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OCR
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. + 87 +
