I'm not willing to despair at the pitiful, terrible functioning of the world - Interview with Péter Benkő

I recently witnessed a great performance at the Hungarian Serbian Theater. The title is Jávor Pali's Last Fun, and the title character is Péter Benkő, a two-time Jásza prize-winning artist. Not incidentally, he is 76 years old. Age is usually not important, but in this case it is not at all irrelevant.

– This performance is physically demanding for about an hour and a half, which is a trying task even for a much younger actor, I confess, I got tired of even watching it. Where does this energy come from?

– First of all, how many years have we known each other?

"I think it's about 50..."

– So you've known me for a long time, you know that once upon a time when I was a student, I played sports intensively, I was a kid in the pentathlon, and even if I stopped, certain sports, for example, riding, accompanied me throughout my life. I recently read a study in which it was explained that human cells remember, stem cells store information that we don't even know about. So even if we build down in old age, the body somehow remembers the performance and tries to recall it again and again. Of course, not like when I was 20, but if the workload was high at 20, even if you subtract the "losses" associated with age, it will still remain. I think that's why I manage to play Jávor's fun like this.

- We know Péter Benkő on stage and in films - at least we think so - much less the director. Did you already have the desire to direct when you were a more active actor, or did it only emerge recently?

– Thank you for asking. I think somewhere in every actor lives the desire to convey his experiences and emotions. When I am on stage as an actor, I pass on this many experiences to the audience. As a director, for the actors I work with. I always had the desire to create something as a director, but I never had friends among directors, I had no friends among theater managers, so I couldn't go there and say hello, I'm here, I'd like to direct. It didn't come together until I met the director of the Hungarian Serbian Theater, Milán Rusz, who is walking the El Camino for the tenth time and is a bearer of extraordinary spiritual and spiritual values. Milán tells me that on the Camino he met a Russian girl who has acting ambitions and also studied directing in St. Petersburg. Her name is Anastasia Kargina. It would be awfully interesting to pick up the Warsaw Melody. Would you organize it? What can I say, I was very happy to catch a bird... that's how this performance was created, which is about the wonderful love of a Russian boy who has just returned home from the front and a Polish girl studying singing in Moscow. We know that Russians and Poles don't like each other, so it's a modern Romeo and Juliet situation. In addition, to add another twist to the story, in our performance the Polish girl is played by a Russian actress who does not speak Hungarian very well. Now, of course, he does a little, but at the beginning he didn't know a word of Hungarian.

– I saw the performance and I must admit, I was impressed. Thanks to the fact that the male character, Máté Pásztor, came up with a great performance, but the Russian girl herself was the miracle. Not only did she "recite" her text, but she made me forget that she was not Hungarian, she portrayed the Polish girl with such experience and emotions given by the story that I didn't even notice that she was not Hungarian. How is it possible?  

– You have yourself to thank, and maybe a little bit to me too. I think so, and you can argue with me... or you can't, because this is my opinion, and I don't like those who would argue with me. So there are two types of directors. One of them wants to realize himself and invents all kinds of nonsense in a performance, so that they say, wow, it's an interesting arrangement, wow, and because of that, all soul, acting performance, the theater disappears, the author disappears, everything, only his stupidity remains on the stage. I dare to state this openly because I no longer want to pursue a career. At seventy-six years old, there is no need to hide my opinion under a bushel. It's true that I haven't hidden it until now. But let's continue. I try to follow the other direction. Zsolt Bayer wrote a very nice article about this play and when he asked how I managed to get the performance with the actors to be the way it ended up being, I told him that I preferred this performance from the actors. Because if you approach an actor with love, reason, intelligence, and knowledge, they will carry away the mountain for you without leaving a single pebble in its place.

– You have to take care of the pipe like a woman, because if you neglect it, it will fall asleep. Well, where did I keep it? Yes, actors and directors. There is one heart. There is one God and wherever you go in the world, the actors are exactly the same. I'm not talking about the directors, because there are many of them, but the actors are all the same. If you meet a colleague in America, after 10 minutes they are talking about the same problems. With a little exaggeration, this is also a big unit of the universe.

- At the time, it wasn't that long ago, when the so-called culture war broke out, unlike many of your peers, you wholeheartedly represented what we call a conservative approach. It was optional. Then why?

– I am not directly involved in politics and I hate it when colleagues write to each other and complain. I am a supporter of reason and reason and I will not give in to this. On the contrary, I like politicians and I support political aspirations that I feel are true and characterized by reason and reason. It is that simple. Apparently, it doesn't belong here, but still, I have been walking in nature with my father since I was a teenager. Nature is wonderful because there are no lies in it, it does not lie. A person can use it to do all kinds of tricks, but it throws him off. Man, on the other hand, can be very unnatural. I am not a historian, but if you look at the history of the world, you will not burst with joy. For example, what are Greek dramas about? They blinded him, killed him, threw him off the mountain. So the entire Greek dramatic literature is a collection of human foibles and tragedies. And we could continue the horrors through the Romans, the Tatars, the Turks, the Germans. And where are we now? We went back to the fall of Rome, only the Roman Empire didn't make it to the gender parade and they didn't have atomic bombs. So the situation is much more risky now. For me, even if my voice is insignificant in this chaos, it is my job to speak out against it. How could I take communion with those who tear down paintings, deface statues and set fire to churches? How do they get it? By the way, a poem by Sándor Márai about our time comes to mind, the title of which is Olyan világ ól. It sounds like this:

 

A world is coming

when everyone who is beautiful is suspicious.

And who is talented.

And who has character…

 

Beauty becomes an insult.

Talent is provocation.

And character assassination!…

 

Because now they are coming…

The ugly ones.

The talentless.

The uncharacteristic ones.

 

And they pour vitriol on the beautiful.

They cover the talent with pitch and slander.

They like to poke those who have character.

 

"Do you think you don't feel good in this world?"

– Maybe now I should say, oh, well, that's terrible, and it is, but I still feel great and I'm not willing to let it go, precisely because I believe in nature. In which I cannot and will never be disappointed. The grass grows, the tree blooms, even if it freezes one year, it blooms again the next. Rivers flow, if God helps. Even if one dries up, the other continues to flow. So I believe in the great balance of nature. And also that there is a worldwide energy of which I am a part. Call it God if you like. And because I believe in this, I am not willing to be disheartened by seeing this pitiful, terrible way of working in the world. Of course I can see what part of the world is doing. He sits on a tree branch and cuts the tree without thinking that he will fall. Perhaps we need to go a little beyond this, to look at things from a little further, that is, from God's point of view.

– You mentioned the closeness of nature, but everyone knows that you experienced this in a tangible way. Not only by observing the beauty of nature, but also by being obsessed with horses, you also had a few. A horse, just like a dog or a cat, becomes a family member. Losing someone is almost as tragic as losing a beloved relative.

– For me, a horse is different from any other animal. Many animals have the power to create community, but the way a horse has it, the way it brings people together and not just the competitors, is special. My example is also proof of this. I managed to acquire a wonderful woman, Claudia, who learned to ride with me. Now we have been together since 2004, we are also married. It was the horse that we were both in love with, and if I didn't realize it, he took care of our horses with great love. Again, I thank him gratefully. And the horse has a strange and wonderful quality, the fact that it accepted the relationship with man, humanity, but it never became a servant, it never became a subject. Well, I would like to inherit this quality from horses. Mór Jókai said: a horse is for a wise man, because a man makes a horse and a horse makes a man.

Author: György Tóth Jr

Cover photo: János Eifert / Serbian Theater