Bánk bán misszió

Mission Bánk

Rippl-Rónai Institute, University of Kaposvár

CLASSROOM PLAY

Bánk bán is not an easy piece. It is difficult to play, to direct and to teach. Every teacher knows how important it would be to transmit to students everything that Katona József, this great and lonely writer of ours, has written about man and power, love and patriotism, loyalty and treason, the biology of politics, and practising grace instead of revenge, with such exactity and staggering power of representation, in Bánk bán.

I, too, have taught in high school, and I know what a challenge even the greatest masterpieces pose as part of the school curriculum. The difficulty is not in “teaching” the work to students. It is in making them “feel” it. To let them experience the very thing that all works of art are made for: catharsis. To help them become people who can take delight in novels, poems, stage plays, films, people who desire to enjoy and devour them. People for whom art is not a compulsory subject, but a necessity, a pleasure and a form of entertainment. People who, through works of art, can search for answers to the questions of their own lives.

It would have been of great help to me there, in that classroom, as a teacher of the Nagymuzsaly school (this was before I started my studies to become a director), if I could have had a similar classroom play to assist me. To have the truth of Bánk bán, Melinda, Gertrudis, Ottó, Biberach and King Endre be born “live”, right there in front of us. Now we have such a play: Mission Bánk.

Verebes Ernő, main dramaturgist of the National Theatre, has made a 60-minute version of the drama that can be played in a classroom. We have kept the five-act structure, we didn’t omit any characters and any storylines. We simplified Katona’s language, and we also evoked the period in which the original heroes of the drama have lived.

The performance is based on the “big Bánk bán”presented in the National Theatre in September 2017. In that performance, members of the acting class led by Cserhalmi György from the University of Kaposvár played the smaller roles. In the “mission” version, they are the protagonists, they play, they sing, they tell Katona’s work. They are young adults, only a few years older than their classroom audience. So, actors and spectators together embark on a journey to discover a masterpiece. Instead of the boring and compulsive nature of required reading, we offer a theatre experience in the classroom.

 

 

At the Student Festival

 

Mission Bánk has been invited and presented with success at the third student festival of acting schools, in November, at the University of Arts in Târgu Mureş. Besides Romanian universities, Studio Festival hosted performances from Hungary, the Republic of Moldova, and the United States of America.

 

Cast

 

Mission Bánk

Written by Verebes Ernő, based on the play by Katona József

Featuring the 3rd year acting students of the Rippl-Rónai Institute at the University of Kaposvár:

 

Bank bán – Kocsis Gábor

Petúr bán – Szurcsík Ádám

Tiborc – Bölkény Balázs

Biberach - Kisari Zalán

Ottó – Kovács S. József 

Mikhál – Varga-Huszti Máté

Simon – Karácsony Gergely

Melinda – Szász Júlia

Gertrudis – Hermányi Mariann

Izidóra – Kovács Panka

Endre the Second – Karácsony Gerely

Narrator – Cseke Lilla Csenge

 

Class-master: Cserhalmi György

Directed by: Vidnyánszky Attila

 

More info about the classroom play at agnes.szabo@nemzetiszinhaz.hu.