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DÁNIEL TIBOR HEGYI The exceptionally complex theatrical language of the poetic theater that Vidnyanszky had been trying to realize in Beregszäsz and later in Debrecen and Budapest, requires significant abstraction on the part of the audience. Vidnyanszky’s authorial career has come a long way: from the directorial position of the — minority positioned — Illyés Gyula Hungarian National Theater to being the executive of the National Theater in Budapest. Between these two positions, he also headed up the Csokonai Theater in Debrecen, and for a shorter period of time he was the main director of the Hungarian National Opera. Although he had been working on the shaping of a unique Hungarian theatrical language from the early years of his career, the planning of the repertoire and the issue of staying in touch with the audience had led to discrete difficulties in all three cases (Beregszász, Debrecen, and Budapest) as the audience can be addressed guite differently in a Hungarian minority theater, in a rural Hungarian theater, and differently again at the National Iheater in the capital city . Atthe same time, Vidnyánszky paid a lot of attention to giving the audience more than simple entertainment, while taking care of the national theatrical status — unlike other for-profit theaters that wanted to appeal to the general taste. He made it his own business to educate the audience — while maintaining conventions — and he was also willing to go through troubled times in order to spread the importance of culture. While working in Debrecen from 2006, he had already faced the problem of alienating sections of audiences through his idiosyncratic theatrical language. This theatrical language inherited from Debrecen sheds light on the circumstances and hardships of the premiere of Joan of Arc at the Stake, as it was Vidnyänszky’s second direction on the stage of the National Theatre (in Budapest) as the newly elected director. The Joan piece was a pioneer of sorts of the still — at least in this form — unknown theatrical language of the executive director/art director in the capital. Staging Joan of Arc at the Stake as a second premiere was as brave an attempt as the aspiration of renewal in Debrecen, especially when taking into account the receptibility of an oratory. But what could Vidnyanszky have meant by transcending the function of entertainment °° Cf. Attila Vidnyänszky’s views on theater aesthetics on pages 157, 159-161. Here, he also draws attention to the connection of theater, rite, and tradition and to the power that rite and the ritual theater had on the innovative pursuit ofthe great theater makers in the twentieth century. Even though he did not include him on his list, it is evidential that there is a connection between him and Richard Schechner (a father of performance art) through the entertainment versus usefulness-effectiveness dichotomy in question. The inherently sacral nature oftheater and the connection of these two components, as well as its artificial disconnection, are closely examined by Schechner in his work: Richard Schechner: A ritustöl a színházig - és vissza: a hatékonyság és szórakoztatás kettősségének struktúrája és folyamata, in János Regős (ed.): A performansz. A színházi előadás elméletéről 1970-1976, Budapest, Múzsák Közművelődési Kiadó, 1984, 91—138.
