Beggar’s Blessing (Tartu,
Estonia)
some phrases
in English, 60’
The play has an aesthetic and
playful nature – the verbal speech of actors has been minimized or cut
completely and the story is told with the help of music instruments, gestures,
shapes and movements and with some short lines performed by orchestra instead
of actors. In that way text serves more as a commentary than spoken line and it
gives to performance sort of an aesthetic of mute film or cartoon.
The performance is based on Estonian folk tales collected by M. J. Eisen, J. Kunder and others. The title is inspired by an ambivalent motif found in many folktales – namely when an unearthly power get’s involved in an mundane life, so that people face a possibility for some sort of ethical or practical choice. Whether it’ll all end up as a beggar's blessing or curse – it’ll always remain a riddle for all of us. Directed by: Enor Niinemägi
teaser :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWy4NMpc5WQ
Ach, ui! (Vilnius, Lithuania)
physical theatre performance, 80’
Tără(z)boi (Iasi, Romania)
romanian
with English subtitles, 60’
The quiet
life of a village in the Republic of Moldova is disturbed by the Transnistrian
conflict. The peasants are dragged in a war that no one fully understands.
People that were once friends become fierce enemies in this conflict. Uncle
Andrei and Aunt Vera become leaders of an adrift community, guiding everybody
in the name of ardent patriotism. They end up having the power of life and
death over the others. The woodsman’s family brings other values to the stage.
The husband refuses the conflict, standing by the forest. The wife blames his
convictions, but maintains unconditional devotion. Ana, their teenage daughter,
discovers the love and the pain of an impossible choice. On the other side, we
discover Stiopa, the kind-hearted Russian soldier. Just like the others, he
doesn’t understand the meaning of this war. The facts happen quickly and the
characters are carried into an emotional roller coaster that they can’t escape
from, even years away.
The characters
are strong through their emotions. They create the perfect image of a world in
decay in the name of an absurd cause. It’s a world where the celebration songs
are replaced by the sound of bullets and the mourning covers the children's
smiles. The love stories are doomed before they even start.
The
dramatic facts are well-balanced by the fine humor and the visual moments
inserted in the play. The performance tries to recreate the destiny of a
village during the war. It is a small world of passion, traditions and choices,
with its tears and laughter, heroes and antiheroes.
The play
was presented with great succes in Apollo International Theatre Festival in
Alba Iulia, 2021 (https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.3854227541347618&type=3).
Directed by: Vera Nacu, Written by: Mariana Starciuc
The Universal (Debrecen,
Hungary)
in English, 90’
Directed by: Szurdoki Péter
Lebensraum (Bratislava, Slovakia)
in Slovak, 90’
The play of the american writer Israel Horovitz presents us with a fictional situation where the German chancellor offers redress to the descendants of Jews exiled after World War II by allowing them return to the land of their forefathers. But it doesn’t end there. She also guarantees them full naturalisation, stable employment and a standard of living. The play then narrates several parallel stories of a diverse group of people who, for one reason or another, either take up on or refuse the offer, as well as those who are suddenly moved to respond to shifts in the formerly stable geopolitical world map. The piece explores plurality: of thought, of attitudes, life decisions and social and human values. Its structure, followed thoroughly in the Bratislava production, involves brief and densely informative tragicomic situations of an almost mosaic blueprint, gradually layering multiple storylines that come to a surprising finale. Directed by: Kateřina Quisová
Worm in human heart (Prague, Czeh Republic)
in Czech, 80’
MAY CLEAN ME
SOMETHING OTHER THAN DEATH_
WHITE WATERWORKS
"The
worm is in the heart of man. We have to look for him there. So we have to watch
and understand the pernicious game that leads from foresight to existence to an
escape from life.”
Let's talk about death for a moment. I was born into a very communicative, educated world of the nineteenth century, when letters were still written, people visited and spoke clearly…
- About everything?
- Everything is never talked about. And
never will be. That would be the death of the people.
Collage
of works by Virgina Woolf, Sylvia Plath and Sarah Kane
Directed by: Kateřina Volánková
The other (Marrakech,
Morocco)
in French and English, 50’
Written by: P. Charaudeau, A. Dubuc, R. Barbier, L. Licata, Massannie
Directed by: Hassan Machnaoui
"infer something" - musical poetry play (Szeged, Hungary)
Our literature evening' is a competition for both the poems and the songs, like the X-factor talent shov. We want to seek together with the audience the meaning fo poetic and prosaic texts. We play contemporary poems, proses, popsongs, slams, punk, alter ang grunge music.
Played by: Rédei Emese, Géczi Gergő, Tari Balázs, Tóth Tamás, Directed by: Varga Norbert
Werther and the wolf (Pécs, Hungary)
in Hungarian ’75
The performance only partially follows the story of Goethe’s novel. Our starting point was that only a few people now read an 18th-century novel, but everyone is still familiar with Werther's basic problem, the overwhelming, blind love. The performance plays on Wether’s artistic susceptibility, with a theatrical gesture which is not in the basic story. We can see what happens when one wants to “cure” the grief of love with theater and crosses the line between reality and illusion, life and death…. We focused on the basic problems of the original work, with the help of a famous study by Roland Barthes, in which the author presents the typical stations of love through Werther. It soon turned out that every actor has “similar” stories and memories, we used these stories in the text writing process with the help of a great author from Pécs, and we wrote our own story, where everyone could and will be either Werther or Lotte.
Directed by: Tóth András Ernő Played by: Inhof László, Pásztó Renáta, Major Ágnes, Háber Krisztián, Somogyi Bianka, Ágoston Gáspár/ Popa Máté Scene design: Vincze Luca, Photo: Farkas B. Szabina
The blind king (Pécs, Hungary)
in Hungarian ’120
Janus University Theatre finds it important to give the opportunity to young directors to experiment. Wrote and directed by Péter Varsányi, this play based on the improvisations of the actors and on different variants of a folk tale. The performance-activating the audiance as well-emphasizes different interpretations of the story. The typical characters are constantly swapped by the actors suggesting that these roles are interchangeable and universal. The winding story makes us ponder about our choices and decisions.
Directed by: Varsányi Péter
Played by: Ágoston Gáspár, Farkas B. Szabina, Háber Krisztián,
Hollósi Orsolya, Popa Máté, Somogyi Bianka, Szabó Márk József
Design: Molnár Anna
Photo: Simara László
