About the performance
The story of Tristan and Isolde is a constant fluctuation between life and death, dream and reality - their love is the fragile experience of momentary eternity, an equilibrium between the commonplace and the ethereal, the concrete and the abstract. One body. Two hearts. Beating as one. The reflexes of twin souls. Their story presents an opportunity to review the promise of an Eden fulfilled. What tore this world apart?
Zoltán Balázs's production in Mini teater seeks an answer to this question, enquiring into the delicate balance of the relationship between man and woman, by unconventional means.
About the director
Zoltán Balázs, actor and director, was born in 1977 in Cluj Napoca (Romania). He graduated as an actor and director from the University of Theatre and Film Arts in Budapest. He participated in several foreign workshops such as in Vasilyev and Jozsef Nagy’s workshop in Avignon. He studied under Robert Wilson in Paris and he also graduated from the European Theatre Union’s directorial course in Stuttgart. His main works: School for Buffons by Michel de Ghelderode, The Blacks by Jean Genet,Empedocles by Friedrich Hölderlin, Pelléas and Mélisande by Maurice Maeterlinck,Leonce and Lena by Georg Büchner, Faust I-II. by J.W. Goethe, Platonov by A.P. Chekov, Inferno by Dante.
Through his performances he aims to give the audience a theatrical experience that is complex, appeals to emotions and senses, while raising the scenery, motion and music to the same level as the lyrics. His latest premiere in 2011 was Swan Lake by P.I. Tchaikovsky. In 2012 he is working with own Maladype Theatre - of which he has been the artistic director since 2001 - on a new performance of Don Carlos/Egmont by F.Schiller/J.W.Goethe. In coproduction with the Mini teater in Ljubljana, he will prepare Tristan and Isolde within the program of Puppet Nomad Academy II. supported by the EU (EACEA).
Selection of critiques
»The performance, full of little and intelligent solutions, aesthetic additions, rationally uncatchable ambivalence (set and costume design by Ana Savić Gecan) is a trip into the borderline author’s view of a love discourse of Tristan and Isolde, which legitimately isolates itself from all the linear procedures. /…/ At the interpretation of the mythology of Tristan and Isolde the director radically shortens the story, cleans it of borderline situations and side characters, also of specific history references and traditions of presence. The core tension is focused in love triangle of Isolda, Tristan and his uncle Mark Kornvalski in a relation narrowed and many times overtaken emotional territory. The cut backs of the dialogues to the basic and most important meaning enlarges the space to extra codes – unstopped choreographed movements, symbolic talk and set minimalism.” Zala Dobovšek; Delo, 12th April 2012
Performances abroad
University for theatre and film art in Budapest, Hungary; May 2013
The performance was created within the international European project »Puppet Nomad Academy 2«, financially supported by the European Comission, programme Culture (2007-2013). This publication [communication] reflects the views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.
