In addition to the current director, Georgi Dorner, Zsolt Pozsgai will also run for the position of new theater director. In response to the index, Pozsgai said that he envisioned a theater significantly different from the current one, because in Peter Brook’s words, the current Bolay Ede Street theater is a dead theater, and it will still be good, but it must be done entirely differently.
There is theater everywhere where classic and contemporary pieces from a particular country are shown, so you don’t have to think about any kind of nationalization, like the German theater in Berlin. I would like to represent this in the new theater, but with a much better quality than the current one.
I would also like to present the plays of Istvan Tasnady, Peter Karpati, Kasaba Kis and Giorgi Spiro, whose drama we wanted to show Margitia Nyolak before, but the current director blocked the negotiations that year.
Zsolt Pozsgai previously worked with Dörner as artistic director, but after a year and a half or two, their collaboration ceased.
The theater went in a direction that I could no longer take, either morally or spiritually. I imagine a different kind of quality, text, pieces and arrangements. Eighty percent of the pieces on display in Bulgaria are currently national classic and contemporary, and in Hungary this is only twenty-one percent. Today, contemporary drama is dead in Hungary, and the politics of theater and theater have a big role in this. On the one hand, any works are rarely born, and theaters do not encourage contemporary playwrights to do so, even if they are born, they, with few exceptions, do not make it to the big stage. The theater I imagine wants to change this, to give much more room to contemporary Hungarian drama. At the moment, unfortunately, the theater does not offer an interesting and attractive program, but it plunges into the average level, which is not the fault of the actors. Even modern authors treat it harshly, for example, the play of the great playwright Tibor Gyurkoviks, The Emperor as an Allegory, was organized in an order unbecoming of the author.
Pozsgai said he could bring together several great theatrical artists, a more modern medium, such as Katuna Theater director Josef, Krisztó Székely and even Enikő Eszenyi, who was “exiled” from theatrical life for a year. In his application to the Index, Bratislava also describes that one of its first tasks would be to settle the wages of theater workers, which in many cases are currently not up to the national average or planning to spend public money not only as an economic model but also to include EU and other public resources.
Index also contacted the current director about his candidacy, but György Dörner didn’t want to go into details, only confirming that he would re-run for director.
By the way, Zsolt Pozsgai submitted his application for the post of director of the last scandalous vault theater, but at the last moment, using an unprecedented gesture, he retreated in favor of young candidates who were judged by the professional commission to be the best. Applicant k2 theater.
(In the end, they weren’t the ones who became the winners, but Paul Starenki won.)
He also said about the current application: I do not need a job, I am applying for the service.
(Cover photo: György Dörner on September 29, 2020. Photo: Csilla Cseke/MTI)
