The career of Imre Csiszár – theatre director, artistic leader, theatre manager, director, pedagogue and actor – is, even in its not yet concluded form, imposing and commanding of respect when considered through numerical data. From the outset of his directing career in 1976 up to the present day, 2024, he has officially directed two hundred and sixteen productions over the course of nearly forty years; and if we include the examination performances he staged for his students at various drama schools, almost two hundred and fifty productions bear his name. This extraordinarily high figure becomes truly striking when examined more closely considering the authors whose dramas Imre Csiszár has brought to the stage. The master of Italian commedia dell’arte, Goldoni; Shakespeare’s contemporary Christopher Marlowe; Shakespeare himself; and the Russians – Gogol, Gorky, Chekhov – together with the philosophical German dramatists Friedrich Schiller and Bertolt Brecht, represent the most significant playwrights within his directorial oeuvre. Alongside these, he has also approached with discerning attention the works of contemporary English literature (Harold Pinter, Peter Shaffer and Christopher Hampton), as well as the most important authors of Hungarian drama – Mihály Csokonai Vitéz, Imre Madách, Zsigmond Reményik, Gyula Háy, Ferenc Molnár and Magda Szabó.
To understand – to understand properly – the boldness, stature and determined consistency of Csiszár’s choice of plays, a brief digression is required, outlining the ‘theatrical conditions’ that characterised the beginnings of his career.
During the 1970s, a process began which – although it seems explosive in retrospect – was in fact gradual: young directors, newly graduated and working in provincial theatres, sought to transform the established, familiar repertoire policies. The programmes, previously dominated by carefree popular entertainment – operettas, musical comedies, folk plays and the like – were to be supplemented, and indeed replaced, by the great works of the European classical canon and by significant pieces of contemporary drama. This endeavour, naturally, required enlightened theatre directors who understood the significance of such an undertaking and were willing to fight their battles with county leaders and, when necessary, with the all-powerful arbiter of cultural policy, György Aczél [leading cultural politician of the Kádár regime 1956-1988]. For despite their canonical status, these authors were not among those preferred by the cultural authorities. At the same time, the audiences of the cities and counties also had to be persuaded of the legitimacy of these works and the productions derived from them; in short, spectators accustomed to different fare had to be encouraged to embrace these ‘difficult-to-digest’ plays. This ‘opening’ was spearheaded by significant theatrical workshops. The emblematic creative leaders of the theatres of Kaposvár, Szolnok, Kecskemét and Miskolc – László Babarczy, Gábor Székely, József Ruszt and Imre Csiszár – became inseparable from the names of their respective cities. Together, they shaped one of the most dynamic and prosperous periods in Hungarian theatre history – more than twenty years that remain defining and exemplary to this day.
The theatres of the capital enjoyed a distinctive degree of priority compared with those in the provinces. The Vígszínház [theatre in Budapest] under Zoltán Várkonyi [actor and director, 1912-1979], and the National Theatre under Tamás Major [1945-1962] benefited from greater freedom in their choice of plays, enabling them to stage works that only slowly filtered into provincial repertoires. The wide-ranging vision of Várkonyi and Major – both well-versed in European literature and theatrical trends – as directors, theatre leaders and pedagogues effectively anticipated and prepared the way for changes in Hungarian repertoire policy. Under the rectorship of Kálmán Nádasdy, the Academy of Dramatic Arts, supported among others by Várkonyi and Major, provided its students with an exceptionally rich and high-quality education, despite the constraints of cultural policy. Among those students was Imre Csiszár.
Imre Csiszár has repeatedly referred to Tamás Major as his master (invariably mentioning, alongside Major, the name of Gábor Székely), and he not only studied under him but also served as his assistant director at the National Theatre of the time. In this capacity, he was able to observe Major at close quarters, at work, throughout every phase of the creative process. Much has been written about Major, a personality of decidedly controversial reputation; yet one fact is indisputable: he launched the careers of a great many significant theatre directors. Today it is almost impossible to fathom the worldview through which Major regarded theatre as the most adequate form of expressing the universe itself, and practised it accordingly: the world is theatre, and theatre is the world. He upheld and transmitted this philosophy with the full force of his personality and with an almost magical conviction to his actors, colleagues, and students. The study of Bertolt Brecht’s oeuvre became possible in Hungary only after the director’s return to the socialist German Democratic Republic. Major sought to acquaint actors – raised within the system of Stanislavski’s Method – with Brecht’s unexpectedly different working methods; he searched for new paths. This was the exploratory period witnessed by the young directing student Imre Csiszár, who not only observed his master working under this “new enchantment” but also watched the great, renowned actors of the era (Bessenyei, Básti, Ferenc Kállai, Gelley, György Kálmán, Gobbi, Hédi Váradi, Mari Törőcsik… and Major himself) labouring through struggle for their roles, for the performance, for success.
The exceptional quality and stature of Imre Csiszár’s oeuvre can and should be approached from multiple directions. Not solely through the nationwide success of his productions, but through an understanding of the path leading to them – the details of the creative work. Csiszár consistently and steadfastly believes in the generative, and at the same time enlightening and educative, power of theatre. He is convinced that theatre is a locus of community, where ideas, social issues, and historically far-reaching perspectives must be discussed collectively – with the intensity of personal engagement – because “things can be talked through”, in such a way that the theatrical experience should obstinately endure, “work on” the spectator long after the performance has ended. As a director, Csiszár believes in the jointly undertaken labour of creation and reception. His preparation – even before rehearsals begin – is thorough, wide-ranging, attentive to every detail, and driven by questions that generate further questions. He wishes to know not only every aspect of the author’s oeuvre and biography but also the political, historical and cultural-historical context of the period in which the work was written: its visual culture, social customs, behavioural codes, down to the material and sartorial culture of the time. His aim is to construct a comprehensive picture not only for himself as director, but also for his creative collaborators – the set designer, the costume designer, the composer, the dramaturg, the movement director – and finally, though above all, for the actors, thus clarifying the interpretive scope of the play. He undertakes this meticulous work to illuminate, through the theatrical performance, the connections that may be articulated between the era in which the work was written and the era in which it is performed – so that the production may ultimately be contemporary, speaking to the present. In each of his productions, Csiszár insists that theatre must be a structure whose conceptual intentions are articulated with clarity and crystalline logic, and that everything must be built upon this foundation. From this premise – this point of departure – develop the acting, the visual world, the music: the effects. His theatre aspires to total artistic impact, yet always in the service of the articulation of thought, employing every carefully chosen means (space, light, music, and so forth) towards that end.
Such artistic rigour required actors who understood and internalised this rich, profound, internationally oriented mode of thinking. Over the course of his career, Imre Csiszár was afforded the opportunity to build ensembles – to gather around himself artists capable of realising his vision at the highest level.
From 1979 to 1988, as Artistic Director of the Miskolc National Theatre, he created with his company one of the most significant periods in the history of Hungarian theatre. This nearly decade-long era is marked by such extraordinary productions as Bertolt Brecht’s The Good Person of Szechwan, P. O. Enquist’s The Night of the Tribades, Shakespeare’s King Lear with Tamás Major in the title role, Bruckner’s Elizabeth of England, Ibsen’s Peer Gynt, Frank Wedekind’s Lulu, his first staging of Madách’s Az ember tragédiája (The Tragedy of Man), Örkény’s Tóték (lit. The Tót Family), Enquist’s To Sing for Phaedra, and, as a farewell production, Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard. Not only his own productions but also those by the directors he invited embodied this worldview. Among many, one may single out Miklós Jancsó – already celebrated across Europe as a film director – who staged Imre Kálmán’s Csárdáskirálynő (The Csárdás Princess) with striking boldness and freedom. It seems almost unbelievable today, but audiences flocked to these productions not only from Miskolc but from across the entire country, including the capital; they were regarded as exceptional cultural events.
He headed the National Theatre [in Budapest] from 1989 to 1991, during which period he again succeeded in creating several unforgettable productions, among them Brecht’s The Caucasian Chalk Circle and a new staging of Peer Gynt. His next major leadership role – undertaken in collaboration with the Kelemen László Company – was at the Thália Theatre between 1996 and 1999. From this period, one must mention the exceptionally powerful Rozsdatemető (lit. Scrapyard), Endre Fejes’s drama.
Csiszár’s career as a director was inseparable from his work as a theatre leader and from his continuous pedagogical activity. The most important task of a theatre director – beyond the many practical considerations – is to define the worldview and articulate the theatrical language through which the institution wishes to address its audience. Only within the framework of this conceptual orientation can one draw up a season’s programme, select plays, cast roles for forthcoming productions and, essentially, build an ensemble and a perceptive, receptive audience in parallel. As a theatre-maker, Imre Csiszár succeeded in realising his vision in the long term; he was aided in this by his broad outlook, extensive experience as a director, and decades of sustained work preparing young directors and actors for the profession.
The trajectory of Csiszár’s directorial career was realised in close collaboration with several significant artistic partners. Throughout his work, Csiszár set a high aesthetic standard for himself and for the theatre, consistently relying on the committed cooperation of his collaborators. The resulting quality became his unmistakable hallmark. The stage designs of István Szlávik – at once broad in scope, symbolically potent, and enriched with subtle realist details – and the costume designs of Györgyi Szakács – with her discerning use of materials and colour, extensive historical knowledge, meticulous tailoring, and costumes that supported both the director’s conceptual vision and the actor’s character formation – together created and defined a visual and theatrical world that surpassed the prevailing domestic theatrical aesthetic of the time. With their striking richness and sensuous power, these productions could stand alongside the major European theatrical schools.
Csiszár’s thinking is fundamentally process-oriented; his choices of dramatic texts are interlinked. While each of his productions constitutes a distinct and independent entity, one can readily identify the set of concerns that preoccupy him at any given period. Thus, the worldview he consciously constructs becomes almost tangible. The Miskolc years serve as a clear example: during this period, Csiszár repeatedly placed at the centre of his productions a figure compelled to undertake formidable, arduous tasks. In keeping with this idea, he created a series of large-scale productions that transcended the “narrow air” of their institutional and geographical context – works in which, as for Hamlet, time itself had been set off its hinges and needed to be righted.
This deliberate approach is also evident in Csiszár’s ensemble-building practices. He gathered around himself numerous strong-willed, singular, and highly skilled actors; and when he assumed leadership of an already existing company, his choice of repertoire and the roles he entrusted to the actors made his conceptual direction apparent after only one or two premieres. Two major artists accompanied him throughout his career: Éva Tímár and Péter Blaskó stand out among their colleagues. Perhaps this was because he recognised in them the embodiment of the heroes about whom he deemed it essential to articulate his vision; and perhaps because they understood, represented, and most fully inhabited their director’s perspective, philosophy, and worldview.
With the distance of many years, it may be stated with confidence that Csiszár Imre’s human and artistic commitment to his chosen profession is exemplary and of remarkable stature. He has been able to speak about reality through the medium of theatre in such a way that the full depth and richness of the works he stages remain clearly articulated, while he avoids both political topicalization and the easy traps of sensationalism. He holds up a mirror to his audience in which attentive spectators may recognise themselves; and through the experience of catharsis, they may leave the theatre with the quiet sense of collective purification.
The theatre is often described as the art of the moment. From this perspective, Csiszár Imre’s oeuvre – spanning more than forty years – is a woven fabric of millions of enduring moments. Against the backdrop of the seismic social and economic changes that have reshaped the world and Hungary, the artistic credo with which he has cultivated the art of theatre is exceptional. It is grounded in a moral and pedagogical conviction – both notions largely forgotten today – and in the body of productions through which he presents, with insight and care, the great works of the European and Hungarian canon.
Some reflections from Imre Csiszár (for his logic, personal tone, and visionary force illuminate and contextualise his oeuvre.)
“There is no other branch of the arts that creates community. If you consider the visual arts, music, or literature, these are all solitary forms. The creators create, and then the spectators arrive, look at the work, and it affects them – or it does not. Theatre is the only form – I was about to say film as well, but film, like cinema, we merely watch; it does not forge us into a community.”
“This is the great trick of theatre, its great – well, for me, its compelling allure: it can create community. In the twenty-first century, human beings need community as essentially as they need the basic elements of life – water and air – because the modern individual has become isolated. This self-imposed loneliness is, in my view, a kind of illness. Theatre offers a form of release from it. When someone goes to the theatre, there is – at least in an ideal case – the hope that this loneliness might be eased, that one might receive a remedy, that solitude might be transformed into community; that the auditorium and the stage might merge into a kind of unity, into a shared mode of thinking and feeling. And this dissolves loneliness. That is the miracle of theatre. This is what people mean when they speak of the ‘here and now’. Indeed, among all art forms, only theatre possesses this quality. What does it mean? It means that for us, who make theatre, it must always remain in view that it will be watched by spectators – spectators who have escaped from their loneliness and who long for an engaging experience. This reminds me of an anecdote – let me share it. Peter Brook relates in The Empty Space a small story: when God created the world, the angels grew terribly bored. They said to God that He should give them some amusement – make something for them – perhaps create theatre for them. God agreed and created theatre. The angels watched it and did not know what to make of it, for they saw that theatre existed in countless forms: spoken drama and musical theatre, farce and tragedy, realism and the absurd, intellectual theatre and epic theatre – every possible kind. So, they returned to God and asked Him to bring order to it. ‘What is good theatre? Help us!’ God took a small slip of paper, wrote something upon it, and handed it to the angels. They hurried to a corner, unfolded the paper, and found a single word: ‘interesting’ – so writes Peter Brook. And there is truth in this, if we think about it. It does not matter what kind of theatre it is, so long as it is interesting. […] And we can maintain this interest only if we take the audience seriously. If we do not behave as though we are unwatched, as though we are not performing ourselves before them. I say – and I believe – that if you tell me what your relationship with the audience is, I will tell you what kind of theatre you are. If you have no relationship with your audience, then you are a poor theatre, an uninteresting theatre – to borrow from Brookie’s anecdote. If you take your audience into account and strive, by every means, to make an impact upon them – through the actor, through music, through visual design, through movement, through diction, through a coherent concept – then you are interesting.”
“I would like to say what I consider worthy of emulation, optimal, congenial, when we speak of dramatic literature. There are five playwrights whose works I would be happy to stage at any time and in any place. This is a very challenging matter, because when we select plays from the classics, we consider: what speaks to the present day, what contains elements that move me here and now, in the twenty-first century? The oeuvres of these five playwrights are such that any play I choose from them is always suitable for this purpose. These five are Shakespeare, Molière, Gogol, Chekhov, and Brecht. Why? Because of their relationship with the audience – they take it seriously that they create an audience. No matter what happens, no matter how convoluted a concept may press upon them, they emerge from the constraints and fully realise themselves. Their plays suit this purpose as they are written in a manner that addresses the audience directly. Consider Shakespeare. Shakespearean theatre is built on the premise that people come to the theatre to engage socially – they talk, drink, and participate in the life of the theatre itself. They did not arrive in formal attire, well-mannered and silently enduring the performance before breaking into applause. The Shakespearean audience was not like this: they spoke, drank, and chatted. The challenge was to capture their attention, to ensure they stopped talking, set down their drink, and followed the action on stage. Shakespeare wrote precisely such plays. This is why he was the first in the Renaissance – although it existed in antiquity – to use the technique whereby the stage directly addresses the audience.”
“Consider, for example, Richard III, or Iago, or many other characters in Shakespeare’s plays who speak directly to the auditorium, seeking the spectator’s opinion. They almost invite the audience to collaborate: ‘Come with me, we are about to do something together. Watch how I do it, then evaluate.’ Forgive my interjection, but it is a truly daring invention in Richard III that you are placed in the position of following the life of a villain, a criminal, and you must observe, sympathise, and accompany them. It is a bold form of audience engagement.”
“This is because Shakespeare had a view of the world. He saw it as governed by malign, selfish, career-driven individuals. Shakespeare was not an idealist; he was a man with an extremely precise historical and social vision. It is well-known that, except for one, all his plays are drawn from other sources. Yet he selects and adapts the material so that it speaks to his own era, to his contemporaries.”
“So he sets himself the goal that in Richard III the audience should recognise that they live in such a vile age – an age permeated by the bloodiest politics, where human dignity is subjected to political power, historical perspective is subordinated to politics, sexuality is dictated by political forces, careerism is controlled, and so forth, all the traits found in our world. The audience should look around and understand: ‘this is the era you live in; this is the world you inhabit’. It holds a mirror to its time. When we stage Richard III today, we approach it with no lesser opportunity.”
“To hold a similar mirror, because in many respects we encounter parallels between the political career of such a gangster and contemporary reality.”
“In theatre, politics – this has been observed by many – is inevitably infused with theatrical practice; without politics, without some degree of engagement, theatre cannot exist. Yet theatre has nothing to do with contemporary political minutiae… If, however, someone takes Chekhov or Gogol, Molière or Shakespeare or Brecht and begins to politicise them with reference to contemporary politicians’ names or the headlines of today’s newspapers, then they are on the entirely wrong path; the poetry of theatre is lost, the magic of theatre disappears…”
[2024]