The history of Hungarian theatre knows quite a few actors who were not satisfied with merely performing on stage the roles assigned to them by the director or the theatre manager, or those they themselves had chosen or that had been written specifically for them. These artists regarded the theatre as a form of service and saw the actor who shapes the human being not merely as a reproducer but as a creator and originator. For a long time, there was a theoretical debate about whether acting was an art or a craft, and in this debate several outstanding artists did not join with arguments but proved their position through their own example. What is more, they were also highly responsive to social issues and made their voices heard in public life. Such artists included Gábor Egressy, Mari Jászai, Gizi Bajor, Hilda Gobbi, and Zoltán Latinovits – to mention only the most eminent. Among them, perhaps the last one, was Imre Sinkovits, the outstanding artist of the second half of the twentieth century.
A telling proof of his artistic significance is that his career was framed by the writings of two brilliant intellectuals. While Dezső Keresztury could devote only a longer essay to Sinkovits in 1979, in 2013 László Ablonczy published a monograph on the actor’s life. In their writings, both sought to articulate the essence of Imre Sinkovits’s exceptional personality. At the same time, they also explained why they regarded his artistic conduct as exemplary.
“Imre Sinkovits is a believing actor. He regards his craft as a vocation; he feels truly in his element when he can fulfil some kind of moral, communal, or national mission; his humanity and his artistry resonate fully and reinforce one another when he can think of his work as a form of service. This is why his friends affectionately, and his enemies with a touch of shrugging irony, used to call him a ‘scout’” – wrote Dezső Keresztury, who, in the soft Kádár-era dictatorship, could consider service and mission as a kind of calling. [1] László Ablonczy, writing much later, could already recall the 1956 Revolution, and relate the words addressed to Sinkovits by Gyula Illyés in the winter of 1957: “if in no other way, then by partially preserving our honour, we must endure.” From this he inferred that “for Imre Sinkovits, the ancient comedian, the stage was important and sacred because, through the power of Play, each evening it allowed the actor to reveal not only human freedom but also the hopeful dreams of the nation. Through tragedies or comedies, through the struggles endured in every age. This is why it was important for Imre Sinkovits, in the spirit of Ady, and in the fraternity-seeking desire of a small nation, to proclaim and confess, with such inspired depth over more than five hundred evenings, the word of survival, belonging, and faith as Moses, with his own deepest feelings and thoughts.”[2]
The two reflections resonate with each other, and it is perhaps no coincidence that László Ablonczy quoted Imre Madách’s Mózes (Moses), which Dezső Keresztury adapted for the modern stage.
We could present Imre Sinkovits’s career by listing his great dramatic roles – Macbeth, Bánk bán, Ádám, the Marquis de Sade, Ulrik Cillei, Moses, Bétisz, Vencel Bódi, Tiborc, Prospero. Yet doing so would not give a complete picture, for it would leave out his early attempts and the period he spent at the József Attila Theatre. He himself acknowledged that his adult acting career truly began when he was allowed to return to the National Theatre in 1963. But what happened before 1963?
He received his diploma from the Academy of Theatre and Film Arts in 1951. Before that, he performed in two theatres – the Youth Theatre and the Belvárosi Theatre – where all four of his roles came from schematic plays typical of the era. His name never once appeared in the reviews of Szabad Nép or Népszava, and tellingly, it was first in the film Teljes gőzzel (Full Steam Ahead) that critics took notice of the young actor. His later much-praised talent for creating vivid character portrayals was already evident in this first film role.[3]
Although from 1951 to 1955 he played some twenty roles at the National Theatre, Szabad Nép mentioned him only once, when the critic dismissed his performance in a review of Maxim Gorky’s drama Szomov és a többiek (Somov and Others). On 4 April 1955, however, he received the Jászai Mari Prize “for his performances in the new Hungarian one-act plays and in the film Életjel (Signal).”
The one-act plays – Ernő Urbán’s Párviadal (Duel), Tibor Déry’s Talpsimogató (Sole-Stroker), and Lajos Nagy’s Új vendég érkezett (A New Guest Has Arrived) – were staged by Endre Marton at the Katona József Theatre, the chamber theatre of the National. The premiere, held on 29 May 1954, marked a turning point – not only because of the Jászai Prize – in Imre Sinkovits’s career. After smaller character roles, he now had to present four very different figures in one evening; moreover, in all three one-act plays, the pivotal role was his.
It was on this evening that Dezső Keresztury also took notice of him: “I had already heard of his legendary gift for mimicry, but what I saw on stage in Déry’s Talpsimogató was more than the usual speech caricature. The living distorted image of an entire personality took shape – not only in the intonation, but in the behaviour, the movement, the very atmosphere of the individual. This young actor revealed himself as such a virtuoso of the craft that one had to fear for him: that success might spoil him, and that virtuosity – as so often happens – might turn into mannerism.”[4]
After this, Imre Sinkovits was given increasingly significant tasks, and one or two of his performances even prompted longer critical reviews. He reached his peak in the spring of 1957. At that time, the management of the theatre, wishing to compensate Anna Tőkés – who had received very few roles after 1945 – put Jean Racine’s Phaedra on the programme. Imre Sinkovits appeared as Hippolytos in the premiere scheduled for 30 March 1957. Unfortunately, only a few newspapers were published in this transitional period, so we must content ourselves with the opinion of István Hermann, who stated that Sinkovits’s “performance rivals that of Tőkés. His character, too, has its own atmosphere. In contrast to the tormented, complication-ridden Phaedran soul, here it is noble simplicity, inner purity, and naivety that unfold from the figure. When, standing before his father and unwilling to slander his stepmother, the words break within him, a new, more exalted moral atmosphere fills the stage.” [5]
Thus, Imre Sinkovits had made his mark, proving that he belonged in the classical ensemble of the National Theatre. All the greater, then, must his pain have been when it became clear that, beginning with the 1958–1959 season, he was to continue his career in the József Attila Theatre as punishment for his involvement in the events of 1956. His rising career was suddenly broken, but if he wanted to remain an actor, he had no choice but to accept the punishment.
Imre Sinkovits spent four seasons at the József Attila Theatre, and one or another of his roles there is often recalled; most frequently his tour de force in the stage adaptation by Roger Planchon of Alexandre Dumas’s novel A három testőr (The Three Musketeers), premiered in the autumn of 1962. Ervin Szombathelyi wrote of this in Népszava: “The undisputed hero of the performance is Imre Sinkovits, who appears alone in eighteen roles on stage. For this excellent actor, it is not only his costumes that change almost from one moment to the next, but with his whole personality, his intonation, and his demeanour he is able to make the most varied figures entirely believable.” [6]
Fortunately, audiences were not limited to seeing Sinkovits only in Angyalföld. He appeared on television, made several films, and also became involved in the work of the Irodalmi Színpad (Literary Stage).
The greatest surprise of the period took place in the Bartók Hall, where on 6 December 1959 he appeared as Hector Berlioz in Miklós Hubay’s one-act play Ők tudják, mi a szerelem (They Know What Love Is). Once again, we must quote Dezső Keresztury, who, by recalling this theatrical evening, demonstrated that the career of the actor exiled from the National Theatre had not stalled or broken in two – only its stage had changed: “[…] We went because of Hubay; I confess, I did not even know that Sinkovits was playing the male lead, the aged heroic lover. He had been on stage for at least ten minutes when I recognised him. His shaggy, grey head; his body, as if burned down to the bone by the fire of passion, thin, wrapped in a fluttering black garment; his agitated–indignant speech; his broken yet blazing movements did not even faintly resemble Sinkovits’s civilian self. The actor had succeeded in stepping entirely into the role of a positive madman. We were witnesses to a stage creation that was brilliant, mature, shaped with burning passion and masterly command. It became certain once more that this exceptional artist cannot be absent from the active vanguard of our dramatic art.” [7]
On 17 May 1963, Imre Sinkovits once again appeared on the stage of the National Theatre: in Endre Marton’s production of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. According to critic György Hámos, he was excellent in the psychologically complex and demanding role of Cassius. Sinkovits played the character without pathos, with sarcasm and bitter intelligence. Hámos thought it would have been an exciting experiment to cast him as Antony. Yet neither the critic nor the actor had to wait long for a major role. A few months later, Sinkovits again appeared in a Shakespeare tragedy: director Tamás Major entrusted him with the title role in the theatre’s revival of Macbeth, a role Major himself had played in 1950. And to make the gesture of forgiveness even more theatrical, on 9 October 1963 he wrote a long letter to his actor, which he ended with the following thought: “[…] I would like to say a few words of thanks for the joy our work together has brought me. I cannot even decide which of the ideas written here were mine, and which were yours, dear Imre. These days people speak much about the relationship between actor and director, about the ‘directorial concept’ forced upon the artist. I feel that during the weeks we spent together this question could not even arise. You asked wisely, and I was compelled to think and to answer.” [8]
Macbeth, however, merely opened the way to Sinkovits’s brilliant career. At the National Theatre between 1964 and 1967 he played a succession of profound dramatic roles. He portrayed Adam in Imre Madách’s Az ember tragédiája (The Tragedy of Man, 1964) and the Marquis de Sade in Peter Weiss’s Marat/Sade (1966). At the same time, he was also cast in modern works – performances in which he tested his strength and refined his means of expression. “These plays, however, although in each he brilliantly fused ever-new unities of virtuosic playfulness with deeply moving characterisation, did not yet transport him into his true, native world” – wrote Dezső Keresztury. “I believe – he continued – that he entered that world during the preparations of Czillei és a Hunyadiak (Cillei and the Hunyadis). In Vörösmarty’s drama he did not have the leading role (in fact, such a role does not truly exist in it); yet he contributed with very strong, distinct, and individual colours to shaping the mood of the entire production – one could say he ‘felt truly in his element’. Thus it became possible – during Endre Marton’s tenure as director and chief director – to launch that series of productions which later – during ‘The Weeks of the Hungarian Drama’, at least so it seemed – sought to make the National Theatre once again the theatre of the nation.” [9]
After portraying Ulrik Czillei in Mihály Vörösmarty’s Czillei és a Hunyadiak (Cillei and the Hunyadis, 1966) and Madách’s Mózes (Moses, 1967), Sinkovits created in this deliberately shaped series the most significant characters of his oeuvre: Máté Csák in Imre Madách –Dezső Keresztury’s Csák végnapjai (The Last Days of Csák, 1971); György Dózsa in Gyula Illyés’s Testvérek (Brothers, 1973); Pope Gregory VII in László Németh’s VII. Gergely (Gregory VII, 1975); László Teleki in Gyula Illyés’s Különc (The Eccentric, 1977); and Prince Géza in Magda Szabó’s Az a szép fényes nap (That Shining Bright Day, 1976).
Dezső Keresztury also drew attention to the fact that these characters stem from the same root:
“In each of these dramas – Czillei and the Hunyadis, Moses, The Last Days of Csák, Brothers, Gregory VII, The Eccentric, That Bright Shining Day – the same great individual stands before us in different forms: one who is at once a devotee of truth and a respecter of reality, who wishes to educate the community according to his own moral code, who desires to bring it happiness according to his own ideals of freedom, and who offers himself as a sacrifice for it. They therefore compel the actor of related dreams and nature to inhabit them, to live through their fate, to speak their words, to perform their deeds: to identify with them, yet – as with the shades of the classical underworld – to shape them according to his own constitution, nourishing them with his own blood. It was surely for this reason that some fastidious connoisseurs, attentive only to the theatre, spoke of Sinkovits’s ‘repetitions’, especially in connection with these roles: yet it was not the artist who repeated himself – which, incidentally, he has the right to do if the repetition is worthy – but the historical, human and dramatic situation.” [10]
Regarding Imre Sinkovits’s portrayal of Moses, in the words of László Ablonczy, it must be recalled separately as “one of the great syntheses of his artistic and human thought.” Dezső Keresztury, at the request of György Turián, director of the Veszprém theatre, modernised Imre Madách’s dramatic poem. After its 1966 premiere in Veszprém, the play was staged at the National Theatre in the direction of Endre Marton. The production achieved a dazzling success. Vera Létay, writing in Élet és Irodalom on 11 November 1967, expressed her rapture over Sinkovits’s performance: “If the National Theatre staged Madách’s drama for no other reason than to allow Imre Sinkovits to play the role of Moses, it had to be staged. Just as we can watch Sinkovits, season by season, indeed day by day, become a greater actor before our very eyes, so can we follow this process, like in a microcosm, within his portrayal of Moses. In the robust figure of the aged leader of the people, he was able to condense not only the terrifying energy and prophetic passion of Michelangelo’s Moses, but also the conscious calculation of Thomas Mann’s jealous and cunning patriarch, who creates his god in his own image.” [11]
The production was revived several times by the National Theatre, as Imre Sinkovits himself recalled: “We performed it for twenty-two years, more than seven hundred times. It ran continuously for seventeen years, then paused for two. After that, László Vámos was the chief director, and I told him that I could no longer go on stage because at the beginning of the play Moses is twenty-seven or twenty-eight years old, and I was fifty. But I had an idea: in the first part let my son (András Vitai) play the young Moses, and after the wanderings in the desert, in the second act, I will come on stage. In this way it remained in the repertoire for a few more years. With this play I received the gift that in the 1960s and 1970s I was allowed to say on stage: ‘Faith and fidelity can uphold the people of our nation.’” [12]
From László Ablonczy’s research we know that Imre Sinkovits significantly modified Moses’ admonition to Joshua – with Keresztury’s approval. The original text reads as follows: “... Like the sea / The enemy crashes upon us. Only faith and fidelity / Can uphold the people of Israel.” [13]
Sándor Fekete also emphasised that the main actor of the play became an equal creative partner to the author, the director, and the reviser: “The great moment of the performance is the one in which Moses virtually wrests from the Lord the punishment of the unbelieving people. This is already Imre Sinkovits’s personal triumph. Here one feels most clearly that for the leader who is possessed by the consciousness of his own mission, the destruction of the doubting opponent is not only a duty and torment, but also a kind of strange, self-tormenting pleasure. It is the shared bravura of director and actor that the dialogue between the Lord and Moses has ‘materialised’ into a dialogue Moses conducts with himself. It is a great role and a great performance throughout the play – Michelangelo’s Moses, but Machiavelli’s as well, in short, truly Madáchian.” [14]
Imre Sinkovits was bound not only to Dezső Keresztury by close friendship, but also to Gyula Illyés and László Németh. He spoke about this relationship in 1981 at the request of Fejér Megyei Szemle: “We, the young people, fled from the lies of the years of the personality cult to Gyula Illyés, László Németh, Áron Tamási and the others. When I returned [in 1963], we besieged the leaders of the National Theatre with our personal influence, urging them to abandon their foolish theatre policy by which they had driven Illyés and Németh out of the National Theatre! First, thanks to our friendship and personal relations, we managed to coax Gyula Illyés back to the National Theatre. Then László Németh, with me personally taking responsibility that Gregory VII would be brought to the stage worthily, with due humility and with faithfulness to László Németh’s intentions.” [15]
His relationship with Gyula Illyés was made even more intimate by their shared experience of the 1956 revolution. Imre Sinkovits could speak about this publicly for the first time only in 1993:
“I will never forget that he would occasionally speak about 1956. He firmly believed that hope must not be lost. Let us admit: our generation hardly believed that today’s circumstances would ever come into being. Think of his drama Testvérek (Brothers), of the debate between György and Gergely! There, György Dózsa says: ‘No matter how those popular uprisings turned out, I am proud of ours, proud of this people.’ If I could have said that on stage at the time he wrote it, and not twenty years later, it would have given the audience even more encouragement.” [16]
A new period began in Imre Sinkovits’s career when new leadership – Péter Nagy, Gábor Székely, Gábor Zsámbéki – took over the National Theatre in 1978. The fifty-year-old, sensitive artist, who was concerned not only with theatre but also with public affairs, found the change difficult to bear. Dezső Keresztury, an excellent connoisseur of his life and work, described the crisis moment in his essay Egy eszményítő realista (An Idealising Realist): “He had to feel that the faith he placed in his vocation was being threatened by the radically altered circumstances in his artistic environment and home. He became uncertain, his always justly admired sense of proportion faltered. He clenched his teeth as he fulfilled duties in which he did not believe; from his malaise he fled into a frenzy of overwork that he could not have carried out with constant renewal even with a healthy spirit: he had to rely on routine; the seemingly inexhaustible source was exhausted, and this only deepened the creator’s dissatisfaction; his recurring stomach ulcer was joined by a new one, he lost weight, aged ten years in a single year, and in the end he had to be taken to hospital by gentle force.”[17]
To be fair, before Imre Sinkovits fell ill, in the spring of 1980 he still played the title role in Husz János, a work by László Németh, directed by Gábor Zsámbéki. The play was written in 1948, and three decades later the thoughts reflecting on the Hungarian domestic political situation after 1945 – as Tamás Koltai observed in his review in Népszabadság – carried the drama beyond its narrower thematic focus:
“Gábor Zsámbéki’s production is flawless above all because it recognises this altered dramatic character; and it becomes powerful through the theatricalisation (plainly: making theatrical) of the ideas drawn from the text, which is entirely his achievement. This in no way diminishes the value of Imre Sinkovits’s portrayal of Husz; even less so, because in a role far better suited to his nature than Gregory VII, he must play through a sequence of situations offering far fewer dramatic conflicts. All that the actor portraying Husz can aim for is the carving of a statue-like character, enclosed within a block of loneliness and immovable. Sinkovits achieved this almost completely. I have seldom seen a gaunt ascetic face become such a perfect mask. Of the Jan Hus he plays, it may rightly be said that ‘into no gentler mildness has nature ever concealed such hardness’.” [18]
Sinkovits Imre achieved even greater success in András Sütő’s Advent a Hargitán (Advent in the Hargita Mountains), which the National Theatre premiered on 2 January 1986, already under the directorship of László Vámos and Dezső Malonyay. The Romanian rights-protection office tried, with the support of the Romanian government, to block the production at all costs. The Hungarian political leadership was initially deeply divided on the issue; eventually, after a delay of several weeks, the National Theatre was permitted to hold the premiere.
“It was a strange evening; alongside the friends of the theatre and the admirers of the author were those who had supported the ban, and they applauded together with those who had fought for the premiere” – recalled László Ablonczy. “But the premiere of Advent in the Hargita Mountains meant even more than this: Ferenc Sík’s production retrospectively proved the failure of a self-effacing political strategy. And it became a great source of strength for amplifying public attention toward the Hungarian communities forced into the misery of Trianon. The struggle to regain our self-respect and dignity – which until then had been waged in individual, partisan efforts by Gyula Illyés, Sándor Csoóri, Mihály Czine, the journals Tiszatáj and Alföld, and by writers and artists, while Sinkovits Imre fought for the fulfilment of the nation-building idea at the National Theatre – became institutionalised with the success of Advent in the Hargita Mountains. That is how the premiere became a celebration. Young people flocked to the performance; provincial secondary schools arrived by special train; university students returned again and again, and for Transylvanians and other Hungarians from across the borders, seeing Sütő’s play became the most important programme during their visit to Hungary. Evening after evening, hundreds of spectators – mostly young people – greeted the artists at the stage door with candles, singing, and applause.”
Several people were of the opinion that the production was alluring because of its political overtones. They ignored the most important idea of Imre Sinkovits’s article in Tiszatáj, which highlighted the artistic challenges of the work: “Bringing it to the stage requires enormous effort from us. And this is not simply the challenge of the drama. In this ballad-like, fairy-tale, playful style, we have no school at all. It is sad even to say this to an actor of the National Theatre. When various debates rage about what the task of the National Theatre is, what should be in the repertoire and what should not, this omission is almost never mentioned. That the nation’s first theatre has not confronted the line of Hungarian dramatic literature indicated by Tamási. […] With the premiere of Advent in the Hargita Mountains, I also hope that we will not only complete our compulsory homework, but that András Sütő will even perform the miracle of having Tamási and Károly Kós staged at the National Theatre as a result of the performance of his drama.”
Although Sinkovits could not take part in the Tamási and Károly Kós premieres, András Sütő’s play determined the National Theatre’s work plan for decades. Under the directorship of László Ablonczy, it was revived in 1991, and a studio version was also produced, with which the ensemble toured minority Hungarian regions and many parts of Europe for years.
From the 1990s onwards, Imre Sinkovits took on fewer and fewer roles at the National Theatre. Most of his time was filled with panel discussions, solo evenings, and public engagements. Still, there were a few exceptional theatrical moments. He again played alongside Klári Tolnay in the once highly successful play by Miklós Hubay, Ők tudják, mi a szerelem (They Know What Love Is, 1993). After the film, he was able to play Tót on stage as well in István Örkény’s work Tóték (The Tóths, 1992). In Richard Salvat’s direction, he played Adam in scenes twelve, thirteen and fourteen of Madách’s Az ember tragédiája (The Tragedy of Man, 1994). He made good use of his excellent character-forming talent in Ferenc Molnár’s Panoptikum (Panopticon, 1994), in the musical My Fair Lady (1994), and in Gergely Csiky’s play A nagymama (The Grandmother, 1997).
Since the staging of Advent in the Hargita Mountains, Sinkovits had been closely connected with András Sütő, so the premiere of Sütő’s new play Balkáni gerle (Balkan Dove) in the autumn of 1998, directed by István Iglódi, was a special event in his life. He played the role of Medárd Schuller, a gynaecologist and the play’s raisonneur figure, and it was therefore he who interpreted the title at the end of the play: “On the site of the destroyed nest, in a nest-imitation assembled from dry branches, shards of glass, barbed wire, the wretched bird fusses, hatching its eggs; it coos sadly and cackles with laughter, as if imitating us. Perhaps what happens to it is what happens to us: vivere non est necesse! Mentiri necesse est.” That is: it is not necessary to live – but to lie one must, one had to! [25]
After the premiere of Balkáni gerle, he took on three more roles. When Mihály Vörösmarty’s dramatic poem Csongor és Tünde (Csongor and Tünde) was staged on the bicentenary of the poet’s birth, the National Theatre was already called the Pesti Magyar Színház. Imre Sinkovits played the role of the Scholar, and with his performance – as with his unparalleled life’s work – he paid homage to the centuries-old National Theatre.
[2017]
[1] Dezső Keresztury: Egy eszményítő realista. Sinkovits Imréről (An idealizing realist. On Imre Sinkovits). In. Válogatott színikritikák, tanulmányok. Bp., Magvető Kiadó, 1984. 524.
[2] László Ablonczy: Sinkovits Imre a Hargitán. Fél évszázad töredékei a Nemzeti Színház 175 esztendejéről (Imre Sinkovits on the Harghita. Fragments of Half a Century from the 175 Years of the National Theatre). Budapest, Kairosz Publishing, 2013. 7.
[3] His name appears for the second time in Szabad Nép on 12 November 1951, when, as a member of the National Theatre, he stood guard at the bier of his beloved master, Artúr Somlay.
[4] Dezső Keresztury: ibid. 526.
[5] István Hermann: Phaedra. Népszabadság, 14 April 1957.
[6] Ervin Szombathelyi: A három testőr. Bemutató a József Attila Színházban (The Three Musketeers. Premiere at the József Attila Theatre). Népszava, 26 September 1962.
[7] Dezső Keresztury: ibid. 531.
[8] Major Tamás rendezői levele Shakespeare Macbethjéről (Tamás Major’s director’s letter about Shakespeare’s Macbeth). Népszabadság, 24 November 1963.
[9] Dezső Keresztury: ibid. 536.
[10] Dezső Keresztury: ibid. 538.
[11] Vera Létay: Kettős perújrafelvétel. In: L. V.: Igent és nemet mondani. (Double Retrial. In: V. L.: To Say Yes and No). Budapest, Magvető Publishing, 1972. 236.
[12] Andrea Ferenczi: (Nemzetet, kultúrát, hitet = F. A.: Arcok és szerepek. Beszélgetések) Nation, Culture, Faith = A. F.: Faces and Roles. Conversations. Budapest, Harmat Publishing, 2001. 115.
[13] László Ablonczy: ibid. 232.
[14] Sándor Fekete: : Madách Imre Mózese a Nemzeti Színházban (Imre Madách’s Moses at the National Theatre). Kritika, 1968/1, 45.
[15] Imre Sinkovits: Az első Németh László-szerep. In: S. I.: „Vigasz-lámpácskák". (The First Németh László Role. In: I. S.: “Little Lamps of Consolation.”) Selected Writings, 1981–2000. Budapest, Kairosz Publishing, 2001.
[16] Imre Sinkovits: Vallomás Illyés Gyuláról. (Confession about Gyula Illyés). Árgus, 1993/1, 58.
[17] Dezső Keresztury: ibid. 524.
[18] Tamás Koltai: Szent vagy eretnek? Németh László: Husz János (Saint or Heretic? Németh László: Husz János). In: T. K.: Interlude. Theatre Writings. Budapest, Magvető Publishing, 1986. 77.
[19] András Sütő: Boldog esték tükörcserepei. Perrin, a gefni lázadó. In: Az ember. Vallomások Sinkovits Imréről (Shards of Happy Evenings. Perrin, the Gefni Rebel. In: The Human Being. Testimonies about Imre Sinkovits). Edited by Péter Spangel. Budapest, Tinta Publishing, 2001. 144.
[20] András Rajk: Új színház régiekről (New Theatre on Old Matters). Népszava, 11 April 1981.
[21] Imre Sinkovits: Esemény (Event). In: I. S.: “Little Lamps of Consolation.” ibid. 30.
[22] László Ablonczy: ibid. 334.
[23] László Ablonczy: ibid. 330–331.
[24] Imre Sinkovits: Event. In: I. S.: “Little Lamps of Consolation.” ibid. 32.
[25] András Sütő: Balkan Dove. Part Two, Scene Twenty. Budapest, Helikon, 1999. (The Works of András Sütő) 100.