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ANDRÁS MIKÓ AND GYÖRGY SZÉKELY: THE COUNT OF LUXEMBOURG, 1952
Theatre." Mikó placed great emphasis on the development of mass scenes.
To this end, Miklós Ormai, called group supervisor on the playbill, dedicated
special days to “the elaboration of each member’s story in crowd scenes: why
he/she appears on stage, how he/she takes a position in a situation and ina
series of actions”.°®® Certainly, the mapping out of the lives of people in the
background, the determination of the through-line of action,” the phases
of events, the objectives and tasks to be carried out in them - all these call
Stanislavsky to mind. Although the desire and the need for a critical stand led
theatre people to the way Brecht had started, they were still busy meeting the
requirements distilled from Stanislavsky — at least as much as they could.
ACTING
While the application of socialist realism became a key issue of character
impersonation, first time with such an emphasis at the Operetta Theatre,
reception was mostly influenced by the complexity of portrayal. When the
meeting of the company at the beginning of the rehearsal process concluded
in a debate on the way of acting because of Läszlö Keleti’s incomprehension
about how to play the President of the Tribunal, the directors and theatre
managers were nearly bidding against each other to define “critical
representation” and “partisan rendering” of a character. In order to allay
the fears of the actors, Margit Gaspar stated that they would neither have
to “quote” characters nor draw distorted images (caricatures). Referring to
Toporkov, whose Stanislavsky in Rehearsal was published in Hungarian that
year, she made a clear distinction between “displaying an age with criticism
by creating caricatures”, on the one hand, and “expressing criticism by
displaying an age realistically”, on the other.*”° She called the latter approach
“the right solution”, involving “a stronger emphasis on certain habits, on
certain characteristics”, and belonging “to the working methods of socialist
realism and to portrayals by socialist realist actors”.*' Gyérgy Székely also
argued that “the kindness and healthy feelings” of positive figures (e.g. Juliette
387 György Székely said that "Bandi Mikó helped me adjust the movement of the choir in
The Count of Luxembourg, and I was more concerned with the characters and the new text.”
Gajdö: A falusi szinpadoktöl, 10.
388 Társulati ülés, 57.
389 Cf. "Basil wants to get Angéle, and René wants to make money for lack of inheritance.
These are the two threads from which the main line of action starts, then these two threads
meet, René and Angèle fall in love with each other and fight for happiness by putting all
conventions aside. The turning point is consequently the personal encounter of the two
lovers. Before that, they are no different than the others, but then they turn against all lies
around them.” Ibid., 32.
#0 Ibid., 51.
#1 Ibid., 51-52.
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