John The Valiant

Director Máté Szabó approached John The Valiant as a journey through a distinctly Hungarian visual imagination, allowing the familiar folk tale to move freely between reality, memory and increasingly fantastical worlds. Rather than modernising the story by replacing its imagery, the production gives new life to the visual heritage already surrounding it.

For John The Valiant, we joined forces with Krakout Studio and Berkes Bálint to build an animated world from fragments of the past. Working from a collection assembled by set designer Horesnyi Balázs, we scanned, cut apart and reconstructed historical drawings, transforming their static figures and landscapes into moving scenes.

The giant LED wall dominating the stage became a constantly shifting extension of the set, carrying animation through nearly eighty percent of the performance. Rather than splitting the work into technical roles, each member of the visual team took responsibility for complete sequences, giving different chapters of János’s journey their own rhythm and character while remaining part of the same visual language.

As the story leaves reality behind and enters Fairyland, the imagery breaks out of the screen itself. Projection mapping spreads the animated world across the surrounding scenery, expanding the illustrated universe into the physical space of the stage.