László Székely’s scenic spaces “expand and contract as though governed by the shared breath of stage and auditorium; at times their black-and-white austerity is overwhelming, at others their sombre, matt surfaces are gently softened by drapery or by the almost hope-giving beam of light that illuminates the living human playing the Living Human, the Player. He learnt and experienced everything in this marvellous social game we call theatre.” [1]
After completing his diploma project, he was contracted by the theatre in Szolnok. It was there that he encountered the director Gábor Székely [Hungarian theatre director, a leading figure of reformist stage practice in the 1970s]. Their shared way of thinking and their common creative method came to define the visual world of the productions, so László Székely became the chief director’s close artistic collaborator in numerous theatre works. Their joint staging of Füst Milán’s Boldogtalanok (The Unhappy) offered a magnificent conclusion to one artistic era while simultaneously opening new vistas for implementing reforms at the Nemzeti Színház (National Theatre, Budapest).
“This set transcends naturalism by refusing to narrow the stage picture to a meticulously cluttered room, flaunting its objects (and thus aiming to characterise its inhabitants). Instead, it raises above it the image of the drab tenement block – the wider environment into which this infernal little island of discord is wedged. The entire stage area becomes the flat itself: its rooms are indicated by doorframes that grant the director the opportunity to shape the movement patterns not merely formally but functionally. A key instrument of spatial composition – as in all collaborative works by László Székely and Gábor Székely – is light. Both favour ‘gegen-beleuchtung’: light that is never emitted in rays but diffused, filtered, cascading; arriving from above at a slight angle, it renders the air palpable and ‘brightens’ the actors. One particularly beautiful solution: at the moment of Mrs Huber’s ‘redemptive’ death, a beam of light falling through a tiny glass-block window onto the crucifix hanging on the wall evokes the angelic annunciations of trecento paintings.” (Tamás Koltai: Magányba dermedt életek [lit. Lives Frozen in Solitude], Színház, 1978/5, 5.)
Alongside theatre critic Tamás Koltai’s appreciations, nationwide recognition soon followed. By this point the director was already an ‘Érdemes Művész’ [Artist of Merit, a state arts honour], while the designer, László Székely, had been awarded the Jászai Mari Prize [Hungary’s principal state award for theatre artists]. From 1982 the production continued with tremendous success in the Chamber Theatre of the National Theatre, with leading roles performed by Hilda Gobbi, Ági Szirtes, László Sinkó, Mária Ronyec and Ádám Rajhona, while the director’s assistant and dramaturg was Győző Duró.
Arriving at the Katona József Theatre, Budapest, founded in 1982 under the joint leadership of Gábor Zsámbéki [Hungarian theatre director associated with progressive ensemble-based work] and Gábor Székely, László Székely brought with him the distinctive achievements of contemporary Hungarian stage-space design: his experiences in Eger, Szeged and Szolnok, as well as the set for The Death of Tarelkin designed for an acclaimed 1981 production at the National Theatre, directed by Gábor Székely with costumes by Nelly Vágó.
The outstanding professional reception of The Death of Tarelkin created a unique opportunity for him to realise his ideas about the organisation of stage space. “Within László Székely’s grey-painted brick walls, suggesting depth and perspective but also insistently emphasising constriction, prison-like severity and enclosure. Built into the walls are orange iron footholds, offering the characters – repeatedly and deceptively throughout the action – an illusory refuge whenever they find themselves in difficulty. The set remains active throughout the performance, fulfilling various functions, yet it never becomes a fifth protagonist; it is simply used and utilised for the diverse purposes of structuring the plot.” (Zoltán Iszlai: Belharcmodor [lit. The Method of Inner Combat], Színház, 1981/5, 18.) At the Országos Színházi Találkozó (National Theatre Festival) the production’s visual world earned László Székely the Prize for Best Set Design.
The company and its actors guaranteed the professional creation of productions that were consistently memorable and artistically valid. It was a meeting of visual imagination and exceptional intellectual energy within a space that posed considerable challenges and was far from conventional. The characteristics of the stage space and its surroundings were highly unusual, demanding inventive spatial solutions and creative adaptability. The venue – originally the interior of a ground-floor cinema built into an Art Nouveau tenement house – had, after renovation, become a neutral yet small performance site. At the same time, it allowed visual emphases to assert themselves, not through large or heavy constructive elements or scenic structures, but far more through metal- and wooden-framed constructions and draperies radiating a cold, atmospheric light.
László Székely developed a distinctive working method based on the conviction that the essence of design lies in “a thought that comprehends the drama and a high level of draughtsmanship; its foundation is not the spoken word or verbalised opinion but the creation and realisation of a visual concept that is clear to all and serves the dramatic experience”. [2]
He thus places the emphasis not on space per se, but on the dramatic contexts, striving to express the interactions between the characters through a range of visual elements and spatial configurations.
The cornerstone of his work is the harmony between the play’s message and thematic content and the associative impulses of both designer and director. Design cannot be self-serving, for however beautiful it may be, it fails if it is not functional. His rational and space-centred ideas nevertheless often had to be adapted to the more modest budgets available in Hungary at the time. He frequently had to turn necessity into virtue through creative solutions, even though the ideal would have been for the given professional and financial circumstances to inspire the design. In parallel with his work in Hungary, he also collaborated several times on the creation of concert spectacles for the world-famous “Three Tenors”, contributing to the visual conception of arena productions.
For Székely, professional challenges were never in short supply, either at home or abroad. Beyond the artistic leadership and directors of the Katona József Theatre, he worked with such major figures as theatre director László Vámos at the National Theatre of and at the Szegedi Szabadtéri Játékok (Szeged Open-Air Festival), as well as with Tamás Major [actor and director, long-time head of the National Theatre] and András Békés [theatre and opera director].
At the Magyar Állami Operaház (Hungarian State Opera) and in Szeged he found a similarly congenial intellectual environment for his spatial visions. His work as a designer was characterised by stage mobility, harmony of resolved space and functional coherence. “László Székely’s set for The Barber of Seville is essentially a stage mobile whose elements are not justified by seeming to imitate something, but by participating in the performance in their own material reality – at first the stage appears to be merely an independent artistic composition, but it gradually becomes clear that it operates, that is, it collaborates throughout in enabling the production to unfold the play in its own distinctive way.” (Géza Fodor: A sevillai borbély [lit. The Barber of Seville], Muzsika, July 1986)
A defining milestone in his career was his work for the concerts of the world-famous “Three Tenors”. In 1994 he designed the arena setting for their performance in Los Angeles at Dodger Stadium, where the three singers appeared before three-hundred-metre colonnades, a forest-like abundance of greenery and a Hollywood-inspired backdrop, with special lighting effects illuminating the artificial waterfalls. The producer was Tibor Rudas [Hungarian-born American impresario].
Two years later, in 1996, came the Superconcert at the Népstadion [People’s Stadium, today Puskás Aréna], for which he needed to conjure a spectacular stage environment for an audience of twenty-one thousand. It was an enormous challenge to incorporate the unique elements created specifically for this occasion. He evoked the Millennial Monument, Vajdahunyad Castle, the Parliament building and the Fisherman’s Bastion with four gigantic canvases displaying digitised photographic images, set against shimmering, gold-toned backdrops spanning a built surface of 2,140 square metres. To expand and widen the sense of space he placed large-scale mirrors on either side. Mood images, including references to the Feszty-körkép [Feszty Panorama – a monumental 19th-century Hungarian circular painting], appeared on 18×6-metre canvases, illuminated by a uniform wall of 190 projectors. The 400-metre stage hosted performances by José Carreras, Plácido Domingo, Diana Ross and Hungarian soprano Andrea Rost. The production team consisted of Queen Holding, Mario Dradi and Ervin Vég.
Székely consistently succeeds in creating a tangible physical environment onstage, whether working in opera, operetta, arena concerts or in the interpretation of classical and contemporary drama. Human beings and their surroundings do not appear as painted backdrops but as a real world rendered with symbolic resonance. Through “the use of heightened perspective” he opens up new spatial vistas, expanding the architectural boundaries of the theatre itself. [3]
His most memorable achievements in spatial composition – not only according to theatre critics but by his own account as well – were the visual worlds created for The Unhappy, Timon of Athens and Danton’s Death. For Danton’s Death, staged at the National Theatre, Székely “created an ideal space for a production that required a rhythmically precise rendering of this complex work. The side walls, inclined towards one another, open great perspectives for the scenes, and this perspective – expressing both the hall of the Convention and the Parisian street – places the action in a setting as grand in scale as the French Revolution itself.” [4]
Through his pedagogical work, too, László Székely sought to shape the next generation. As a docent, later head of department, and eventually professor at the Magyar Képzőművészeti Főiskola (Hungarian Academy of Fine Arts, today Hungarian University of Fine Arts) he worked – under the guidance of Iván Koós [Hungarian puppet artist and stage designer] – to establish an independent puppet-design department, offering new opportunities for young designers. He often felt that the creation of heavy sets and monumental elements, from sketch to execution, was perhaps more a man’s task than a woman’s. He took this consideration into account when assembling the new department and selecting its students.
Neither his retrospective exhibition nor his collected volume marked the end of his creative activity. He continues to design. In autumn 2015 the Studio Stage of the Szeged National Theatre presented Gogol’s The Gamblers in a production directed by Géza Bodolay, set within Székely’s designs. A few months later, in December 2015, he conceived the set for Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew for a production by Péter Balázs at the Szigligeti Theatre, Szolnok and in Komárom. In 2017 he designed the set for the Csíksomlyói passió (The Passion of Csíksomlyó [a large-scale Hungarian sacred play with roots in Transylvanian tradition]).
His artistic talent, unmatched capacity for work and endlessly renewable creative imagination have never been questioned by the theatrical profession or by critics. László Székely’s exceptional zest for life, his passion for drawing and design, and his irrepressible thirst for renewal and for the creation of stage space make him what he is: a master of shaping and rediscovering space, in whose work exceptional draughtsmanship and artistic knowledge combine to generate defining theatrical experiences.
The author is a theatre historian and head of scenographic collections, OSZMI (Hungarian Theatre Museum and Institute)
[2016]
[1] Ferenc Kerényi, preface to László Székely’s collected volume; excerpt from the blurb, Székely László, Díszlettervek 1961–2004 (lit. László Székely, Set Designs 1961–2004), ed. Berta Székely, Budapest, private edition, 2005.
[2] Székely, ibid., 7.
[3] Győző Dúró, dramaturg, Székely, ibid., 120.
[4] András Rajk: Danton halála (lit. Danton’s Death), Népszava, 26 Nov. 1978.