Erzsébet Rátkai is a revolutionary innovator of symbolic costume systems, the creator of special surfaces for the theatre, and thus a great magician of the mechanism of the effect of stage costume. This is particularly important as the word spectacle has lost much of its artistic content in recent times, especially with the advent of spectacle bakeries, spectacle theatres, highlighting structured concepts, gastronomic and cultural stalls.
But we have a special Hungarian designer for contemporary theatre, who wants to show more than just the costume or the nakedness of the sign. Not content with the possibilities offered by applied art, with following the concept of the play and the director, she forges new paths, seeking creative materials, techniques and forms, and infusing her individuality and repainting the bumpy road of stage design. She is also not discouraged by the fact that the trade press has given the designer a one-sentence review, with little mention of the symbolism of the colours or the specificities of the materials used.
The textile workshop she created is more than just a tailoring experimenting with modern techniques, it is more than a strategy for handling materials, the latest achievement of the school of design. She does not ask, she does not complain, she uses the basic forms available, and her experimental approach has not only brought her international recognition for her performances of the rock opera trilogy by Levente Szörényi and János Bródy performed in the Hungarian Theatre in 2000 and in Szeged in 2001, as well as other musical productions of the Szeged Open Air Stage. Her vision, drawings and innovations have also reached London, namely the designer of the Royal Shakespeare Company. Her creativity is unsurpassed. A huge challenge was to dress the entire cast of the three rock operas in Szeged’s Dóm Square, with the support of the Ministry of National Cultural Heritage, using Hungarian symbolism. The costumes will be designed and made over and over again as the director’s vision and the singers chosen for the changing locations, shapes and sounds are selected. Between 1985 and 2012, the rock opera István a király (Stephen the King) also had more than 230 performances at the National Theatre.
Dreamed up to create imitation fabrics, her design workshop brings to life costumes whose main virtue is to push the boundaries of imagination. She uses a wide variety of techniques to alter the costumes, to give them patina, to age them, or to give them functionality when a different costume is required for a character in a scene: revealing or covering up a decorative element, changing the headdress between scenes, varying the accessories, using metal and/or gauze-based materials.
She would not be satisfied with her patination method alone, and so she alternates, and often combines, painting, appliqué, gluing, scuffing, abrasion, and dirtying techniques to allow the actor to interpret the director’s concept in the most expressive costume.
Her method of design, from the unfolding and interpretation of the play, is shaped by the consideration of the actor’s talents and forms, and the development of the characters. The first costume is the functional realisation of the trinity of costume – actor – character, when the designer draws on her workshops and collaborators to achieve the perfect costume. http://szinhaz.hu/videk/41160-a-gyurodesekkel-valo-jatek-ratkai-erzsebet-az-ev-jelmeztervezoje – Playing with the creases – Erzsébet Rátkai is the costume designer of the year.
A particular challenge in her work is that while the stage performance is a unique, unrepeatable experience from night to night, the film realisation requires even more meticulous elaboration due to the proximity of the camera and the unalterability of the film tape. The essence of the unified costume system she creates is “the living person, the movement, the change, the unexpectedness and transience of the moment, which makes the costumes she designs even more special.” (Rátkai: Egységes jelmezrendszerek (Unified costume systems), spoken, 27 June 2014, MMA)
She was awarded the prize for Designer of the Year by the Association of Hungarian Creative Artists for her contemporary reconstruction of Hungarian costumes, the elaborateness of the decorative elements and the representation of the period-historical fidelity of the costumes, as a professional recognition for the innovative realisation of the material handling possibilities. She looks for a cloth fabric for historical costumes, preferring to use shiny taffeta to convey sophistication and nobility, while cotton organza is the most characteristic of her choices for fragility and defencelessness.
In her performance of the musical Chicago (Petőfi Theatre, Veszprém, directed by Károly Eperjes, 2014), Erzsébet Rátkai used a hitherto unknown textile with a metal base and coating, which is therefore extremely easy to wrinkle and vary. Playing with warm colours from pale pink to burning red to tired mauve tones, as well as variations of greyish black and deep dark black cold colours, she told the emotional changes of the characters with magical colour compositions. The interplay of sartorial and light effects with the creases brought the next professional recognition, based on the votes of the designing and directing colleagues.
“Listen up, big words are coming: I have never seen such a quality, entertaining, meaningful musical performance in this country or anywhere else! The whole performance is characterised by a high level of sophistication. Balázs Horesnyi’s set is tasteful, the twelve Al Capones of the jury are original, and the cityscape behind Billy’s office is a sight to behold for long minutes. I’m a big fan of Erzsébet Rátkai’s work, she always uses materials with an excellent sense of style, avoids being an end in itself, while always providing a touch of elegance in her costumes; this time is no different, she has dreamed up expressive, character-building costumes for the characters. (Special thanks for the wigs – they are surprisingly natural hairstyles).” http://www.szinhazkolonia.hu/kritika/Broadway-Magyarorszagon – Theatre Colony, from the Veszprém production of Chicago, Broadway in Hungary, review by S. E. Ezra, 2014.
Erzsébet Rátkai is no stranger to imaginative thinking beyond the costume. She designs masks, accessories and hairstyles in harmony with the costume, with the same attention to detail. From rural productions to a spectacle at the Central Theatre, her ingenious, humorous and hilarious wigs are highlighted on numerous occasions, placing the character’s crown on the unrecognisably masked actor’s head. An extremely creative collaboration has been established both at the Keszthely Summer Games and at the Central Theatre’s shows, in collaboration with director and theatre director Tamás Puskás. Highlights include the productions The Comedy of Errors (Katona József Theatre, Kecskemét, directed by Tamás Puskás, 1999) and The Marriage of Figaro (Vidám Színpad, directed by Tamás Puskás, 2004). Viktor Nagy, director, was also a key creative partner in the collaborative thinking. They have worked together on more than twenty productions over the last fifteen years, both in Budapest and at the request of several theatres in the countryside. (László Hunyadi, Szeged, 1990, A vajda tornya (The Viceroy’s Tower), MÁO, 2003, Faust, Pécs, 2004, Isten pénze (A Christmas Carol), Győr, 2008, Csárdáskirálynő (The Queen of the Csárdás), Győr, 2009, Szegény gazdagok (The Poor Rich), JASZ, 2010, Mária evangéliuma (The Gospel of Mary), Győr, 2011, Falstaff, Pécs, 2012, Marica grófnő (Countess Marica), Kecskemét, 2013, A salemi boszorkányok (The Crucible), Szolnok, 2014.) It is a testimony to their creative community that this season they are staging several productions in the spirit of their common ideas (Sztárcsinálók (The Star Makers), Szolnok, 2015, Csiksomlyói passió (Csiksomlyó Passion), Pécs, 2015, Isten pénze (A Christmas Carol), Kecskemét, 2015.)
In 2008, Erzsébet Rátkai spoke for the first time in a longer interview at the Central Theatre about the birth of the drawings and designs: “The piece as a whole appears before me slowly, moving in a fog, seemingly unimportant details, moods and surfaces appear. In space and time, everything blends together. I try to travel a path by the end of which everything will be visible in my imagination. This takes the greatest effort, it is the hardest part of the work. It’s all in my head, not even on paper. Then the characters take shape, they slowly become one with the actor, and that’s when the actor’s being, his proportionate physical gifts, start to play an important role. You can build on that in a serious way. At this point, the actor becomes more and more influential, the final form becomes more and more inseparable from the actor playing. The actor can be the source of many funny solutions and can inspire you in many ways. Then, when the actor starts to move and behave as the role requires from the moment he first gets dressed, i.e. when he has taken on the personality of the character he is playing, I feel that I have not worked in vain.”
(http://www.centralszinhaz.hu/component/content/article/7/44-beszelgetes-ratkai-erzsivel)
In a metaphor that surpasses the success of Broadway productions, the designer has perhaps received more recognition for her work than her awards. She is not only a darling of the public, but of the theatre profession, an internationally acclaimed design artist and stage innovator from London to Oslo, around the world. The secret of her success is not only her unparalleled handling and crafting of materials, but also her close creative collaboration with her fellow creative partners: the director, the set designer and the composer.
Her success of more than two decades with the patinating workshop has not only been proven in the productions she has created, but in 2015 she also gained international recognition as an educator. Daniella Sasvári, who grew up in her workshop and mastered even the smallest tricks of the trade, thanked Erzsébet Rátkai in New Zealand for her ideas, her theatrical secrets, her education in the craft and the history of theatre. Daniella Sasvári, formerly a costume painter at the workshop in Veszprém, won the Word of Wearable Art’s grand prize, the Sustainability Award 2015. http://www.veszpremkukac.hu/daniella-magyar-es-maori-motivumokkal-nyert/ – from Gabriella Gombás’ report, 30.09.2015.
Her creative art is not a finished process, from the founding of the workshop, the highlighting of theatre backgrounds, the training of the young generation, to the tasks of professional jurying at national theatre conventions, she has many design tasks ahead of her. In December 2015, the Central Theatre, directed by Tamás Puskás, presented Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing, with sets by Balázs Horesnyi and costumes by Erzsébet Rátkai, in December 2015. Their creative trio is a guarantee for the realisation of a unique vision and idea. She also designs for the National Theatre in Győr and Pécs, the Hungarian Theatre in Pest, the Katona József Theatre in Kecskemét, the Szigliget Theatre in Szolnok and the Gárdonyi Géza Theatre in Eger.
By spring 2016, the National Theatre of Pécs and the Gárdonyi Géza Theatre in Eger will be creating costumes for opera and fairy tale performances. The presentation of her theatrical innovations would be worth publishing in the series of her photo albums (Szcenika series, publisher: OSZMI, 2012-2016, author Tímea Turnai), which represent experiments in the design and applied arts. In 2014, she gave her inaugural lecture at the Hungarian Academy of Arts on “Unified costume systems, special surfaces”.
Hers is a special theatrical craft. She not only dreams up costumes for the stage and designs them in drawings, but also reinterprets the most minute practices of construction, elevating textile dyeing to an art, including the professionals of the construction workshops. In a creative team, thinking together with the director and the space planners, the ancient Hungarian, Renaissance and contemporary costumes are created, translating the costumes, props and decorations into theatrical ideas. I admire your creations! These costumes, headdresses and props, created with artistic elaboration, are detached from the theatrical creative process, they are works of art and craftsmanship in their own right, which have their place in exhibitions of Hungarian schools of visual design and artists, and even call for picture albums. I can only hope that the unique works of her workshop will one day be on display in our national public collection, the scenic and costume collection of the Hungarian Theatre Museum and Institute (OSZMI). It has been an honour to get to know Erzsébet Rátkai’s theatrical creations and workshop works and to write about her experiments! Thanks and gratitude for her work as an artist!
[2016]
The author is a theatre historian, curator of the scenic collections, OSZMI