Oldal 132 [132]
FROM IDOL DESTRUCTION TO IDOLATRY
dialectical thinking”. That Marton was not working with a classical concept
of theatricality is demonstrated by the fact that after the Internationale rang
out at the end of the Brecht-cantata, the actors did not come back to bow.
ACTING
In this performance, there was not a single actor appointed to each name
in Gyurkö’s work (as there would be in a play), but Marton divided the lines
belonging tothe same name among multiple actors, so that it became impossible
to identify, or identify with, the characters.°* In the first chapter, the text gave
merely selections from the letters of two people, Lenin and Krupskaya, but it
was spoken by five men and six women, and overall the fifteen actors in the
performance approximately did “an equal share of the work”. The directorial
instructions blocked character impersonation even when temporarily the
same actor quoted the same character multiple times — an example of which
is Tamas Major reciting Lenin’s statements in the second and third chapters
— since no context was created, the gestures and the facial expressions did not
become significant, and the movement followed formal patterns. Even then,
Major did not try to convince anyone that it was Lenin speaking, at most, he
emphasized the consistent behavior of a “robust political personage”, while in
other chapters he divided him from the younger man, the older man, and the
“lyrical, reticent man”.®** While Marton did not work with a chorus and did
not follow the labor movement’s tradition of prose choirs, the performance
focused on the ensemble of the actors. In the interrelation of individual and
community, he emphasized the latter, tasking it with experiencing and carrying
on “the Lenin idea”.™’ It is also important to note that Marton considered the
622 Letay: „Ha tisztelni akarjätok...”, 13. — This objective, however, may not have been fully
attained, as Vera Létay noted: “the relationship between the stage and the audience was
somewhat troublesome”. (Ibid.) She recalled her own experience that in the scene of the
debates and votes of the Central Committee (in chapter two), she was unable to “follow and
precisely understand the arguments” in spite of her focusing strongly, and only in hindsight,
when reading the play in the monthly Valésäg she could grasp, what it was all about. “While
listening to Gyurkö’s play, one sometimes feels as if she had fallen out of a train, staring
numbly at the receding carriages. However, the spectator must remain on the train and
travel through the drama all the way to the end station.” (Ibid.)
Although the critic of Pest Megyei Hirlap did not regard it as mistaken, he thought it
“reduced the possibility of creating intimacy”. Kriszt: Fejezetek Leninröl, 4.
644 Gách: Együtt éljük át, 4.
645 (bernáth): Gondolatok drámája a színpadon, Esti Hírlap, Vol. 15, No. 77, 2"! April, 1970, 2.
During the 1980 revival, the reviewer of Pesti Műsor recalled the performance ten years
earlier, noting that "the ensemble [...] was like agreat chamber orchestra, but all its members
were also excellent soloists." György Kárpáti: Fejezetek Leninről, Pesti Műsor, Vol. 29, No. 19,
7% May, 1980, 13.
647 Gách: Együtt éljük át, 5.
64:
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641
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