In 1973, Zsuzsanna Pregitzer – who later changed her name to Fruzsina – was a primary school student studying to become a ballerina when she saw Gogol’s The Government Inspector directed by the legendary Soviet director Georgy Tovstogonov at the National Theatre in Budapest. A few years later, she saw Hamlet three times at the Taganka Theatre in Budapest, directed by Yuri Lyubimov, with Vladimir Vysotsky in the title role. These evenings decided her destiny: she wanted to be an actor.
She was a member of the children’s choir of the church in Zugló, whose legendary leader, Róbert Kuzma, commissioned her several times to recite poems on festive occasions. She says that she discovered the joy of giving and the importance of connecting with the audience, and the fact that she experienced it in a sacred space made her career choice even stronger. In addition to her theatrical experiences, her musical studies and her family’s love of music gave her a strong motivation. “Our family was a family that loved music. My parents took me and my sister to the opera, the ballet, the Academy of Music – to the Young Music Lovers concert series. Music made my father’s eight-year imprisonment in the gulag somewhat bearable, alongside the strength of his faith: he was allowed to play the violin in the prison orchestra, so he was given more food. So it was natural for my father that if his life was saved by faith and music, we should follow suit.”[i]
After graduation, she applied to the Színház- és Filmművészeti Főiskola (Academy of Theatre and Film Arts), but was not accepted. So she studied for a year at the National Theatre Studio under the guidance of Sándor Bodnár, Zoltán Simon and Eszter Tatár. This year was not a useless one: not only did she learn a lot about acting, she also got to know herself better.
At the Academy of Theatre and Film Arts, she was in Endre Marton’s class, though the renowned director and teacher sadly passed away a year later, in October 1979. Her teachers included József Gáti, Géza Hegedűs and Kálmán Nádasdy, but in her memory, she remembers the four years as a time when she and her classmates helped teach and direct each other.
In her final year of college, she landed her first major role, taking over the role of Ilma in Mihály Vörösmarty’s Csongor és Tünde (Csongor and Tünde) from Eszter Vörös at the National Theatre. It was at this time that she changed her name to Fruzsina.
After graduation, she was hired by the theatre where she had gained her experience, the National Theatre. She started her career with high expectations and hopes, but was soon disappointed. She felt she was being shunned for bigger roles and ended up pigeonholed into comedic roles – playing a succession of fire-breathing butlers, maids and supporting parts. And yet her aspirations were for more than that. Asked in 1986 what she would play, she replied: “Chekhov, Ernő Szép, Örkény! I love those dramas where crying meets laughter. I’ve always been attracted to slightly grotesque characters.”[ii]
As time and dedication allowed, she began to teach acting under Sándor Bodnár at the Studio of the National Theatre. At the same time, she was able to make guest appearances at the Játékszín Theatre at the invitation of Gábor Berényi and at the National Theatre in Miskolc. There, in 1988, she played the role of Josie in Eugene O'Neill’s Long Day's Journey into Night as partner to Zsolt Körtvélyessy. She had already chosen this role for herself at the age of 16. “She is O’Neill’s enigmatic female figure. Her natural instincts and her purity are hidden behind self-destructive gossip she spreads herself, but she does not deceive her lover Jim or the audience, for her unassisted performance creates a separate space for herself, illuminated by purity. A jeans-wearing farmer’s daughter, her father’s daughter, she is a partner in whimsy and fun, but her tender soul, tinged with humour, foreshadows Josie’s doomed fate in the viewer’s soul. She also forms an original duet with Zsolt Körtvélyessy and Ferenc Karczag, and her talent is a blossom of talent that fills the stage.”[iii]
On the one hand, this gave her a taste of success, but on the other hand, she was still not given worthy tasks in her own theatre. She was unsure of herself and her talent and was tempted to leave the profession. She sought out András Balczó, whom she considered a great role model. He asked her why she could only imagine her life and career in Budapest. She was at a crossroads and felt the need to leave, to gain a new perspective on her career. So she went to Transylvania, with a show of her own composition, to test herself and the power and responsibility of the word. On her return, she signed a contract with the Móricz Zsigmond Theatre in Nyíregyháza, where she has been a member since 1990. On her debut in Nyíregyháza, she summed up her experiences of her Transylvanian trip, while at the same time articulating her ars poetica. “It was there that I understood that there was no other way for me but the theatre, and that if I did not have access to it, I would have to create the conditions for addressing the audience myself.”[iv]
She succeeded so well that in December 1993 she won the Domján Edit Award, which is given to the best actresses from outside of Budapest, and on 15 March 1994 she was awarded the Jászai Mari Prize. She has played and continues to play very different roles in Nyíregyháza. Her first role was as the Apothecary in Ernő Szép’s play Patika (Apothecary). But she has also appeared in musicals, as Marcsa in Albert Szirmai’s and Károly Bakonyi’s operetta Mágnás Miska (Rich Miska) or Aldonza/Dulcinea in Dale Wasserman’s musical Man of La Mancha by Mitch Leigh and Joe Darion. “In the role of Aldonza/Dulcinea, Fruzsina Pregitzer has shown in all her depth, if I may say tragedy, the situation in life when art exposes the wickedness of our lives and encourages us to be different. [...] Fruzsina Pregitzer’s performance had strength and depth, rawness and poetry, frivolity and tender modesty.”[v]
But she could also play Jarry’s Mama Ubu as well as Olga from The Three Sisters. “5 September 1994. Two rehearsals a day for weeks. The always cheerful Fruzsina Pregitzer smiles less than ever. She had already realised that Verebes wanted a different Olga than the one she had imagined for herself. As she gradually accepts his wishes, her back begins to hunch, her eyes to flinch, her movements to slow. She is beginning to resemble the Olga she is prescribed to be, more helpless than active, more silly than good, and more repressedly erotic than a dry spinster."[vi]
Nyíregyháza also brought her the task of portraying Ibsen’s Nora, with which she deservedly won great success. “Pregitzer Fruzsina – as Helmer’s wife Nora – shows so much colour in the role that it’s enough for a whole season! We have long loved and known her comic vein, but this time she showed off her other acting chops in a sparkling display. Tragic, conversationalist, romantic heroine, broken, powerful, self-sacrificing, little liar, mother, woman, all wonderful!”[vii]
She found her place in the town of Nyírség: sometimes she edited a theatre programme on the local radio, sometimes she held theatre workshops for disadvantaged children at the Huszártelep. Today she is still working as a speech teacher for the students of the St Athanasius Greek Catholic Theological Institute. She has put together several independent evenings, which she still performs in small villages and in various parts of the country, but she often travels beyond the borders to spread the message of the motherland and the word of culture. With this aim in mind, in 2010 they created a production called “Operation Déryné” to visit the villages of the county that are physically and financially isolated from the theatre. The artist says: “I approached István Román, the vice-president of the Szabolcs-Szatmár-Bereg County Assembly. [...] Operation Déryné was supported by the Assembly, the Thália Foundation of Nyíregyháza and the Móricz Zsigmond Theatre, thanks to the director Csaba Tasnádi. It’s like a nice stone soup story: the theatre’s seamstresses made the moustaches, sewed a little puli puppy, the decorator made the poster, and thanks to the county assembly, no spectator has to pay for tickets.”[viii]
Her partners in the production were the company’s young actors, more than one of whom she also taught. It is in this task that Fruzsina Pregitzer’s career meaning is manifested: to be an actor and to give to the audience. In her words, “I am happy to have found these artists in this mission. They accepted without a word, even before we knew for sure if we would get paid at all. I wanted them to feel what it was like to meet the gaze of eyes filled with tears, to experience first-hand what it is like to be a Hungarian actor.”[ix]
[2016]
[i] Pregitzer Fruzsina: “What you are hearing did not happen in Pest. Such novelistic things don’t happen there.”
Academic inaugural lecture (20 June 2014)
[ii] Anna Földes: I’m not bad with myself..., Nők Lapja, 20 September 1986 21.
[iii] Ágnes Gyárfás: O’Neill: Dead Light – Stage in the auditorium, or spectator on the stage, Észak-Magyarország, 22 April 1989.
[iv] n.i.a.: New faces in the theatre, Kelet-Magyarország, 22 September 1990.
[v] István Attila Nagy: Man of La Mancha in Nyíregyháza, Kelet-Magyarország, 25 March 1993.
[vi] Andrea Stuber: Secrets of the Three Sisters, Esti Hírlap, 22 October 1994.
[vii] István Palota: Sparkling performance of her acting self – A clear, precise, beautiful Ibsen performance, Új Kelet, 16 December 1995.
[viii] Sonja Makrai: A stone soup story, Magyar Nemzet, 3 July 2010.
[ix] Sonja Makrai: A stone soup story, Magyar Nemzet, 3 July 2010.