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T h e...N A T I O N A L...D R A M A...A N D...T H E A T R E...S E L E C T I O N |
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Sterijino Pozorje Festival |
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Novi Sad |
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May 26th - June 5th 2008 |
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MONDAY - JUNE 2nd 2008 |
Grand Stage, Serbian National Theatre |
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19:00 |
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| based on the text by János Pilinszky etc.
URBI ET ORBI
‘Dezsö Kosztolányi’ Theatre, Subotica |
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Director
ANDRÁS URBÁN
Technical Assistant ATTILA ÚRI
Costumes - Everybody sleeps in what they
feel like
The play is intended for audiences over 16
Premiere:
October 27th 2007 |
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A verbal-textual orality – with plenty of laughter, off-colour stories and touching moments – gradually leaving János Pilinszky ‘s play of the same name |
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Cast |
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Móni |
MÁRTA BÉRES |
Zsuzsi |
ANDREA ERDÉLY |
Zoltán |
IMRE ELEK MIKES |
Tibor |
ÁRPÁD MÉSZÁROS |
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| The 'DEZSŐ KOSZTOLÁNYI' THEATRE, SUBOTICA |
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| Alternative, experimental, modern and open – this is what characterises the “Kosztolányi Dezső” Theatre from Subotica.
The theatre was founded by the local Subotica government in 1994. At first it operated in the building of the Subotica National Theatre. Ferenc Péter and Tibor Szloboda played an important role in its history so far. Since 2006/2007 season András Urbán has been at its head.
In November 2006 the theatre opened the new season in its own theatre hall. The ensemble consists of four young actors: Márta Béres, Andrea Erdély, Árpád Mészáros and Imre Elek Mikes. They gave five premiers: The Taming of the Shrew by Shakespeare, Dracula – The Brightness of a Moment, Tango by S. Mrožek, Five for Two, Dénes Döbrei) and Heni Varga, The Hardcore Machine by Brecht, which premiered in Berlin.
The 2007/2008 season has seen premiere performances of: Urbi et orbi by János Pilinszky, The True Nature of Love by Brad Fraser, The Last Temptation of the Lamb by Andor Szilágy, The Collector by John Fowles, A Curve of Death (after the drama by Otto Tolnai), Turbo Paradiso (after the short story Encyclopaedia of the Dead by D. Kiš), Happy Lunatics by Zsolt Pozsgai. During this season the ensemble has been invited to the 58th Festival of Professional Theatres of Vojvodina (Zrenjanin), 53rd Sterijino Pozorje, Festival “POSZT” (Pécs), INFANT (Novi Sad), “THEALTER” (Szeged), “SZIGET” Festival (Budapest).
During the 2006/2007 season the theatre initiated a programme series ‘Streetcar Desiré’ (Desiré villamosa), a unique project in Vojvodina. The aim of the project is to present theatrical and related productions Vojvodinian audiences have not had a chance to see and to introduce recognised national and Hungarian artists. The programme has included mainly alternative theatrical productions and theatre of movement performances, and organised literary evenings and concerts. The theatre wants to provide a space for young artists of Vojvodina. Since October 2007 it provides simultaneous translation into Serbian. |
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P E R F O R M A N C E...... |
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The text of the play is very particular, as János Pilinszky‘s drama of the same name was used as its base, but the play has been done as an improvisation. The text is mainly variable and it contains segments of Pilinszky‘s and Heiner Müler’s writings.
The play only reaches the point of wishing and suffering, more accurately to the desire for purification, to the question of whether there is mercy for sinners in their punishments. The question is if a spectator, finding him/herself in the role of judge, can pass judgement, that is, answer this question. The play reaches the degree where purification is wanted, and only then can catharsis follow, which still depends on the spectators’ receptivity and personal affinities. As if from this point real privacy, through confession, begins.
Roland ORCSIK
The play is characterised by soul-stirring, shocking scenes, but the spectator must see even the most horrifying of them to the end... One such experience, approximately one-hour long, is something each of us must take part in. Perhaps it is no experience at all, but therapy: everyday problems people tend to take as tragedies suddenly lose their importance and are suppressed; we find ourselves hoping that we are never to experience such torment and suffering. Extraordinary acting given by the four protagonists is what makes this performance very effective; truly immersed in their faults, the sins become authentic. After the show, there is probably no one in the audience who is not urged to think about their own sins, guilt and what kind of punishment will be brought upon them.
Attila HORVAT |
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S E L E C T O R ' S...R E P O R T...... |
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Are we afraid? Is there any punishment? What is sin today, in humanity-denuded era of reality shows and the Internet, which displays and offers everything, but gives nothing tangible? Is there faith, in what, and does faith hurt? The powerful, blasphemously entertaining and warningly horrific play Urbi et Orbi by András Urbán deals with these issues. Its title and ‘tendency’ meaningfully flirt with the emptied fullness of former Caesarean and Popish announcements; while its stage logic flirts with some of the model examples of performance art of the 1960s, as well as with the media, electronic eyes and ears of our global village which are always tuned in. In a small form of a well indicated evening para-media confessional, containing some inhuman props – merely a microphone, one bar of soap, a washbowl, a cart, a metal barrel... and some human ones, such as the fragments of János Pilinszky and Heiner Müller’s texts, religious melodies and chants, a few little couplets, the artistically aware director, four devoted actors and a space open for improvisation – a stage form is created which the director reasonably calls ‘orality’. It uncanonically unites the energies of cabaret, morality, ritual play, and post-Brechtian agitation with an obvious step onto the territory of re-examining the effects of lyricism – in the place from which it has been nearly completely eradicated. Synchronically tense in seeking a more active form of verbal, oral theatre, and fresh blood of the non-verbal stage ‘oraculum’ - in which it finds its powerfully conclusion, in spite of the litanies of the words uttered, this play says that we, ourselves, must give answers to questions it poses, just like we pose them ourselves sometimes. And, its true answer - if it even exists in the tense stage whirlpool of the said and played – is the very form stretched between the trivial and poetical, daytime and night forces, in that twilight silence staying behind theatrically open sense which we are dragged into deeply, by this small big crew.
Vladimir KOPICL |
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JÁNOS PILINSZKY
János Pilinszky was born in Budapest in 1921 to a family of intellectuals; his father had two diplomas - that of an engineer and a lawyer. He matriculated from the prestigious Piarist comprehensive high, starting law studies afterwards, but he switched to Hungarian and Italian language and literature, and art history later.
He published his first poems between 1938 and 1939. In 1944 he was drafted to the Army; his unit withdrew to the west and from February 1945 he experienced firsthand the horrors of concentration camps – a fact which determined his entire life and poetry from that point on. His first collection of poems, Trapeze and Bars, was published in 1946, for which he received the prestigious Baumgarten Prize the following year. He spent a couple of months in Italy from 1947 to 1948 on a scholarship. He was barred from publishing from 1949 and wrote fairytales in verse. During 1956 he was a proof-reader for a publishing house for a short while, becoming an associate for the Catholic weekly Új Ember (New Man), where he published his essays, religious and philosophical reflections, literary, theatre and film criticisms. From the mid 1960’s he was allowed to travel again (Poland, Switzerland, Belgium, Novi Sad, Vienna, London, Rome), staying longest in Paris, but he reached the United States as well. His sister committed suicide in 1975 and he stopped writing poetry. In early 1978 he met Ingrid Fiseau in Paris and in August the same year they got married. János Pilinszky died at the age of 60 after his second heart attack.
His published collections of poetry are Trapeze and Bars (1946); On the Third Day (1959); Metropolitan Icons (1970); Splinters (1972); Final Development (1975) and Crater (1976). His novelConversations with Sheryl Sutton was published in 1977. |
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ANDRÁS URBÁN
András Urbán was born in Senta in 1970. At the age of 17 he founded an independent theatre and literary workshop where he was author, director and actor at the same time. He formed the famous theatrical troupe AIOWA which treated theatre as a particular, yet all-art-encompassing and, last but not least, ideological action. He started studying at the Section for Direction of the Academy of Arts in Novi Sad, under Professor Vlatko Gilić. He studied film and theatre direction, and directed at the Subotica based National Theatre. In the mid 1990’s he decided to quit his studies and leave the National theatre, leading a secluded life. Theatre was only present in his thoughts. Five years later, Urbán was back at school, under Professor Bora Drašković, graduating in 2000. He started working as a director at the ‘Dezsö Kosztolányi’ Theatre, while creating ‘independent’ productions supported by MASZK from Szeged and his own troupe. He has worked in Novi Sad and Belgrade, led art workshops in Romania, and taken a study trip to Japan. Since 2005 he has been at the head of the ‘Dezsö Kosztolányi’ Theatre. András Urbán has directed the works of Bihner, Shakespeare, Dejan Dukovski, F. Arabal, J. Pilinszky, Ottó Tolnai, Yordan Radichkov, Géza Csáth, Slobodan Tišma, Becket, S. Platt, and Bram Stoker.He has authored the short films Somebody and Somebody (1991), Glass (1992), As If We Don’t Even Exist (1993) and the book of stories Partisan from the Dawn (2003).
Awards and recognitions: 1st Prize at the Festival of Small and Experimental Theatres, Pančevo (Mildew, 1989), Special Award of the Bitef Jury for the plays Woyzeck and Hamlet (1992), Best Director Award at the 9th Alternative Theatre Meeting, Szeged (Children, Death Bend, 2003), Award for Innovations at the 10th Alternative Theatre Meeting, Szeged (0,1,2004). |
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To some extent I see the raw world of our play in Pilinszky, and to some extent I don’t. His poems always exude immense pain, and although in our play these eruptive confessions are not given in so many nuances as in Pilinszky’s poems, they are still very personal, which perhaps in this case carries more weight and value, as theatre seeks to be alive and not a recital.
András URBÁN |
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Infidel Fidelity
(...) Instead of the two Popes from Pilinszky’s text, there are two men and two women in the play. All four give their confessions in the form of interviews. Questions, which seem improvised in spite of practice, are posed by the remaining three actors, who are placed in the audience or on the fringes of the stage. By using this procedure the director opens an opportunity for us to pose a question, but simultaneously warns that the following interviewed person will be one of us, so we could be next in this cruel game of honesty, even though it is still just theatre, we are still in the theatre, watching a show.
(...) The four life stories which end in a joint ritual of purification – in the final scene Zuza utters ‘Whip me!’ – express Pilinszky’s idea recorded in his essay on divine dramaturgy: ‘Each human life is a dialogue of appearing and disappearing, and is unavoidably of dramatic construction.’
This dramatic feature is also expressed by the play in which the virtue of the director’s method lies in the fact that he uses Pilinszky’s text to announce, Urbi et orbi, the theatrical parable of sin, suffering and the desire for redemption. He manages to connect several fragments from the playwright’s text into a sensibly clear play, as well as to elevate the actors from the role of passionate interrogators, through a spontaneous, improvised and cruel quadruple ‘game’ of questions and answers, to the ecstasy of intensive experience. In Márta Béres and Imre Mikes’s confessions, he managed to mix the humour, which comes as a consequence of naiveté, into shades of the tragic; while in the case of Árpád Mészáros and Andrea Erdély, instead of humour we find enforced, later discarded, exposed self-discipline. Cruel, yet deeply humane show. The theatre of life.
László GEROLD (Híd) |
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.The
management preserves the right to change
the schedule
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Copyright
: Sterijino pozorje 1998-2008.
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