PARASTUDIO – Paraliturgical and Ritual Pedagogical Association was founded in 2014. Before that, it operated as a foundation work project for ten years. The inspiration for his work was Jerzy Grotowski, who is one of the most significant directors of 19th-century theater art. He was the head of the Polish Teatr Laboratorium, which was chosen as part of UNESCO’s cultural world heritage. The objective of the association is primarily the search for the language of the ‘performer’ as a ritualistic playful person, the research and practice of significant elements of the possible actor’s objective language, their integration into relationships, and the possibilities of the ritual use of the body and voice with primordial symbols and contemporary-postmodern European paradigms according to the relationship, where with the help of the personally found elements of body language, anyone can join a ‘ritual event’ as a participant, and, overcoming the culture of passivity, becomes the creative force of an active, both ritual and theatrical culture. During its existence, the association (formerly a working group) created numerous performances, organized acting training for adults and youth, as well as published textbooks, studies, essays and translations.
ABOUT THE TEAM
TAMÁS LISZKAI, performer, trainer, stage-director; born in 1976, Békéscsaba. He completed his studies in Szeged, Budapest and Rome. He defended his doctoral dissertation in 2010 on the topic of ‘liturgical anthropology’. Since 2011 he has been teaching Liturgy, Ritology, Rhetoric and Homiletics at Francis Gál University in Szeged. From 2004, together with Maria Punk, he established the Paraliturgical Research Workshop as a foundation project, in the framework of which they developed contemporary mystery plays under the title Fables, and also organized acting pedagogy trainings in Szeged and Budapest. In 2014, they became independent under the name Parastudio – Paraliturgical and Ritual Pedagogical Association. He has been the association’s secretary and project manager since its foundation, and its president from 2021. He completed theater workshops – among others – in Wrocław, organized by the Grotowski Institute, with Rena Mirecka and Zygmunt Molik, former actors of the Teatr Laboratorium; at Przemysław Błaszczak, actor-trainer of Teatr Zar; in Paris, organized by Compagnie Les Toupies; in Modena with Mario Biagini, art director and project manager of the Workcenter of Jerzy Grotowski and Thomas Richards; and Jorge Parente, Voice and Body Worksession trainer (heir to Zygmunt Molik’s method), in Wrocław and Lisbon. His own theater workshop entitled Ideograms was checked and certified by Jorge Parente in Paris in 2017. Since 2005 he has been holding acting pedagogy workshops organized by the Paraliturgical Research Workshop (later Parastudio), in 2011 and 2012 in cooperation with Thealter – Alternative Theater Festival. Since 2010, he has been a researcher in the Open Research University program of the Grotowski Institute in Wrocław.
BÁLINT SZIGETI ELTE BA Liberal Arts. At the center of his interest is the fabric of designated spaces and the ritual state of consciousness. This is how he turned to Grotowski and laboratory theater and has been working in it for years now. During university, he created a research group SZUSZ and has been working with them ever since. He worked together with Sardar Tagirovsky, Tamás Liszkai and Zsófia Rideg, as well as with the Kelet-Nyugati Alkotóműhely (KeNya), of which he is still an active member. In the winter of 2021, he was able to study Jerzy Grotowski’s methods first-hand in Poland, as part of a residency program at the Grotowski Institute in Wroclaw, with the support of his mentor Jaroslaw Fret, the director of the institute. The theater operation he experienced in Wroclaw confirmed in him the importance of spreading the accumulated knowledge in Hungary.
DÁNIEL SZÉKHELYI Actor and acting teacher; He was born in 1991 in Budapest. After graduating from the Faculty of Arts in Szeged, where he worked in several theater initiatives related to university life, he continued his studies at the University of Theater and Film, majoring in prose theater directing. His attention turned to ritual theater forms, so he ended up in Parastudio, the theater laboratory of Tamás Liszkai, where he met the approach of Zygmunt Molik and Jerzy Grotowski. He deepened his studies in this direction in Wrocław, Poland, with Jorge Parente, with whom he worked several times in the master’s international team in Portugal. He worked for years with Sardar Tagirovsky, both in domestic and foreign theaters. In Hungary, he joined Bálint Szigeti’s laboratory group SZUSZ, where he continued acting pedagogy research by considering the methods of Mihail Chekhov, Molik and Grotowski. In 2022, he graduated from the Károli Gáspár Reformed University master’s course in theater studies. He teaches acting in the K30, Erzsébetváros art high school. He also holds team cohesion trainings for actors and groups outside theater. As an actor, in addition to Parastudio, he is also a pillar member of the company of the Kelet-Nyugati Alkotóműhely (KeNya) and participate as an actor in the newly founded Epic Theater Company.
“For me, the theater is a space of attention. The density and power of this space have captivated me since I was a child. I think that this radically analog space can be the key to survival in this alienated digital apocalypse.”
FRUZSINA HORVÁTH has been involved in theater since she was a teenager. From the very beginning, his attention turned to actor training and the creation of performances, now known as physical theater.
He took part in the 1987 renovation of the legendary Petőfi Rock in Veszprém, during this process he met István Paál, who basically defined his relationship with the theater. During the later joint work, his interest turns to Grotowski’s method. That was when the process of experimenting with organic sound began, which continues to this day. Both as a drama teacher and as a speech teacher, he searches for methods that can not only restore the voice to its original vibration range, but also achieve serious results in everyday speech situations and life management through the learned conscious control.
Member of the Parastudio Paraliturgical and Ritual Pedagogical Association, and currently a student at Tan Kapuja Buddhist College. He works together with Sardar Tagirovsky and is a member of the Budapest Anarchist Theatre.
