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DÁNIEL TIBOR HEGYI
of Nagyszőlős. When the actor playing Ihomas Becket, Trill [Zsolt] started
praying, I was shocked to see that the audience sitting there had been praying
with him, and when he said the words: ‘In the name of the Father, and of the
Son, and of the Holy Spirit, amen!,’ the audience made the sign of the cross
and bowed their heads. That was such a cathartic experience I have only felt
a few times in my life.
There and then I realized that the stuck-up elitist approach to the world we
lived and live in is just so dumb and narrow-minded. Back then Vasiliev was
my role model, with his theater in Moscow. They had been working like monks
in a monastery, opening their doors only ever so seldom. [...] When the show
ended, their community closed again, [...] I had had these thoughts and emo¬
tions of this spastic huffiness and I obviously did not take into account that I
cannot do the same things in a small minority community with 150.000 people
as Vasiliev could in a big city of 10 million people. [...]
ISTVAN KORNYA: What does it mean for Debrecen?
ATTILA VIDNYANSZKY: Looking at the substantial cultural decay sur¬
rounding us, I think it is a lot more important to serve a hundred thousand
spectators than to walk untrodden paths. I feel like many hundreds of thou¬
sands of people cannot cope with the conflicts of their own lives. If a theater,
which deals with these questions, can only address a few thousand individuals
then what happens to the rest?
ISTVAN KORNYA: The start was very strong in the autumn of 2006 at the
Jel Festival. One of the greatest figures of world theater, Josef Nadj, was the
partner-director of Europe’s most prestigious festival, the Festival d’Avignon,
in the summer of that year. After this he celebrated the twentieth anniversary
of his drama group in Debrecen.
ATTILA VIDNYANSZKY: We wanted to make a statement of intent in De¬
brecen. That is why we invited Jéska Nadj, to show the direction the Csokonai
Theater wanted to take. He is the author who could make a modern theater
with Hungarian-Kanizsai roots well known in the whole world. We wanted to
signal that we bring the best of the best here. As we had very few performers
in the beginning, we packed the show with the plays from Beregszasz that had
already been played in festivals as well. [...]
ISTVAN KORNYA: When did you feel like you got the audience in Debrecen?
ATTILA VIDNYANSZKY: In the case of the Úri muri I could already very
confidently feel that we have a community that does not only follow through
the three-and-a-half-hour-long show, but something happens with, or beneath
them, something very important. [...] I have already quoted Stanislavski, who
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