Context of the performance in theatre culture

After the liberation of Hungary by the Soviet Red Army (1945), the Belvárosi (Downtown) Theatre in Budapest, led by Artúr Bárdos, was one of the private theatres struggling with an uncertain financial situation and was taken over by the capital in 1946. In 1948, Bárdos left Hungary, and Zsuzsa Simon was given the opportunity to operate the theatre, which was left empty, in a planned way in order to “promote the development of the new Hungarian dramatic literature.”1 As a result of the work of the new management, by December 1949, the theatre was able to boast the premiere of three new Hungarian dramas. In this pre-Sovietized theatre, state feminism was also emerging. As the theatre was headed by a female director, the first theatrical manifestations of the new Hungarian socialist-realist drama were written by female authors, and in the production Hétköznapok hősei (Everyday Heroes), equality was also given a role in the content. However, Zsuzsa Simon’s role as director was soon taken over by Ferenc Szendrő in 1949,2 thus the Belvárosi Theatre lost its sensitivity to women’s equality.

After the nationalisation of Hungarian theatres in 1949, even greater hopes and expectations were placed on the first (freshly written) domestic plays and their stage debut. On the premiere of Éva Mándi’s play Hétköznapok hősei in November, the press gave the following superlatives: “A modern Hungarian play, […] a gripping and moving plot,”3 “in the outstanding major scenes the auditorium and the stage are inseparably united,” which “everyone should see”.4 “Socialism is heading towards the cliffs of prosperity!”5 Here, “stage poetry” is also placed in a historical context, when the new tasks of the new theatre are defined by the author as follows: “in the age of the bourgeoisie, it was the conscientious agonies of the individual wandering in a maze of passions. Today, it captures the reality of the present moment, the struggle for social progress of people struggling between reactionary and progressive forces, recorded for the present day.” Furthermore, “we would never have believed that the salt of our lives today could fit into a story around a Martin’s furnace.”6 Sándor Sarló writes in Új Világ (New World): “In the sweat of the simple blast furnace workers of Csepel, the new world of the Hungarian socialist future, of the Hungarian Grinyovs, of the Hungarian Shtakhanovists, shines forth.”7 László Vas, a columnist for Független Magyarország (Independent Hungary), points out, among other things, that the play “faithfully reflects the full reality.”8 Ferenc Debreczeni, in the journal Csillag (Star), devoted a longer essay to the praise of the premiere, in which one can find a similar laudation to the praise listed in the daily papers: “Hétköznapok hősei is the most significant Hungarian play since the liberation. […] The first play to depict workers in the most important scene of their lives, their workplace, through their relationship to their work, the decisive aspect of their lives.”9 According to Debreczeni, “in our country, the path of socialist realism does not necessarily follow the thematic sequence of Soviet literature (illegality: The Mother, Enemies; revolution: The Rout, And Quiet Flows the Don; construction: Time, Forward!, Virgin Soil Upturned), but can be achieved through close and paired links with the work of the Great Five-Year Plan for the Construction of Socialism, and even more so in this way.”10

Dramatic text, dramaturgy

In the Soviet episteme and the Sovietized literary model, development or progress is the priority. On the horizon of the expectations of the era, constant and straightforward progress is central, requiring constant criticism, constant monitoring of mistakes, both socially and economically, and in the personal development of individuals, as well as in the writing and staging of plays in successive performances. In the same way, the aesthetics of the era seek development in the characters of the stage; the competition of production is explicitly reflected in the “character” or “beliefs” of the characters; the closer they come to the Soviet ideal of the new man, who sheds his individualism, the more they are useful for the betterment of society and ultimately the world.

The Hungarian drama of the period is described in the literature as a schematic drama, following Olga Siklós,11 which is further typified by Edit Erdődy along the thematic and other characteristics of the dramas as follows:12

1. Production-related plays played in factory environment, e.g. Hétköznapok hősei (Everyday Heroes) by Éva Mándi and Az élet hídja (The Bridge of Life) by Gyula Háy, or peasant plays in an agricultural context and set, like Vetés (Sowing) by Éva Mándi, Mélyszántás (Deep Plowing) by Mihály Földes, Nyári zápor (Summer Shower) by Pál Szabó, or Tűzkeresztség (Baptism of Fire) by Ernő Urbán.

2. Peace drama, like Diplomaták (Diplomats) by Erzsébet Mágori.

3. Youth plays, like Becsület (Honour) by Klára Fehér and Úttörőbarátság (Pioneer friendship) by Márta Gergely.

4. Historical plays, like A harag napja (The Day of Wrath) by Kálmán Sándor, Értünk harcoltak (They Fought for Us) by László Sólyom, Fáklyaláng (Torchlight), and Az ozorai példa (The Example of Ozora) by Gyula Illyés.

Éva Mándi’s play and its premiere were considered by the press of the time, as well as by professional forums, to have paved the way for Hungarian socialist realism. The play takes place in the autumn of 1949 (absolutely in the present), in a Martin furnace. According to its sujet, the central problem is the department’s lagging behind in the work competition and the inability to increase the productivity of the casting furnace. See: “We have been at 101% for four months now, and we cannot move away from it.”13 While the other departments are making substantial progress, the martin workers cannot melt and cast more than 30 tonnes of steel in one run, mainly because of the size limitations of the melting pot and other related equipment. In addition, there is a constant turnover of staff, compounded by the fact that a female—thus useless—worker from the office, Anna, has been sent to help out. In the meantime, with the help of János Dunai, the assistant worker turned foreman, the group is constantly thinking of ways to increase productivity, which can only be achieved by increasing the internal volume of the casting pot.

Act II takes place in the office, where the intellectuals appear alongside the workers, in the person of the retrograde Chief Engineer, left over from the “old world”, and the progressive figure of the engineer Nagy, born of the new world. The Chief Engineer treats his subordinates badly; his manner of speech is always that of a superior. He later admits that he does not, in principle, “give a damn about increasing productivity” and that he does not support the increase in the volume of the cauldron for technical and safety reasons because it could cause a serious accident. Engineer Nagy is initially sceptical, but then, thanks in part to the enthusiasm of Comrade Dunai, he becomes increasingly confident that the experiment will succeed. By the end of the act, the technical solution is found, based on the idea of Engineer Nagy: preheated oil, thinner masonry, and a 4 mm iron plate for the foundry to melt 35 tonnes instead of 30.

Act III is again set in the furnace, where we see the practical implementation of the innovation; the workers, who are constantly in a state of great excitement, are preparing for the first 35-tonne casting, which, as was said at the beginning of the act, will take another 30 minutes. The doubters are still not sure of success, so much so that Szabo, the tapper, sprains his ankle, while the Chief Engineer, suspecting that the casting will be a success, goes to the office to work until he is allowed to. Anna fills the vacant position of the tapper, while Dunai himself joins the team of casting supervisors. The casting succeeds, the retrograde doubters are dismissed, and the “converted” wavers are promoted. The collective, celebrating the successful casting, is already thinking about further improvements and the dissemination of the results achieved in other plants. (See: “Uncle János: We should write to Diósgyőr about what we did here.”)14 In the conclusion of the play, one of the few workers, Kovács, draws the (final) conclusion that they will find workers like themselves at another furnace.

According to the minutes of the discussion of the Hungarian Theatre and Film Arts Association held on February 4, 1950, “the play is the first Hungarian play since Liberation to be set in a factory, the majority of the characters are workers, and the subject is the increase of productivity.”15 In his commentary, Endre Gellért (one of the most prominent directors of the National Theatre of Hungary) further emphasises that “every scene of the play […] is about the present and the now,”16 and thanks to its well-drawn characters, there are flesh-and-blood figures on both the reactionary and progressive sides.

The protagonist of the production-related drama is the developing man, the doubter who changes in a positive direction and who, by the end of the play, comes closer to the ideal of the Soviet ideal man. The characters in this context can be divided into three main categories:

1. The retrograde/obscurantistwho is a child of the old world. Often a reactionary figure who sabotages production and obstructs ideas through intrigue.

2. The sceptical progressive, who, by the end of the play, is convinced of the correct belief, is a mostly stumbling figure who, as a result of certain positive events, becomes a communist/soviet, or rather starts on the path to becoming a communist/soviet.

3. The communist/Sovietman, who is mostly a charismatic party bureaucrat, is the guide who leads the doubters on the right path and who defeats the obscurantists.

In the Everyday Heroes, according to the typification, retrograde figures are: Chief Engineer, Szabó; developing figures: Uncle John, Pinter, Engineer Nagy, Anna, and Mrs. Kovács, while the leading lights of the working class are the party men Dunai and Werner. It is typical that in their praise of this early play, all critics, almost all professional commentators and journalists, point out the play’s flaws: that the communist characters are too static, that their faith does not deepen during the play, and that they remain the same communists at the end of the play as they were when the curtain opened.17

Nevertheless, the question is: how innovative can the drama and theatre that try to write drama and create theatre according to Soviet expectations be? The question is whether, in the trichotomy outlined above, the socialist realist playwright of 1949 is creating exactly the same genres as the bourgeois naturalist-realist playwright of the 1930s. As Tamás Bécsy wrote of the supporting characters in pre-war domestic “well-made plays”: “either their story or the story they tell is an anecdote. […] They give the impression that ‘life’ is authentically shaped by them. […] This familiarity is embedded in the recipient in such a way that it can be transferred to the story. It is not through their position in the story that they become familiar, but it is through their familiarity that the recipient accepts the story’s progress towards a happy ending.”18 In Éva Mándi’s production-related drama, one can have a similar feeling about the typecast characters; in fact, there is no protagonist.19 Does the foreseeable/perceivable character development of the genre characters not exactly realize the same character movement as preferred by the bourgeois salon comedy? It is another matter that Bécsy calls his own, essentially Aristotelian, Platonic, ontological theory of drama to account for in his 1930s comedies, but his conclusions seem to be correct for the late 1940s experiment of production-related drama.

From the point of view of reading the text, how different the “happy ending” is in the author’s dominant plot from the “happy ending” that in the 1930s meant marriage and prosperity for the bourgeois spectator, as compared to the “happy ending” that in the 1940s and 1950s could be measured in the building of the socialist world (read: prosperity) and advancement in the workplace (read: well-being). Was the proletarian’s—who could use his strength and “sovietise”—way of thinking no match for the naïve who sought marriage in the hope of security of wealth? In terms of roles, just as there are genres in operetta and well-made plays, but also in farce and Molière, there are templates and patterns in the plot. Perhaps that is why the play was relatively easy to fit into the system of socialist-realist expectations.

Éva Mándi spent two and a half months before and during the writing of the play at the Weiss Manfréd foundry in Csepel (the name of which was changed to Rákosi Mátyás Foundry only in 1950), six weeks of which she spent at Martin, i.e. next to the furnace.20 Socialist realism is perhaps best understood by her on the basis of the drama, in so far as by socialist we mean the factory environment and characters, and by realism we mean the knowledge of the workers’ real life (including their way of speaking, their daily problems, their gestures, their dress).

Staging

The press release for the performance practically loses the description of the staging. The reviews focus almost exclusively on the drama, emphasising its parable-like quality. In addition to praise for the staging at a general school level, which is difficult not to read as disparaging and macho remarks directed at women, the lifelikeness of the stage is emphasised: “Zsuzsa Simon’s enthusiastic, good staging is characterised by care and pure simplicity,”21 writes Világosság. “The ensemble-forming staging of the theatre’s director, Zsuzsa Simon, deserves special praise. The director and the actors’ performances are characterised by a departure from theatrical templates and a deep study of reality,”22 writes Ferenc Hont in Fórum, who sees the play as a milestone in working towards socialist realism. “Zsuzsa Simon’s staging is lively; when necessary, it is genuinely joyful, dynamic, and, especially in the third act, extremely tense, recreating the excitement and beauty of the first experimentation with innovation. The elaboration of the individual scenes is thorough”,23 summarises the daily Szabad Nép. Endre Vészi, like Hont, writes that “this theatre has recognised the need for a new theatre—the path that leads to socialist-realist theatre. Zsuzsa Simon’s elaborate, measured, realistic direction has captured a great collective work in a commendable, disciplined framework.”24

What we can be sure of from the subsequent reconstruction is that a remarkable feature of Zsuzsa Simon’s staging was that she visited the Csepel foundry many times with the actors and the author to ensure, like Mándi, that the performance was realistic. Although there is no source for this, it can be suspected that the production was created in the spirit of collective creation and that this, in addition to its ideological nature, may have contributed to its freshness and success.

Acting

In September 1950, acting earned the special attention and control of the political leadership (József Révai) of the Hungarian theatre, which was moving towards socialist realism, as reported in the article on the First Theatre Conference of the Theatre and Film Arts Association.25 Nevertheless, in April 1950, Lajos Lenkei (who had previously headed the cultural department of the Hungarian-Soviet Cultural Society and later the Budapest committee of the Hungarian Communist Party) considered the role of actors secondary to the sublime aspect of “mobilising and educating the masses.”26 According to Ferenc Hont, “actors in general have managed to free themselves from the bourgeois theatre’s cursed legacy of self-emphasis and self-validation and seek to assert their individual values through the characters they portray. The performance also proved that doubling the rehearsal time in our theatres has led to a quantum leap in quality.”27 Miklós Molnár wrote that “we also see some excellent portrayals of people. László Bánhidi stands out in particular with his play, which sometimes lapses into formalism but is as a whole sensitive, decisive, and individual. He succeeds as the Horthy-sergeant György Gonda, and his portrayal of Pintér is well done by László Kozák, but as always, he seeks the »oddity« in the role instead of the individual.”28 Endre Vészi singles out János Görbe (who later became famous as a Hungarian film actor), the labour director, for his dynamic playing, and László Bánhidi, who plays the role of Uncle János as the most successful character in the drama.29

Stage design and sound

There is no doubt that the Heroes of Weekdays can claim a pioneering role in the history of Hungarian theatre in terms of scenic design. Before 1949, the stage had never before been a factory interior, and the most important element of the set was a furnace. “The red glow of the glowing steel illuminates the stage; we can almost feel the stifling air of the furnaces; we can hear the chains of the loading docks creaking,”30 begins the anonymous critic of Kanadai Magyar Munkás (Canadian Hungarian Worker). The construction of the interior of the Csepel blast furnace demanded work as meticulous, precise, and realistic as the writing, directing, and acting of the drama. The hyper-realistic set was set on a box stage, and the costumes were a gift from the Weiss Manfred factory; they were real workers’ clothes.31 The master foundryman wore all the martin workers’ mandatory clothing: a heat-protective cape on his body, a helmet on his head, and the iconic “stanga”, or poker, a rod used to move smelted iron.

The set was replaced by an office space in Act II, which was also a faithful replica of the actual location. In the office space, there was a table under the obligatory portrait of Mátyás Rákosi, a wall behind it, a window, and even an iron radiator typical of the period, which probably did not occur much in other theatre productions either, as it was certainly expensive and cumbersome to install. On the table was the obligatory office equipment of the time: a telephone, seal, papers and bound statements. The costumes in this production were a suit for the managers and an original Weiss Manfred Factory working suit for the workers. Although naturalism was a buzzword in the Zhdanovian expectations of socialist realism, the hyperrealism of the set rather impressed the audience and critics, as it fully supported the realism of both the drama and the acting in terms of visuals. “Zoltán Gara’s sets are excellent; they create a suggestive effect of reality even on this small stage,”32 writes Endre Vészi, but unfortunately he does not express his opinion more than the quoted line.

Impact and posterity

On March 16, 1950, a weekly, titled Haladás (Progress) reported on the 150th performance of Hétköznapok hősei,33 And since less than four months have passed since the premiere with the Christmas and New Year’s Day breaks, it is legitimate to ask how it was possible to hold 37–38 performances a month. It is possible that the author of the article corrected the statistics in the heat of the labour dispute. It is easy to imagine that Magdolna Németh, the planner of the Mátyás Rákosi works, did not actually exist, or did exist, but never wrote a letter to the editorial office of Világosság saying that she wished “it would encourage writers to write works such as Hétköznapok hősei or Mélyszántás”.34 The letter from Mrs. Károly Pieszol (a rewinder at the Standard factory’s Workshop 8) is somewhat suspicious.35 But the play was presented in the Hungarian rural theatres of Győr, Debrecen, Miskolc, Pécs and Kecskemét in the 1950–1951 season. During the preparations for the Miskolc (important industrial city of Hungary) production, the creators of the play visited the nearest Diósgyőr smelter in the same way as the Belvárosi company visited the Csepel one during the Budapest production, which means that not only the drama but also the “method of production” was canonised.

Hétköznapok hősei was also performed in Łódź (Poland) and in Prague (Czechoslovakia),36 and Béla Both reported on serious preparations at the State Film Production Company for the filming of the play.37 Zsuzsa Simon received the Kossuth Prize (the most prominent prize in Hungary) in 1950 for her work in staging the new Hungarian drama, and from then on, she became director of the Academy of Drama.

The Heroes of Weekdays became a model of schematism, but due to its highly ideological nature, it was not staged after Stalin’s death in 1953. But perhaps the most curious outcome of the performance’s impact was its premiere by the workers’ theatre troupe of the Mátyás Rákosi Works in early May 1950. The workers played themselves—more precisely, as a joke of hyperrealism and a living example of a representational loop—they played the theatre that had played them before.38

Details of the production

Title:Hétköznapok hősei (Everyday Heroes). Date of premiere:November 17, 1949. Venue:Belvárosi (Downtown) Theatre, Budapest. Director:Zsuzsa Simon. Author:Éva Mándi. Set designer: Zoltán Gara. Company:Belvárosi (Downtown) Theatre, Budapest. Actors:János Görbe (János Dunai), Mária Sulyok (Anna), Pál Nádai (Tóth), László Bánhidi (Uncle János), Sándor Kőmíves (Werner), László Kozák (Pintér), Lajos Pándi (Tímár), László Joó (Rókus), György Gonda (Szabó), Gyula Farkas (Kertész), Imre Sinkovits (Kovács), Tamás Benő (Füsi), László Földényi (Chief Engineer), István Somló (Nagy, Engineer), Oszkár Ascher (Horvai), Mária Simonyi (Mrs. Kovács), Béla Keresztesi (Foreman), Gyula Bay (Szalai), Emil Keres (Kőműves), Ferenc Deák (1st Worker), János Körmendi (2nd Worker), Pál Major (Hajdú).

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