» Tibor Egervari
Transcript of an interview with Tibor Egervari, conducted by Joerg Esleben on 16 December 2020 online on the Zoom platform
Joerg Esleben: I’m here with Tibor Egervari for an interview on Brecht and particularly an emphasis on Brecht in Canada. Tibor Egervari is a professor emeritus at the University of Ottawa and, Tibor, correct me if I’m wrong, but you started your theatrical training and career in Strasbourg in France in the early 1960s ...
Tibor Egervari: I started the training in 1957.
Joerg Esleben: Oh, 1957, okay.
Tibor Egervari: Which makes me, then, older than yourself.
Joerg Esleben: Only in years. ... You then came to the National School of Theatre in Montreal in 1965 as Assistant Artistic Director for the French section of the École nationale, and then in 1971, I believe, you came to the University of Ottawa and had a long career as professor of theatre, as Chair of the Department of Theatre, and as Acting Dean of the Faculty of Arts as well. So that’s a brief biographical overview. With that, I’d like to start with my questions. And my first question is: how did you learn about Brecht? How were you first exposed to his ideas and works?
Tibor Egervari: Well, I guess you know that I am Hungarian born; I was born in 1938 in Budapest. I am of a Jewish family. So it marked my life until today, of course, but especially during the war. And after the war, we were under the Soviet regime, not from immediately after the war, but from 1948 until I left in 1956 after the revolution.
Before being a man of theatre, I have been and I will always be a spectator. I started at a very early age being a spectator - and not a spectator of children’s theatre. As far as I remember, I went with my mother first and then alone to the theatre as as often as I could. So I was quite interested in theatre ever since I was ten or eleven years old and even before that.
And I heard about Brecht in Hungary, but if my memory is correct, his work had never been played before 1956 in Hungary. He wasn’t considered as being a man or a playwright of réalisme socialiste. People were talking about him; we heard about him here and there, but I had never seen anything of his or read anything by him. When I arrived in France in 1957 - the summer, I think, in ‘57 - I went to Paris, and it was the first time I saw a show by a West German company, of the Threepenny Opera. So that was my very first encounter.
Then, of course, as soon as I entered the theatre school in 1957 it was all over … I mean, he was all over. And what was interesting about him ... in France, it had been taken over by an intellectual coterie that had a total lock on Brecht, the presentation of Brecht, the interpretation. It became a sort of church, with the priest who dictated how it can be done. And of course, Brecht, you know that there was the model directing and you had to follow that. It was rather difficult to put on any Brecht play because of the terror - it was quite an intellectual terror of those people.
Joerg Esleben: And were these the people around Jean Vilar?
Tibor Egervari: Jean Vilar wasn’t involved in it. It was really the intellectuals, those around the magazine Théâtre populaire. It was a review that suddenly took up Brecht, with Bernard Dort as one of its main contributors. No, Vilar wasn’t … Vilar discovered Brecht, I think, when the Berliner Ensemble visited Paris in the mid 1950s or something like that. And from then on Vilar was interested in Brecht, but not that much. He didn’t do a lot of Brecht.
But it was the very left of the French intellectuals who took up Brecht as being the absolute model. So while in Strasbourg, I saw a touring production of the Caucasian Chalk Circle directed by John Blatchley, who was an English theatre director and professor, and he had quite a distinguished career. And it was designed by Abd’Elkader Farrah. His name will be back in my memories. By this time I was a little guy in the back, back, back of the school, and they were already in the front of the whole thing. It was a magnificent production, and I keep remembering it.
Joerg Esleben: Performed in French, or in English?
Tibor Egervari: In French. He was working in France because of Michel Saint-Denis. I don’t know if you have heard his name, Michel Saint-Denis. Now, you have on the one side this Brecht school, and on the other side you have Copeau and his descendants. And I am from the Copeau family. And the Copeau family wasn’t Brechtian. We did Brecht, but it wasn’t the ‘right way’ of doing it. Now, Copeau had a descendant ... I mean, artistic descendant ... who was Michel Saint-Denis, who was a French radio correspondent during the war, but at the same time he created a company and a school in England, the Old Vic and the Young Vic, which was the first of the schools that Strasbourg and Julliard are part of, and the National Theatre School as well; the same system. And it was a real system. I mean, it was a sort of monastery, the same way Brecht was a monastery. So the meeting of those two monasteries and two ways of thinking ... they were not matching.
So, my first Brecht I directed was in Strasbourg, and they asked me, it was the director of the school. I mean, I was very young. I finished the school in 1960, and I was immediately hired as an assistant professor, a little guy, a stage manager and and a director. And I directed a few shows for the professional company, but I directed as well inside of the school, and that was Grand-peur et misère du IIIe Reich.
Joerg Esleben: You were asked to direct that particular play, or was that your choice?
Tibor Egervari: Oh no, I had been told. Most of the time, well, for a long time I was told what to do, and it’s a very good school to be told what you have to do, because it’s a question of craft. And as a matter of fact I resisted at one point because Brecht for me … especially because of this intellectual clique and all that, and because of my background - and I have always been rather to the right of the political spectrum, which is very unusual in theatre and very unusual in intellectual circles in France as well; most of my colleagues and my bosses were members of the Communist Party. And they knew about my political orientation. So when my boss told me “you are going to do that”, I said, “well, Brecht, I mean, he’s very, very much to the left, and I’m not quite sure that I would like to do that.” And he looked at me, “But you are not a fascist, are you?” And I said, “no, not really”.
Joerg Esleben: Who likes to admit that!
Tibor Egervari: So, it was in the corridor; as a matter of fact, the kind of thing we did there, the way we operated was quite different from today. So it was in the corridor, it was verbal, there was no written exchange. He told me, “Look, next term you’re going to do that.” And I said, “well, it’s ...” and he said, “You are not a fascist?” “No.” “So you will do it.” And I said, “Yeah, okay.” And so I did, and I did something which surprised him, I remember. We are in the early 1960s. And it [the play] happens almost 30 years ago. But he was born during the First World War. So by the 1930s he was a grown man and he started his career, and the ‘30s for him was today, more or less. So at one point he asked me “How is it going?”, and I said, “Look, what I did was a history course before starting rehearsals.” “That’s good, I would have never thought of that.” So it really gave me the opportunity to go into the beginning of the Nazi regime, and I still consider this one of the most important plays Brecht wrote. Especially for today, but we’ll talk about it. So that was my first encounter as a practitioner with Brecht.
Joerg Esleben: Right, and the cast were all students?
Tibor Egervari: Yes, yes, it was a class. Now, I have to tell you what it meant, because of the next step. The Saint-Denis system of schools is like a fixed company, you’ll know about fixed companies because you are from Germany, but people in Canada don’t know, I think, don’t really know anything about it. So it’s a different system. But you, I don’t have to explain to you what is a fixed company, what is a permanent company. So every group was composed of the normal number of female and male actors sufficient to form a company. And this company, this little group, in the morning were doing technical things like gymnastics, physical, vocal, improvisation, and so on and so forth, and even some intellectual classes. And the afternoon was devoted to rehearsing a show, a play. And after six weeks, the play was presented. The morning classes went on all year long, but the afternoon changed all the time.
Now, it’s very different from the way the conservatory in France and elsewhere trained or still train actors. In the French Conservatoire, there were masters, chosen by the government, more or less, coming from La Comédie Française. And those masters had their classes. No matter of mixing or whatever. No question of an equilibrium between women and men and so on. They were chosen like a draft in the National Hockey League. There were, I think, about half a dozen masters in the conservatory. So, during auditions there was an established order of seniority, and the first one could say, “I want”, the second one, if not, and so on and so forth. So finally, by the end of the auditions the classes were set. But in the classes you had people for one year, two years, three years, whatever. And the actor or the actress taught her or his way of acting to this group, and especially to the individual. And it ended by the concours. In the French theatre, it’s called the concours. And you could go to the concours after one year, two years, three years, or never. Et il y avais des prix, premier prix de tragédie, premier prix de comédie, and so on and so forth. And it ended up like that.
Although in our school, the whole group graduated at the same time with a series of shows before a jury. But they were still given ... un classement. So it’s very, very different. And during my career I more or less drifted away from my original monastery, when I understood that a violinist would never learn how to play the violin with a conductor - he or she learns the violin with another a violinist. So there is this kind of difference, which is important for the second show we will be talking about. So that’s the school.
Joerg Esleben: But Grand-peur et misère du IIIe Reich was performed publicly as well?
Tibor Egervari: It was. It was performed more or less publicly. It was a very small invited audience. But, strangely enough, part of it was put on TV, a short TV program in Strasbourg at this time.
Joerg Esleben: How did the students react to the piece?
Tibor Egervari: Well, we are in the early 1960s. The war is still quite close. And I think, in my recollection, they did very well. They did adhere to it ... because we are in Strasbourg, we are at the border to Germany. Very few of them came from Alsace, but most of them came from the rest of France. But in Alsace at this time, the war was quite close.
And there are some masterpieces in this series: “La femme juive”, “Le mouchard”, “La croix blanche”, those are absolute masterpieces of theatre. I think they loved it.
Joerg Esleben: So then you told me about another formative experience during that time, which was your opportunity to observe Giorgio Strehler directing Galileo Galilei in Milan. Can you tell me about that experience?
Tibor Egervari: Well, after having received your email and the questions, I went into my papers, and we are lucky because the first wave of Covid I devoted to sort out my papers that had been waiting for at least three decades in the basement. It was very fruitful. So I found quite quickly everything pertaining to that. But I decided not to reread anything really, because ... though I’m not doing a conference about it, I’m having a conversation with you. And on top of that, I really do believe at my age that ... I heard this phrase or sentence, it’s a very good one: la culture c’est ce qu’il reste quand on a tout oublié. I’ve decided that whatever remains is important, not whatever I can read in my papers.
However, I reread my report on the Piccolo, and I was quite surprised; the writing is not that bad for a guy who had been speaking French for four years then. But it was interesting, because I forgot much of it. So I was sent by my theatre to see what the Piccolo Teatro was all about. And I had the opportunity to attend Strehler’s rehearsals of Galileo Galileo, some of them. I guess you know about the Piccolo Teatro, and my report is very detailed about it. So I could send you the whole report.
Joerg Esleben: Please do. I’d love to read it.
Tibor Egervari: It’s fun, because it has some statistics that are, I’m quite sure, totally unavailable now, unless you read a book about the Piccolo. Because I was quite conscientious about noting how much it cost and how many people work there and so on and so forth. But what is really pertaining to our conversation is his directing of Galileo. I might be the only living person in Canada who has seen this production. It was one of the most beautiful productions I’ve ever seen in my life, including 99% of my own directing. It was a total and absolute masterpiece.
Strehler had a huge machinery, I mean, a whole enterprise at his service. By that time, the Piccolo employed about a hundred people full time more or less. I mean, it was amazing, he had three assistants. One of them only brought him coffee and Coca Cola, and I guess some coke as well, but that’s my fiction. He was the star of this time, I mean the kind of director you can imagine, you see in movies. And in the beginning, I was really, really reluctant, because from that time until now I have evolved, but at that time as well I already understood that the reign of directors can be a disaster in theatre. Theatre is basically actors. Actors meeting spectators, if possible. And directors intervene in it, from time to time well, and from time to time very badly. And I can talk about that for a long time, so I will stop here.
It was in the middle of the rehearsals. I arrived in January, the opening was foreseen for March, and they opened on the 22nd of April. So that was possible there. And he had already access to props and lighting and costumes in the middle of rehearsals, and he stopped everybody for organizing some lighting and whatever. He spoke endlessly from time to time, and he was a kind of star for all these people who attended the rehearsals, from Germany especially. But after two hours of rehearsal I discovered the actors were doing whatever he imagined. And not because of his words, because I read his book, and really I think intellectually speaking he is a dwarf. But artistically speaking, the way he thought things was absolutely amazing. And it came out in a way I have, I think, never seen in a whole company. Buazzelli, who played Galileo, was absolutely a towering interpretation. And the transformation that came about between the beginning and the end, and the woman who played his daughter. And Andrea as well ... there was less of a success by the end, but in the beginning he was very good. But those two, the daughter and the father, were absolutely ... by the end you saw the whole aigreur. And nonetheless, it works, because the text is going to leave Italy and it will become something; so that purpose is there. But the people around are completely undone. And at the beginning Buazzelli was really almost a romantic hero, with the scene with the milk, a force of nature, and by the end, he was like a pig, trying to eat as much as he could, almost blind.
So I saw the rehearsals; and it’s interesting because during the rehearsals they had a prompter, who read all the text, all the time. In Italy they have this tradition of prompting, like in opera companies where it survives because of the repertory nature of it. It has been a fixture in companies having several plays in alternance; there is a nice demonstration of it in Six Characters in Search of an Author. The prompter, at least at this time, spoke all the lines all the time. No one had a script because they were able to take the text from the prompter one called sentence ahead of time. And at one point I went crazy, because my Italian was very weak and knowledge totally non-existent, but at this time I had brought it up - after half an hour you forget it completely. So they had all these possibilities and they made a magnificent show.
Joerg Esleben: I think you’ve used the word formative when you told me about this; in how far did that have an impact on you?
Tibor Egervari: Because I understood one thing: that whatever you do as a director, you can be very ... at this time and in this kind of theatre ... you can be talkative or not speaking a lot, like Vilar - basically what’s important is how the actors are able to absorb whatever it is all about, and they are able to deliver. So whatever happens before, during, after rehearsals - it’s like in Brecht: what’s important is the goal, and the focus after all that on the performance. So in this respect it was important. But I never had this kind of entourage. I never reached these heights.
Joerg Esleben: You mean when you then went to the École nationale de théâtre, they were not waiting for you with a big ...
Tibor Egervari: Neither in Bussang, no, no, no.
Joerg Esleben: So let’s make the transition to the theatre school in Montreal. So you arrive there, and my question to you was: what role did Brecht’s ideas play for you there, in your pedagogical practice at the school, if any?
Tibor Egervari: Well, I have to introduce the whole show, because the show is ... I told you about the monastery in Strasbourg. I mean, it’s a perfect system. It was a perfect system and it worked very well. It was a movement within la décentralisation en France, which was like an egg - I mean, it was self-containing very well. We went to the provinces, we played Racine in small villages. I mean, it was really an idea made real. And it was like a monastery in that we never questioned the existence of God. We never questioned the reason, la raison d’être. We had endless discussions about the means, but never the goal, which was popular theatre - to bring a real good thing to all kinds of audiences. And, of course, more than slightly to the left, but that was the normal idea. And I was perfectly at ease with that. I was one of the good small monks in this. So the monk goes like in the Middle Ages from one monastery to another one and finds the same thing, so that the very first day he can do whatever is needed. It’s like a Holiday Inn.
But arriving in Montreal, that was founded on the same principle, I discovered slowly, more slowly than I should have, that it wasn’t the same situation. So what they had in mind wasn’t popular theatre; what they had in mind was Quebec: Quebec’s révolution tranquille, Quebec’s nationalism, Quebec’s wanting to be different from the French tradition, from the English, from anybody, but basically what Quebec was all about. And it didn’t touch me whatsoever. I kept pushing for the old God, and we had a new God. And they wanted to apply my means, which I was perfectly at ease with and mastered, to something that I didn’t have any interest in. So that’s my assessment of my position at this time. And finally, it came to a student revolt in 1968, the end of ‘68, beginning of ‘69. And the whole third year, which produced public shows - I was about to direct one of the public shows, and the whole third year decided that they didn’t want to do that with me and they wanted to leave the school.
Joerg Esleben: Because you were not Quebecois enough?
Tibor Egervari: Because I wasn’t Quebecois, I was ... cultural appropriation wasn’t yet in fashion, but it was more or less impérialisme, French imperialism, which is strange for a Hungarian guy, but nevertheless ... And at this time - I have to underline that on record -, the theatre, the school stood by me. The group wanted to have another director, the school said no, you are doing that with him or you are not doing anything. And they left the school. And I still have the press release they they put out, the students. So at this time I knew that it would have been completely stupid to resign. I was young, I could do anything, I didn’t have a family - it wasn’t a problem. But you have to stand by your principles, and I knew by that time that a year later I would resign, really immediately after that. So the school decided to take the second year and do a show with them, which would be a demonstration, on the one side, of what the school is doing, and a play that would demonstrate the school’s function.
That’s why it was important that I told you about the school’s function, because the school functioned the same way. So in the morning, you had the exercises and the whole technical work, and in the afternoon you had rehearsals of the show. So that’s how the show came by une journée d’école, une journée de travail à l’école.
Joerg Esleben: And once again, the choice of the play - Les Horaces et les Curaces ...?
Tibor Egervari: The play was chosen because it could be applied very well to the technical training. You had this very rigorous technical training in the morning in the first part of the show, so you can demonstrate with Les Horaces et les Curaces - heavily impressed by the Chinese theatre, which was a revelation for the West between the 1950s and then, and which impressed me a lot, because I discovered, of course, the article on the Bali theatre by Artaud, and all the Chinese visitors with the Chinese opera and so on so forth - so it was a choice basically for technical reasons, as well as for artistic or intellectual or political reasons. It was a technical thing.
Joerg Esleben: The play - Die Horatier und die Kuratier - is often grouped with the Lehrstücke.
Tibor Egervari: Yes, it’s a Lehrstück. It was a Lehrstück because it’s a school, I mean, a place to learn, as well.
Joerg Esleben: I was curious because I read your blog and I know that one of your fundamental tenets seems to be that there is no theatre without spectators. Now, the Lehrstücke could be defined ... one definition is precisely: it can be theatre without audience, without spectators, because it can be just to teach the actors or the actors teaching themselves through the performance.
Tibor Egervari: Yes.
Joerg Esleben: I was wondering how that squares, or whether it came up.
Tibor Egervari: Well, I am rather Brechtian in that sense, that theory applies except when it doesn’t.
Joerg Esleben: Right.
Tibor Egervari: Of course, but at the same time, when you are in school, you are in this no man’s land, because we had a lot of inside productions. So, it is the third year’s productions where there’s a transition between theatre with real production work and a school exercise. And at this time we kept calling it public exercises. So it’s a student exercise. So you’re right.
Joerg Esleben: Well, it’s only one definition of the Lehrstücke. So what was the response to the production among the students, among the public?
Tibor Egervari: Well, I think the students liked it a lot because they were able to demonstrate whatever they knew, whatever they were able to do. One of the problems with schools is that students in schools, in theatre schools, especially at this time, learn a lot about voice, movement, improvisation, and end up by coming on stage and saying “Madame est servie”. So in theatre training, even today I would say, there is a big gap and it has always been a problem. I’m against school in general. The insight that you read in Wilhelm Meister, you know, training inside of the company, that’s the real thing, of course, because, finally, you end up by acting. But you learn a lot of things in the schools which you are not able to apply. And there are very few professions where you are trained for things you never use. The army is one of them. And in the army it is even worse, because you are trained for something you are wanting not to use. And there are many, many mental problems with the army soldier who is not able to fight, of course.
So in theatre it’s really a problem that you learn all that and you can’t show all that in a production. I mean, you can show part of it, but not all. And you might never end up playing Shakespeare in your career. So the students were quite happy being able to show all that they were able to accomplish vocally, physically, improvisation, working together, in the first part of the show. And then the Lehrstück is good for that - there is a discipline, there is a way of doing it, speaking verses, and so on and so forth. So they liked it.
And in St. Cloud in Minnesota, Shapiro was there, quite a few rising stars of the American theatre were there, and it was the period where everything was possible. I mean, Hollywood moving for the beautiful future of changing the world and so on and so forth. And it was very well received, because it was in French, of course, and you have to very well receive something in French which you don’t understand a single word about. But at the same time, it was the kind of theatre, the kind of exercise they hadn’t been very familiar with. So it was a success.
Joerg Esleben: How did the invitation come about?
Tibor Egervari: I have no absolutely no idea. It was done by the school administration, and I guess they called up the school because the school had a reputation already, and there was the show available for traveling, so ... I have absolutely no idea. One day, I was told “you’re going to St. Cloud”, and I said okay. Lots of times, when you are not in the position of leading, of directing things, of being in charge, it’s very comfortable.
Joerg Esleben: And did this production resonate at all with the context that you described, the political context of late 1960s Quebec and Montreal?
Tibor Egervari: No, no. Politically speaking, it was totally ignored. Technically speaking, it was well received. Normally I didn’t receive any good reviews in Montreal. But the first part was well received. And what’s interesting about it is that one reviewer “discovered” the designer. So the designer was Abd’Elkader Farrah, who was one of Saint-Denis’ major discoveries. He was an Algerian by birth, who was, in my opinion, one of the most talented designers of my generation, of the second part of the 20th century. And I was able to - and in this respect I had some influence - I invited him. I mean, I convinced the school to invite him for a year to work with the school. And he accepted to come because it was America, it was Canada and so forth, and at this time he was already working in London exclusively and he was working with the Royal Shakespeare Company, a major, major designer. He designed the show. And someone discovered how good of a designer he was. But he was already a star in London.
I have one anecdote about him. One my very first professional productions - I was 24 years old, I think - was The Peace by Aristophanes. And it was coupled with Prometheus Bound in the same production, but Prometheus Bound was directed by the school’s director and one of my masters, and they gave me the director’s adaptation of The Peace by Aristophanes. And I was absolutely, horrendously stage-frightened. And he was the designer of the show. And so I prepared myself to defend my ideas, not to be steamrolled. He was already a professor in the school, I was a student, and he had a reputation, for very good reasons, because he is absolutely amazing. So I was waiting for his call; he told me “when I have something to tell you or show you I’ll call you”. And I was waiting, and all my colleagues asked “Did he call you?”, “No, he hasn’t called me. What is he going to impose upon me? And I have to fight for that.” And one day, he called me into his studio and I looked around, and the whole studio was plastered with all sorts of propositions. And he said, “Well, choose.”
Joerg Esleben: So that was quite a coup, bringing him to Montreal.
Tibor Egervari: It was really a coup. It was a whole organization, and it came out of the student profit. That’s why.
Joerg Esleben: So, nevertheless you left in 1971 - do I hear between the lines, in part because of the student revolt?
Tibor Egervari: Certainly, certainly. I mean, I resigned and I knew one and a half years ahead of time that I’d be resigning.
Joerg Esleben: So you come to Ottawa and fairly much right away you do your next Brecht, which is La noce chez les petits bourgeois. So how did that production come about?
Tibor Egervari: Well, Jean Herbiet was in charge of the French theatre of the National Arts Center. The National Arts Centre is both a blessing and a plague in this city. A blessing because all the bien pensants and all the nice people can go to see everything they present; the plague is that it killed or at least it slowed the development of Ottawa’s normal theatrical life and musical life for decades. So I still think it’s more of a plague than a blessing, but with that the parenthesis is closed. If you have a question I can answer that.
Joerg Esleben: No, no, I mean, I’ve read your blog, so I’m aware of the broad strokes of your arguments there as well.
Tibor Egervari: So, but at the beginning, everything was possible. And you know the 1960s in Canada were really very important, not only for Quebec, but for the rest of the country as well, because of the opening of the world, because of trying to establish some sort of Canadian identity, some sort of Canadian nationalism, or some sort of lining up with the rest of the world. Now, Southam, whom I’ve known, who was there at the helm of the conception of the National Arts Centre, had in his mind what I used to call the old boys’ Liberal network, you know, all those people, the Southams, the Hendersons, and all those people, who had a tremendous influence in the Liberal government. They tried to convince them that, “look, after the center in New York, after all the Maisons de la culture in France and all over the world, it is absolutely necessary to have this kind of thing to establish the national unity of Canada at the National Arts Centre.
It started by costing, on paper, 9 million; it ended up at $45 million. So already at this time it was ... At the beginning the model was there all the time. So, how shall we run it? And you will understand quite easily what I mean: if you burn down Stratford tomorrow, they set up a tent again and will start all over again, in the same or almost the same way. Same thing for the National in London, La Comédie Française, whatever. But if you burn down the National Arts Centre, what will happen? What remains? The orchestra. The only thing that has a root. The rest is completely planted. I mean, there is no root. The last thing they would do is to recreate an English and French company that they would call the National Arts Center. They just don’t exist. No one would notice that. But in the beginning they had been trying to implement this kind of ... if not permanent companies, but something that would go along with this idea.
So that’s when Jean Herbiet, who was at the University before that and who was the one who basically called me to come to Ottawa, moved there and started to run a National Arts Centre French theatre. And I directed two or three shows there. One of them was the worst-attended play, I think, in the National Arts Centre ever, which was Mademoiselle Jaïre by Ghelderode. Some of the performances were cancelled because there was absolutely no reservation whatsoever. It was at the very beginning and certainly a mistake to put something like that on. By the way, the main star was Jean-Pierre Ronfard, who was playing the lead part. That’s something.
So this was a series of five plays. It was quite deep and in a row. So, La Rose rôtie by Herbiet and La cantatrice chauve in one evening; Denise Pelletier doing Oh! Les Beaux Jours! And in another combination of two shorter plays, Les bonnes de Genêt, directed by the same Denise Pelletier - it was her very first directing - and La Noce chez les petits bourgeois. So I had the opportunity, the honor, and the pleasure to meet Denise Pelletier and discuss with her about her first directing, and she was relying on me for a certain number of things, because we were in the same evening, on the same show dates. And that was the circumstance in which ... and more or less the same people played in these five plays, some of them were double cast.
Joerg Esleben: And once again, the choice of play was not yours, you were asked to do it?
Tibor Egervari: I think we decided in common, but basically it was his choice. Because of the possibilities and so on and so forth, we discussed what would be a one-act play that would be a good comic relief after Les bonnes, which is a masterpiece.
Joerg Esleben: Was there a deliberate jab at the the bourgeoisie of Ottawa in that?
Tibor Egervari: Well, I guess, yes. I mean, you don’t have to look very far from artistic communities to have a jab at the bourgeoisie, and especially the small bourgeoisie. And so it’s quite easy. It’s interesting because one day the general director of the National Arts Centre, MacSween, who had no theatrical training whatsoever, but he was running the school at one point from an administrative point of view, and then he was running the National Arts Centre … so we got quite close at one point and we had a few discussions around a beer or a meal … at one point he told me, “look when you see the the actors doing those exercises in improvisation, you will see that all the improvisations are with people below you, those you more or less despise. Never above.” And that’s true.
So artistic communities have ... at least had, and still have quite a large amount of contempt for normal people. I always consider myself as a petty bourgeois, because that’s my origin. My family was a little bit further up, but petit bourgeois more or less. With more or less success in life, but we could be considered like that. But, of course, my pleasure of the whole thing was - with Brecht always - the theatricality of the whole thing. It’s pure theatre, and it’s pure theatre by action, this time the breaking of the furniture. And it’s interesting, because the Governor General at this time, it was Massey, came to see the show, not because of me, but because of Denise Pelletier, of course, because Denise Pelletier was directing Les bonnes, so he showed up for that. But he had to see both of the plays. By the end, we were all aligned in the wings and he came to congratulate us, and they introduced me as the director of Les petits bourgeois, and he said, “Ouais, ça devrait être très difficile pour les meubles, hein?” Yes, that’s what remained, is the meubles. But it’s okay because they’re scrambling. You can explain to him that it is the crumbling of a society, of a whole political system, social class and whatever.
Joerg Esleben: That’s the anarchic moment.
Tibor Egervari: Yes. The anarchy on stage is absolutely magnificent.
Joerg Esleben: And how did the actors respond to that? How did they go with that?
Tibor Egervari: It wasn’t an easy production because the actors came from different horizons. And some of them I knew; at least one or two of them were among the people who had left the school. I remained very … not friendly, but on very fair terms with them. They pointed out, after a certain time, that even then it was not really against me. It was against the system. I kept directing some of them after that. And so some of them came from there. Some of them came from Le Conservatoire, some of them came from other horizons. I was in my early 30s. And I came out of a difficult period in Montreal, so I wasn’t sure whatever I was doing. So it was a touchy atmosphere. And of course, as well because of the presence of Denise Pelletier, who was an absolute star, and you are trying to impose your ideas about Brecht; you are the one who left Montreal in shame. But it came off quite well after that. It came out as being a good show, a rather good show.
Joerg Esleben: How about the critical response?
Tibor Egervari: Well, some of them are dreadful and some of them are very good, interestingly enough.
Joerg Esleben: Did they have a good understanding of Brecht in writing their reviews?
Tibor Egervari: Oh, none whatsoever. I mean, I had a small part in the reviews, because most of it was devoted to the first directing of Denise Pelletier and the masterpiece - of course, Les bonnes in the French culture is an absolute masterpiece. If you put against it an almost totally unknown, obscure Brecht play - Brecht is known more or less at this time, as a German phenomenon, and it’s not a winner.
Joerg Esleben: It’s not a fair contest. But I did see in one preview that the Brecht play, your play, was referred to as the most funny of the lineup.
Tibor Egervari: Yes, yes. Which is good, because I was up against La cantatrice chauve. Which, if you are more funny than La cantatrice chauve, you are good.
Joerg Esleben: That’s a success. Anything else about the particular experience of that production that you want to share?
Tibor Egervari: I guess at that point I more or less understood whatever I thought about the National Arts Center, because the mechanism of the place was just not made for this kind of work. From the technical point of view, I mean. From the administrative point of view, it was already completely locked down by the unions. The rules were there even before the first stone was laid. The union rules.
Joerg Esleben: So then did Brecht play any role in your practice at the university after that, your pedagogical practice?
Tibor Egervari: Well, it did, it did always; I mean, Brecht for me is the ultimate theatre. In my opinion, Brecht and Beckett will be the only playwrights remaining of the 20th century, if anyone survives. But how many playwrights do we know of the 19th century, where there were tens of thousands? If some of them survive, it will certainly be Brecht for his understanding of theatre. He did understand, I think ... I mean, in my opinion, both of them understood what theatre was all about, which is the exception. For Brecht, the main question … there are a few questions that he poses, or four, as he said … one of the main questions in Brecht, or the answer, is that, first, you are not interested in the dénouement mais le déroulement. And secondly, because he says, well, if you, if a character acts so that the spectator says “Well, that’s what I thought”, it’s not real theatre. Real theatre is when he acts so that one says, “Oh, I would have never thought that.” And it applies. I mean, there is a huge amount of writings of Brecht which are contradictory, I read them again and ... but what remains really is that he resisted against the technology, he resisted against everything but the real expressing something by action on stage. And that’s what makes Shakespeare great, that’s what makes Brecht great, that’s what makes some of the French classics great as well.
Joerg Esleben: What do you mean when you say he resisted technology?
Tibor Egervari: Well, he could have brought in all the technology on earth, because at the Berliner Ensemble he had all the means he wanted, all the projectors, all the new mechanics and whatever. He remained with the actors. He remained with Weigel doing whatever. The most important thing is the V-Effekt: you are trying not to be yourself, but you are trying to do someone on whom you have a certain look. It comes out of the masks, it comes out of the of the origins of theatre, which is, you are presenting someone who is not you and who acts in a certain way. And if this character acts in a constrained way, in a way that is absolutely necessary, all the better. So that’s why Brecht is the pinnacle of theatre.
Joerg Esleben: Of course, he was very interested in technology and media.
Tibor Egervari: Yes, but he never let the theatre be submitted to it. Today, as soon as there is a way to change the voice again on stage, immediately you have ten directors who will do that. He was interested in progress. He was interested in technology, but nothing alters the moment when Mère Courage is shown her dead son and couldn’t react to it. And that’s the ultimate theatre. There is nothing to replace that; there is nothing to enhance that.
Joerg Esleben: That speaks somewhat to my question what you regard as Brecht’s most important ideas, or maybe most lasting ideas, as you put it. Are there other Brechtian ideas that you regard as important, and are there some that you regard as either outdated or never relevant, in Brecht’s oeuvre, in Brecht’s corpus of ideas on the theatre?
Tibor Egervari: Well, I’ll start with the less successful part of it: I think that he was certainly less successful and interesting when he tried to comply with the necessities of réalisme socialiste. La mère, Les fusils de la mère Carrar, the propaganda pieces. I read much in Gorky, he’s much better than Brecht in describing all that. Brecht is not made for that. What he is made for is whatever came out of cabaret, whatever came out of his understanding of the relationship between something exaggerated but out of the ordinary and put in a strange situation.
I know chess, but I’m not a chess player; I am interested in solving chess problems. And a novel is a chess board, so you go and you never know where it ends up. A chess problem is a complete circle; I mean it is determined from the very beginning. It’s like a play is a chess problem. So Brecht understood perfectly well that a play is a chess problem, it is limited. It is limited in its scope. It is limited in everything. But inside of that there are a certain number of compulsory actions you have to accomplish. Let me illustrate that with two scenes in Galileo. When I arrived [in Milan], they spend endless time on the scene of dressing up the Pope, when he decides by the end of the scene that Galileo would be submitted to the questioning, but shown the instruments. The Pope at the beginning is a former Cardinal, and a former Cardinal who understood Galileo, who was close to Galileo. And there is an army of young boys who dress up the Pope. And the Grand Inquisitor is by his side, and the Grand Inquisitor tries to convince him that Galileo should be submitted to the Inquisition. And as he dresses up - at the beginning he resists completely - and as he dresses up he says, by the end, “well, okay, but just show him the instruments”. And I thought, the youngster that I was, “What a waste of time to spend time on this bloody scene of dressing; who cares?”, and then I understood that that is the most important one. Because if you enter the position, of course, it is quite clear, you have to act in a certain way, and he understood. I mean, that’s a magnificently scenic way of showing things.
The other, the second example is the Little Monk, Le petit moin. Because if you are a normal leftist bien pensant, you would have a scene where the church is horrendously against this new idea. And Le petit moin brings up his parents, who are going to be even more disrupted in their lives than the Cardinals, because their idea of life is that they suffer, but God is watching them because they are at the center of the universe. What will happen to them if they are not? Why undo all that? Well, that’s an argument which is absolutely striking; it’s way more important. And it is much better exposed by the guy who is close to the people. And Galileo brushes it aside. He doesn’t care, but the audience cares. He goes on because he is this character who has to go ahead, but the audience, thinking about it, says “Goodness me, what would I do in his position?”
And that’s where he arrives at the idea of making people think instead of making people feel. He doesn’t succeed all the time, but there are moments which are absolutely magnificent from a theatrical point of view. So that’s why I like “La femme juive” or “Le mouchard”. “Le mouchard” in Grand-peur et misère is one of the most ... for me - I lived that! I did live that, I did live youngsters who were denouncing their parents to the communist regime. And when inside of the family, you realized ... and the last question: “Do you believe him?” Well! What a family life it’s going to be. It’s like La vie des autres, this magnificent movie.
So these kinds of theatrical situations he creates are, in my opinion, important. I had been thinking for a long time about the V-Effekt, And I didn’t come to a conclusion either. But I think what it really is about is when Chinese actors or Japanese actors or even actors who are used to playing with masks, like in some of the stages of the Commedia dell’Arte - there were three centuries of Comedia dell’Arte, so it’s a long period of time - when you see these actors … I’ve seen some of the good actors, who before acting with a mask spend a half an hour, watching the mask, looking at the mask, before putting it on. So, more or less, that’s the V-Effekt. You have an idea of what you are doing. And you are never, never - and that’s one of my major theatrical principles - you are never yourself on stage. It’s a horror story when you are yourself on stage. It can be done in the movies. In the movies, of course, I am going to see Jean Gabin, because I like Jean Gabin, but in the theatre it’s totally different. And when people come out today telling their story, I am totally bored. I might be very interested in their story in a café or during a lunch, but in theatre I don’t really care about who the hell they are, where the hell they come from, and what kind of sufferance they went through their whole life. That’s not my problem in theatre. My problem in theatre, my interest in theatre is to see fictional characters being put in a very specific situation and how they solve this problem.
Joerg Esleben: And you don’t think those two can cross paths? They can’t be blended?
Tibor Egervari: No. No, I don’t think that anyone who is himself on stage could ever interest me.
Joerg Esleben: So that actually is a nice transition to my final larger question. And that is: what, if any, do you see as the relevance of Brecht’s ideas and plays for contemporary theatre in Canada in particular? Beyond that as well, but I’m interested mostly in Canada, and you have a broad knowledge of the Canadian theatre scene.
Tibor Egervari: Well, Brecht today is certainly à contre-courant. Whatever he stands for is against the current. First of all, he shamelessly culturally appropriates things that he doesn’t understand, really, but I mean he takes things that are useful for him. He is a practical person, he’s down to earth. And being down to earth in a very intelligent and artistically talented way. He wrote a lot about it, but finally he says “we would like to have more good boxing matches on stage”. So, I love soccer - as matter of fact, after this interview I have a very good soccer game to watch, that’s my program of the day. So, the sheer excitement of being in a tense situation on stage. It’s not smoothing. It’s not a reflection of life, it’s not about identity, and when it’s about identities, it’s against the kind of identities we are standing for, I mean, the society is standing for today. La bonne âme de Sechouan is perfect, Homme pour homme is perfect in this time. We are social constructions in the perfect Marxist way more than we are genes. And today, gene culture is totally [dominant]. I think it is very foreign to Brecht.
So he is à contre-courant in this way, but he’s contre-courant as well because he is interested in the exception. And today we are interested on stage in the normal. We are interested on stage in ‘feeling with’. Many a time I gave the exercise to students: What is the most surprising and, theatrically speaking, the most interesting situation if you cross someone on the street and he spits on you? You have never met. What is the theatrical reaction? Of course it’s doing nothing. Just continue on, because then there is a whole series of “what?!” I would have never thought it, at least, not me. I mean it certainly can be my reaction, personally speaking, therefore it is something theatrical. So his way of being someone else all the time, his putting on stage strange characters, putting on stage archetypes from time to time, but basically people who are acting in a strange and different way.
And the way he understands dramaturgy is certainly against the grain of today, where the theatrical flow is that “Here we come in communion with everybody around, so please, audience, do join us in receiving this guy who has suffered, whatever he was, a Jew, a Black, or whatever. And we are going to feel together.” He separates definitively and totally the audience from the stage. Which is perfectly okay because then you observe. You can break it from time to time, which is good, which is interesting, but Brecht’s message is that you are in the theatre, you are nowhere else. And that’s not very common.
So, sooner or later … you know, there are ‘dormant cells’, like in terrorism, where you have all those dormant cells … Brecht is one of those dormant geniuses who will be back at one point, but I don’t think that today ... I mean, if you put on the Threepenny Opera today, because that’s what you put on, you have all the songs, you have all the lighting, you have all the technical aspects of it - it was supposed to be a cabaret play. And that’s what it is all about. And so the naked theatre, like in Shakespeare ... you know what Racine one day said? “The play is done. What remains is to compose the verses.” And most of the time today, we have the verses, or the songs, or the feelings, and they are trying to make a theatrical play about it. And in this respect, Brecht is anachronistic today. But he should remain.
Joerg Esleben: Do you have anything left that you wanted to say or ask before we conclude?
Tibor Egervari: Well, you know that the ambiguous character of Brecht himself, remaining in East Germany but retaining his Austrian passport ... there is a magnificent anecdote about him. No one knows if it’s true, but that’s alright. It is about the Verfremdungseffekt, which I think is a very important thing. It seems that one day he turns back to his assistants and he says, seeing Weigel and the other old school actors doing their thing, he turns back to them and he says - I’ll say it in French: “Et comment voulez-vous qu’avec tous ces cabotins je n’aurais pas inventé la distanciation?” Which means that la distanciation is really something to be applied to les cabotins, to the good actors, to the actors who are able to do that, who are distanced, who are refrained. But you have to be refrained from something. If you have nothing, there is nothing to refrain from. And that’s the main idea, that Brecht is doing things in a certain environment of grandiose acting, which I love from time to time; I love Victor Hugo. Victor Hugo is magnificent; I cry every time. But Brecht looks at them and says, “No. Well, you can do that and we have to see that you can do that, but you have to refrain yourself from that.” And the action of being refrained, of being tight, makes them all the more tense and all the more effective in acting. But if you try to teach the students to do immediately the Verfremdungseffekt - from what? You are being distanced from what? And that’s the whole problem. And then comes the school, the ossification of all that.
It’s like, you know, Chekhov was writing in a period of melodrama. I think the best Chekhov I have seen - and I’ve seen all the Russians directing Chekhov, up to here ... I’ve learned that in Spanish: hasta la coronilla ... But Andre Gregory directed it in New York, and it’s on video somewhere. And it’s called Vanya on 42nd Street. And when you see that you discover that those actors are coming out of soap opera. They are doing that as if they were acting in a soap opera. And the meeting of the Chekhovian situations and the soap opera acting is the thing. Because the clashing of the two is what makes it really very great and important. But if you do immediately Chekhov on Chekhov, like Ionesco on Ionesco, or Brecht on Brecht, you are … so in order to do Brecht well, really, you need the company of Strehler or you need the Berliner Ensemble, or you need at least Denise Pelletier, who was magnificent in Mère Courage as well, under the direction of John Hirsch. To take someone out of context is always very, very dangerous. Because it becomes something of a dogma. And you don’t know in which circumstances ... and theatre is always live. And you have these kind of people who are doing something today in a theatre in a city for a certain audience. I was in Berlin a year ago, and I went to the Berliner Ensemble to see their adaptation of Othello. And then I saw on video the Lenin of the Schaubühne, and you see they are acting for the same audience. They are trying to do the outrageous things better than the competition. It’s absolutely normal. But if you take it out of this context, if there is no ... and that’s why the National Arts Center is a plague, because it is not rooted in the environment.
Joerg Esleben: Well, thank you so much for your time.
Tibor Egervari: It was a pleasure discussing it with you.