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A BITTER FARCE OF LOSING POLITICAL IDEALS
last ministerial activities in 1982, as a conseguence of which "a significant
number of actors, including some old members of the National Theatre,
followed the two young artistic leaders" to the Katona."" It was László Vámos,
the new artistic director of the National, who had to reinforce and reshape all
that remained of the company, in the midst of a countrywide cooperation for a
new building, which had been promised for almost twenty years. Vámos aimed
at a repertory focusing on contemporary Hungarian drama, complemented
with the classics as well as contemporary foreign plays addressing a wide
audience.”! Diirrenmatt’s history play was considered suitable for the latter,
since it had attracted a great deal of attention on Odry Stage in a production
of Imre Kerényi’s class, made for an exam at the College of Theatre and Film
Arts in the autumn of 1983.” The director saw the reason for the outstanding
success in the fact that “there was about twice as much human effort in it”
as in an average production in Budapest.“ He added that “ventures outside
the structure, such as a college exam, such as the most recent production of
Stephen the King [...] release creative energies that can be positively utilized”.
The example of Stephen the King, performed in the City Park, in Budapest
two months earlier, is particularly important, because, similarly to the King
John of the college students, it was born outside the establishment of repertory
theatres (yet, of course, entirely within the order of officiality), and Kerényi
tried to include both in the so-called mainstream “theatre structure”. (Stephen
the King was staged at the National by Kerényi in September 1985, a year after
the opening of King John at the Castle Theatre.) The utilization of “creative
energies” in this way proved significant in the period of uncertainty and loss
70 Gyorgy Székely: A felszabaduläs utän. A Nemzeti Szinhäz intezmenytörtenete, in Ferenc
Kerényi (ed.): A Nemzeti Színház 150 éve, Budapest, Gondolat, 1987, 186.
This objective is shown by the fact that before the premiere of King John in early November
1984, four plays of Miklós Hubay, Géza Páskándi, Ákos Kertész and István Sárospataky had
been staged at the National and its new chamber theatre, the Castle Theatre at the beginning
of the season. They were followed by plays by G. B. Shaw, Maxim Gorky and Victor Hugo
at the National and by Moliére, Andras Nagy and Goldoni at the Castle Theatre. With
Dürrenmatt’s adaptation of Shakespeare, they killed two birds with one stone, so to speak,
since, according to Vamos, “it is the most difficult job to select the works of contemporary
world literature suitable for us. There is a shortage of new dramas everywhere and when
a new play appears on the horizon that could really make us hopeful, all theatres try to
seize it at the same time. The National desperately needs attractive contemporary successes
again that the audience, interested in today’s literature, had found at the Vig Theatre and the
Madäch Theatre during the last decade.” Laszl6 Vamos: Gondolattéredékek a nyolcvanas
évek Nemzeti Színházáról, in Kerényi: A Nemzeti Színház 150 éve, 201. (My italics — Á.K.K.)
Cf. "We havent had such an audience success at the College for ages. [...] Ihis college exam
is more expressive in its means, denser in atmosphere and has higher quality in acting than
the vast majority of our theatre productions.” Tamas Mészaros: A komédiads uralkodik.
Színművészeti főiskolások sikere, Magyar Hírlap, Vol. 16, No. 269, 15" November, 1983, 6.
Mentioned in Studio "83, a program on Channel 1 of the Hungarian Television at 8:50 p.m.
on 26" October 1983. Transcript for the Hungarian Theatre Museum and Institute.
74 Ibid.
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