I experienced the anxiety of the professional receiver when I was involved in the project made by Petra Ardai and Luc van Loo from Amsterdam, in co-operation with TÁP Theatre. I am scared to death every time when I, obliged to see an interactive theatre performance, have to participate. That’s why I never sit in the first row at the theatre, to avoid receiving some kicks or being asked to dance in the funny finale. In reality, perhaps, I fear the authors’ vengeance, that they come to me in my nightmares if my article was negative about them, and they give me a leading role only to dissect me. What happened was that I arrived at the quasi-show restarting on the hour, and right when I tried to sneak to a dark corner, Kati Lázár, a fortune-teller and audience selector, asked for my ticket number and my choice what type of hero I wanted to become. She said she had a tailor-made hiding role for me. She was absolutely right. I had to sit to the centre of the stage, on a high chair, in the spotlight, with cameras on me, projected to a huge screen, while my initiating mother (see pioneer initiation), actress Márta Szabó praised my figure, my smile, and my talent. Then she came to me, so I had to give it back, and I said some fluttering words about her acting skills, like a critic driven by interests. She gave up saying OK, I was a better egomasseuse. In the meantime, others were being initiated around me. Some where made great by László Rókás, the giant comedian, some received a beauty queen make-up, I saw Superman’s robe here and bouquets of flowers there, some were taught by choreographer Adrienn Hód how to melt into the environment and become a chameleon hero. Then a button was switched to trigger a resounding effect, then I heard applause, cheering, and a hero accountant initiated me. Vili Vajdai had his comments in the microphone, reflecting to the events and the images projected, and sometimes personal comments on me, with name and address, not to let me be forgotten. On the screen there was the hero of work in some manufacture in the Far East, soul-destroying work seven hours a day, only to let us see the other end of the scale, then vintage footages of athletes, private collections of photographs, and amateur pilots. The stage at Trafó evoked the craze of a TV studio, with that applause coming from a CD, the gong, the lights, the images recorded on the spot and screened that showed you how a bad TV programme affects your mind, and how unknown people become stars in five minutes. We joined the game unconsciously as we had no other choice – to watch all this as an outsider can’t be entertaining. Finally, we were given fake medals, and they sang the legendary song A Real Hero by Európa Kiadó to us. The parade ended up in dancing in a sea of balloons, then new candidates arrived, and we could enjoy some malicious joy over that we, now as audience, were watching them.
When you are involved in the play, it enables you to enjoy the discovery of processes, and you become a little sociologist, too, not only a hero. Space and I think TÁP, too, are strong because they dissect and turn theatre inside out, even if the risk of less popularity is there. Nobody likes to see that it’s no big deal to become a hero or an actor. On my way out I burst a few balloons, that was my loud vengeance, an attempt to leave a hero’s trace behind.