Kristof Tobiáš: Acting is finding a new life within yourself

He wanted to become, perhaps like other children, a police officer, a racer, a car journalist, a designer, but as he himself says, it is natural for him to be an actor. He would have liked it not to, he grew up in an artistic environment. Both his parents are actors and he spent a lot of time backstage at theaters. He started with experimental art, so-called performance, tried out several characters in films or series and you could also see him in the theater. In addition, he is engaged in dubbing and you can recognize his voice from our short fashion films . A recent graduate of the Academy of Performing Arts and an artist in body and soul – Krištof Tobiáš.

My parents were and are definitely my role models, but I try to go my own way and not rely on them being actors. I have been observing their acting work since I was a little girl and I like it. At the same time, I am very grateful to them for the extra work they put in with me. They have given me a lot of acting lessons, and I hope to play with them someday.

"Acting awakened in me when I was about sixteen during the M films workshop, which was held in Banská Štiavnica for several years. During it, young people met - photographers, painters, actors, who lived together for two weeks in a scout house. I started with land art there (editor's note). In Vyhnie near Banská Štiavnica, we converted a piece of stone sea into a pier and several tourists took it as an attraction. A kind of first performance was created, which I then continued for another year in the streets of Banská Štiavnica. We were a group of performers dressed in black and silently, we walked concentratedly around interesting places in the city and pointed out to tourists about them. It practically looked like we surrounded Trojičné námestie, we were near the Old and New Castles, near the Počúvadlo... It was an amazing experience," recalls Krištof and adds that during those two weeks he tried different types of art - the aforementioned land art, drawing, painting, photography, modeling, acting. "Banská Štiavnica is very artistic. I really enjoy going back there. And I was very happy that Alain Delon chose Banská Štiavnica as the setting for one of his commercials."

Although Krištof's parents (actress Szidi Tobias and actor Boris Zachar) initially did not see him as an actor, they did not prevent him from choosing it either. "It is a beautiful profession, but difficult, you have to devote yourself to it with both body and soul. Spending an incredible amount of time working on yourself to create a nice idea. I like art, but at the same time I am not a person who has a problem, figuratively speaking, picking up a shovel in my hand. I do not shy away from any work, I am even currently working as a taxi driver and I enjoy contact with people. I like inviting people to the theater and to my delight, many of them react positively and actually come. I also have the opportunity to study human characters and I admit, once when portraying a character in a student film, I was inspired by my customer."

Studying at VŠMU

According to Krištof, acting cannot be taught, a person must have it somewhere within themselves and only together with the desire to be better can they create new characters and find new acting positions. "Studying at VŠMU is a very beautiful period for every artist. There are phases when a person is struggling, searching for themselves, not feeling completely well, but then there are semesters when something beautiful is achieved. And that is fulfillment, that is what we are looking for. I don't think there is any point in doing culture for money. I don't think that is the primary purpose of making art as such," Krištof reflects, adding that he is glad that he met a multitude of interesting people at the university, from professors to classmates, but also people from other faculties. "It is up to us how we will use these contacts, acquaintances and, above all, the acquired experience in our professional lives. Acting is an endless textbook until the end of our lives. It is a search for a new life within ourselves."

"Actors make theater out of love for acting"

Krištof gained experience on stage during his school days. He played about eight characters at the Lab Theatre, which is part of the VŠMU Theatre Faculty. His favorite character was a character from the play Children of the Demon by Hungarian author Béla Pintér. "It's a play about a Hungarian family that plays the Japanese. A crazy dominant woman finds a homeless person, me, and pulls me out, literally, from a puddle of urine in a Budapest station, and makes me her servant. And I can already say that, since it's the last act, the whole play ends with her dying and her entire bad image being transferred to our daughter. So my wife dies, and my daughter accepts me as her servant. The play is actually about how to (not) raise your children. The whole thing is depicted in a very funny way, grotesque, but it's basically very sad. But the absurdity of the situation makes it very funny," recalls Krištof. In addition to the Lab Theatre, you could also see Krištof on the stage of the Slovak National Theatre (for example, in the performances of The Merry Wives of Windsor, How Lomidrevo Became King), but he is not drawn to permanent engagement on our main theatre stage. "My dream theatre is my own and I am gradually trying to move towards it. My girlfriend writes fantastically, she wrote a monodrama, which we are now performing as part of the Theatre Institute in Studio 12. It is called Podenky."

Podenky – searching for one's own identity

Mayflies is a metaphor and comparison of mayflies (a type of insect), whose adults live only one day, to young people. The game shows how fleeting life is, compared to the evolution of our planet, we are really only here for that one day, maybe one second. "Podenky is an experimental project, a lecture performance (a combination of theatre and lecture, ed.), intended mainly for the young generation, which has too many information sources and distractions to be able to develop undisturbed. That is why, together with my friend Alexandra Rychtarčíková and director Maximilán Sobek, we described the spectrum of young people and their development and growth within young adulthood. There are seven different characters and personalities plus one professor who is on stage. Those seven characters are projected onto the screen as part of the presentation, it is pre-played. We made me, Krištof Tobiáš, a person who is looking for an identity, into a professor and during that lecture it becomes clear that I am nobody. I am Krištof Tobiáš XY, everyone is looking for their own identity and my acting is actually just a search for oneself." It was in Podenky that Krištof got a great opportunity to portray several characters, psychological profiles of very interesting young people, as he himself portrays all seven characters in the videos. He even got away with three female characters.

One of my dreams is to expand Podenky to its audience and take the next steps towards my own theater. My second big dream is to play one nice big movie role by the time I'm thirty.

The future Sherlock Holmes?

During his studies at the Academy of Fine Arts, he made about 16 student films, several of which were screened at European film festivals. "It was crazy stuff. I was filming in the snow in summer shoes, in the forest in swarms of mosquitoes. I couldn't film the details because I had a mosquito in my eye, on my chin, on my forehead, in my mouth... But I'm grateful for every single opportunity, because it gave me experience and contact that was important for me later," says Krištof. His greatest professional film experience was probably filming the series Tajné životy for RTVS, where he played Zuzana Mauréra's son. "I gained various experiences that every actor has to go through to get under their skin. If the production calls you at 3:30 in the morning that something still needs to be shot, you have to go, always be ready. It taught me responsibility and a kind of efficiency at work. The director was probably angry with me at the time because I was slow in the situations. He needed me to say the text faster, without psychological pauses... I was a freshman at VŠMU and it was all very fast for me. I was a fish thrown into water, but somehow I swam out of it and I'm very happy for that," recalls Krištof. Another great experience for Krištof was filming the fairy tale Johankino tajomstvo, where he also starred with his mother Szidi Tobias and his teacher Emília Vašáryová. His latest film is the family film Letní rebeli, where his mother also stars. Kristof's acting idol is Benedict Cumberbatch, and he would really like to play Sherlock Holmes. "I'll say it bluntly that I would cut that into a movie right away."

Captivating and deep voice

As part of his acting work, he has been recording voice overs (recording voices, for example, for commercials) since his first year at VŠMU, even in three languages ​​- Slovak, English, and Hungarian.

Whenever I do voice over, I try to find an idea or something other than my natural voice so that the commercials and spots don't sound the same. It's very difficult, because it's hard to find naturalness outside of your naturalness, but that's the job of acting.

"I work with an amazing sound engineer, Tomášek Balák, to whom I am grateful for almost all the professional projects I have recorded voice. That's how I got to the Alain Delon brand and I am very grateful to be able to represent it." So now you will know that the captivating deep voice in our short fashion films belongs to Krištof Tobiáš.