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ANDRÁS VISKY for Victor." The plan was for them not only to meet each other but also to discover each other. Not forgetting, of course, the calculated opinion that the theatrical realization of the Esterhäzy dramaturgy requires a Purcärete. It was a glorious evening, perfectly prepared Argentine steaks and Italian red wines underscored the cultural interchange. I also invited Sirliand Buhagiar so that the creative team could be at least nearly complete (it could not be complete in the absence of Helmut Stürmer). A psalm of forgiveness was the order of the day, and before the supper I read it aloud in Hungarian and Romanian, but also in English and French, and of course the dazzling conversation proceeded in both Hungarian and Romanian. The following day, I purchased the Esterhazy volumes available in Romanian, among which was hidden his “Rubens and the Non-Euclidean Women” (Rubens si femeile neeuclidiene. Patru dramolete).°? “You, who creates non-Euclidean theater, must be familiar with the dramaturgy of self-commentary, whose closest relation is the theater of Tadeusz Kantor.” The encounter in Cluj was followed by one in Budapest after Purcarete’s production of As You Like It at the National Theater, not at the premiere but on the second night. There was no follow-up; human things come to an end. We all come to an end. FEBRUARY 7, 2020 The text resonating from the doppelgangers and the gestures of the masked actors (the non-speaking ones) present us with the image of two separate theaters. For the time being. Can we make it through to the discovery of the gestural language and its detailed refinement, I ask myself — and not just myself. In any case, the gestures of action do not point in the direction of realism because, in this case, the text remains purely a voiceover, and the production splits apart into at least two performances. He stands in the empty space, two tables and nothing more; he stands motionless as if beholding interior images. He’s not simply thinking but appears to sense the entirety; his hands move at times, sketching out gestures. He rearranges the tables, but the spatial relations hardly change at all. He spends an unreal amount of time this way, standing stock still in the space. “I find the old [original] texts much more appropriate to the stage, simply because the words arrive from another time and in doing so, they filter through and reflect from the culture’s mirror and consequently, they possess greater weight and purity. I contend that the farther the text comes from, the more 58 Roger Vitrac (1899-1952): French surrealist dramatist; Victor ou les enfants au pouvoir [Victor, or Power to the Children], 1928. Péter Esterházy: Rubens és a nemeuklideszi asszonyok. Három dramolett [Rubens and the Non-Euclidean Women. Three Mini-dramas], Budapest, Magvető, 2006. +250 +
