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ANDRÁS VISKY scientist is hysterically anti-culture: he considers the highest good — which just barely makes him humane — to be his memory of his mothers damaged reputation. Purcáretes typical gastrohumor. The assignment of the children of the Phalanstery has become a heartrending scene in the manner of Tadeusz Kantor with Eniké Eder, robbed of her children, collapsing beautifully. Silviu loses his faith in the meaningfulness of the mask-play. He assembles the actors on stage and tells them again the meaning of this dualism: the relationship between the masked actor — that is, the simulacrum speaking the text into his microphone — and the animator. The pronounced word is what brings the (non-speaking) masked actors to life on the stage. And those who actually speak the text are not bystanders in the scene, and in no way at all mere synchronized sounds, but, on the contrary, they are the creators, via the words spoken aloud, of the characters that are physically active in the space. At times, one can see decidedly beautiful dualities; they work with great energy and meaningful immersion, but they remain far indeed from being settled in their roles. After the encouraging talk that enlivens the performance-technical instructions, Silviu turns to me and says he sees no chance of a premiere on the first of March. He called attention to important performance-technical elements earlier, I tell him, but for the animators’ handling of the text and the actions of the masked actors to display an organic unity would require roughly another seven months of specialized work — choreography of sound and body. The masked (silent) actors must speak the text internally, he says: it’s the same as when we write and speak what we’ve written aloud: the movement, rendered essential, is what gives the scene its meaning. He demonstrates the gait of the elderly to Andrea Tokai: as if you were walking on ice, he says. He loves this discovery; he taught Csilla Albert the same thing in Julius Caesar. Purcarete’s staging process is extraordinarily complex; I have not even seen anything remotely similar: at every instant of the rehearsal he’s working on the entire production. Not psychological but form-based thinking characterizes him. The underlying relations of psychology are born in form, and it is not form that is born of constructed psychological processes. Music, noise, and sound samples play a definitive role in the rehearsal process: a scene — indeed, even its sketch — can only evolve within the condition of the acoustical space. Purcarete is a Meyerholdian, with scarcely a doubt.
