Attila Vidnyánszky is associated with Debrecen as both a director and as a private citizen. In 2013, he received the city’s Pro Urbe Award. During the Debrecen Ünnepi Játékok, two of his productions are featured on the Main Stage of Kossuth Square: the „Csíksomlyó Passion” on August 13, and Ferenc Erkel’s opera “Bank ban” on the 17th.
– You are connected to Debrecen in a thousand ways…
– Debrecen is a very important and defining city in my life, if only because my three children were born here. The eight, very busy and fulfilling years I spent there is what binds me to it. And beyond that, I think we managed to create a very successful theater there — a theater that was able to perform on the most important stages of the world from Odessa to Paris to Moscow. We have also shown that regional opera performances can easily be successful, and there can be a serious opera life for a regional national theater.
I have a lot of deep thoughts about Debrecen, but the first is the multitude of people I still keep in touch with today, who I still know as my friends, who, when I go to the city and walk down the street, they address me and are happy that we can be there with two productions this summer.
– What should we know about the Csíksomlyó Passion?
– Both productions talk about the most important issues that people and Hungarians can talk about in this turbulent 21st century — faith. As a Christian, I think the most important story (if I may call it a story without any blasphemy) is the story of passion. To live through it, to strengthen our faith, to re-experience everything that the Christian faith suggests, is the message… I experience it as a gift that you have been given; that is, to work with these wonderful archaic texts. In addition to the Shrine at Csíksomlyó, the Esztergom Basilica, and the other important sacred spaces in our nation, is the Great Church and Square in Debrecen. The fact that we can recreate the performance here now is a huge gift to me. Local forces will join the production, including the Debrecen Folk Ensemble and children. I want – just as we feel Christianity to be our own, individually and as a community – to make this production a little bit our own.
– Is this different from the Csíksomlyó’s outdoor stone theater, or is it essentially the same?
– The theatrical passion of Csíksomlyó works in such a way that the spectator sits on the stage and the actors are there at his fingertips. The Csíksomlyó Passion, played in a large space, also consists of the same texts and the same choreographies, but in its wide spread it creates a monumental effect – this is a completely different experience: different mechanisms of action work in the performance and thus for the viewer. On stage, we tend to want to pull the viewers toward us, play around, try to pull them into the story. And here we literally „lie down” with the story. In part, in addition to the theater guard, roughly a hundred actors get into the game. They started studying the existing choreographies a month ago in Debrecen, taught by Zoltán Zsuráfszky, the dancers, choreographers and helpers of the leader of the Hungarian National Dance Ensemble.
– So, it’ll be more monumental than the stone theater…
– Of course, let’s play on a football field! However, this is a different experience.
– And Bánk bán?
– Bánk bán tugs at our national issues, constantly trying to formulate our place again and again, to understand our Hungarian-ness and our mission in this stormy place of Europe. Why is it that we have always been such a conflict zone throughout history? Compared to our size, our population, we are given a much bigger task or a much bigger situation by God. Why is it that our nation always finds itself somehow in the thick of events? Why there is this duality within us is this constant fragmentation: the point of intersection of East and West is our soul. If there are any real big, eternal questions for our Hungarians, then this lies in the basic conflict of József Katona’s drama. [Composer] Ferenc Erkel wonderfully interpreted and revived the material, the music is very true to who we are: Hungarian and world music at the same time.
– You’ve staged both the József Katona theatre piece and Erkel’s opera interpretation of it. Do you approach these differently as a director, as an interpreter?
– Certainly, one always wants to focus on essential issues. So, as in my prose lecture, so did the practice of grace by King Endre II, and the practice of free grace at the end of the performance intensify in the work of Erkel. However, this was not so important to me in my previous stage direction.
– For example, in Debrecen?
– Yes. The music, on the other hand, dictates to us, so it would be foolish not to hear what aesthetics it offers, what system of gestures it forces. So, you should not fight against it, because if you start fighting against it, all the efforts will come to nothing, and there will be at most three critics who praise it… The prose work, on the other hand, leaves itself free to interpret. For example, my production at the National Theater is formally built on contemporary gestures, yet I think that the basic idea of Katona’s work is respected in our performance. The “Bánk bán” opera is a monumental, great work, where of course I have very modern gestures, but the task was to unfold this voluminous work.
– And here does the open space add something or reinterpret something?
– It’s not just open space. This is a sacred space. If we were playing outside on the field or in a neutral hall, that would be a different story. This, in turn, is the space in front of the Great Church with the Great Church behind us, with all the historical events, hope, and prayers associated with that church.
- Interview by Gábor Mesterházi
- Edited translation by A.S. Ivanoff
