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THE TRAGEDY OF MAN AS THEATRUM THEOLOGICUM (A DRAMATURG’S DIARY)
more comical and untrue. “And this — at least from my viewpoint,” I tell him,
“is caused by the text that already sounds archaic to our ears.” He has the
masks — just experimental and not final faces, used to examine the behavior
of the latex — put on, and as soon as they appear on the actors, everything
changes. The text, for instance, is easily “understandable” and acceptable, since
every word comes from the other side of time, and neither its old-fashioned
nor its poetic qualities seem excessive. The mask strikingly alters the body im¬
age of Etelka Magyari: she finds refined, sustained movements and instantly
senses that she must strive to create images. Well of course, as if this were the
language of performance.
FEBRUARY 4, 2020
To be an amateur: an unintentional gift. To play the amateur: a style. The ama¬
teur actor cannot play an amateur. Acting is only born of a very personal inter¬
pretation of amateurism: who is the amateur (actor, author, artist, etc.)? What
is the true criterion of amateurism in an age when we long for the elemental
and when civilian actors appear on stage and on film? Would amateurism be
enfeeblement now, in our case? To discover the enfeebled in ourselves — would
this be our actual task?
Timisoara’s main square has fallen under the rule of the buskers. They
are many, and it appears that it is all indeed organized — at least, it seems as
if everyone knows when it’ll be their turn: at times, entire salon orchestras
perform on the square or on one of its nearby side streets. It’s hard for us to
work this way: Purcarete can only exist with open windows and the unceasing
flood of music from outside makes concentration difficult, especially because
at times the production’s musical samples also start up during the course of
interpreting the scenes.
The rehearsals proceed, incorporating the musical materials given to the
sound engineer so far: without setting up the acoustical space, not one scene
can proceed further. In reality, Purcarete is directing an opera — this provides
the key to the production’s form.
After rehearsals, they take us out to Recas*® to visit the noted winery and
taste the wine. Dragos Buhagiar brings up his conservatory years and talks
about the artists who exerted a major influence on him in Cluj: Sandor Mohy,
Sandor Bardécz...*° The name of Istvan Szényi (not the painter of the Danube
Bend region, he!) — who found his world in Bucharest and whose gorgeous
daughter Julieta Ivanca Sz6nyi achieved a fine career as a film actor in Romania
59 Temesrékás in Hungarian.
1 Sandor Mohy (1902-2001): visual artist; Sändor Bardöcz (1962-2017): musical artist.
It is worth noting, in case the reader has not guessed it, that the intimate and respectful
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