired change.

In short, the failed suicides are comic because the situations are created in a nontraditionally absurd framework. We can’t take the plans for suicide too seriously when all the characters do is talk or use ineffective means or act over-sentimentally. Yet, while we realize the comic nature of these situations, we are also reminded of the bitterness of life that creates the need to even consider ending it all and to then, for severed reasons, be forced to continue.

Marilynn J. Smith

DIRECTOR: Botos Bálint
STAGE DESIGN: Golicza Előd
COSTUME DESIGN: Jeli Sára Luca
MUSIC: Trabalka Cecília
SOUND DESIGN: Hodu Péter

Cast:
István Hunyadi, Noémi Tasnádi-Sáhy, Júlia Molnár, Levente Dimény, Réka Fodor, Tünde Tóth, Cecília Trabalka, Attila Balogh, Gyula Kocsis, Lóránt Csatlós, Levente Kovács, Dávid Scurtu, Anna Kocsis, József Szotyori, Ádám Tőtős, Ilián Vanca-Fodor

Kleist ruins any hope that the realities he creates can be sorted out.

It is better to acknowledge such complicity with mess than to defend an illusion in the name of perspicacity. The illusion we easily fall prey to is based on our confusing subjective and objective confusion. As more or less naive readers of Kleist’s perplexing scenarios, we tend to invest in the idea that the protagonists simply misinterpret the situation. This allows us to take a firm stand against mess.

But, indeed, Kleist ruins any hope that the realities he creates can be sorted out. If we read a character as mistaken, we might find it possible to objectively resolve the issue, but doing so will most likely get us caught in a subjective confusion of our own.

Katrin Pahl