Péter Halász (director)

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Péter Halász

Péter Halász [ ˈpeːtɛr ˈhɒlaːs ] (born August 20, 1943 in Budapest , Hungary , † March 10, 2006 in New York City ) was a Hungarian actor, director and theater maker. He became famous for his alternative theater groups, which he founded first in Budapest ( Kassák Ház Stúdió ), then later in New York ( Squat Theater ), where he was considered a theater cult figure to the end.

Life

Between 1962 and 1969, the actor and director played numerous smaller and larger roles under the director József Ruszt at the Egyetemi Színpad in Budapest . He founded the theater group Kassák Ház Stúdió , which after 1972 only appeared in his apartment in Budapest's Dohany Street, which he rented with his then partner Anna Koós , because the communist cultural functionaries had declared a performance ban. Thirty different pieces were written during that time, the last being the Three Sisters of Chekhov with an all-male cast.

In 1976 Halász emigrated with his theater group, first to Paris , and a year later to New York City, where the group performed under the name Squat Theater . They worked u. a. also with artists like Andy Warhol . After the political change in Hungary, Halász came back, where he appeared again for the first time in 1990 with his play "She Who was the Helmetmaker's Beautiful Wife" (co-author Seth Tillet ). He participated in numerous, mainly Hungarian, film productions. For the leading role in the film Sade Márki élete (Marki De Sade, director: András Szirtes ), he received the prize for the best male leading role at the Budapest Film Show in 1993.

In the last years of his life he was constantly commuting between New York and Budapest. At the end of the 1990s he reopened the Józsefvárosi Színház , a small theater in Budapest's Josefstadt, which was exclusively used for alternative plays, together with András Jeles in the Hungarian capital .

Péter Halász 'last film Herminamező-Szellemjárás who acts by the inmates of a home for the mentally disabled, who oppose the Russian tanks during the uprising of 1956, received at the Budapest film actor in 2006 the prize for the best experimental film.

The on liver cancer diseased Halász bahrte located on 6 February 2006, a month before his death, in an open coffin in the Kunsthalle Budapest adopted (Műcsarnok) itself and was of hundreds of friends and theater fans. Among others, the writer György Konrád also gave a "funeral speech".

Filmography (selection)

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Halász, Péter
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Hungarian director and actor
DATE OF BIRTH August 20, 1943
PLACE OF BIRTH Budapest
DATE OF DEATH March 10, 2006
Place of death New York City