Trafó House of Contemporary Arts
A world famous psychiatric hospital in Hungary was forced to close down a few months ago. The building has since become dilapidated; the garden is overgrown with weeds and a handful of patients have been left to vegetate alone on the fourth floor. The patients with developed dementia are living in the empire of amnesia... We have to face the following questions: How could society ever profit from one mental patient living a few years longer? What is the point of helping those who suffer when it all leads to death anyway? And besides, suffering is what propels humanity. When we numb ourselves with modern medicine we forget about religion and philosophy for good, albeit humanity found shelter in them before. May we presume the contradiction that death is Man's only hope and main human right?
This latest production of the Proton Theatre, which shifts from documentary-like realism to a more abstract world of the subconscious, manages to create an operetta-like reality wrapped in a postmodern melodrama that is frighteningly similar to our own daily life, insofar as every society is best characterized by how it treats its elderly and those livings with disabilities.
Bartonek: Ervin NAGY/János SZEMENYEI
Dr. Szatmáry: Roland RÁBA
Dóra, nurse: Kata WÉBER/Annamária LÁNG
Mercédesz Sápi: Lili MONORI
Henrik Holényi: Balázs TEMESVÁRI
Lady Oci: Orsi TÓTH
Lukács: Gergő BÁNKI
Dentist: László KATONA/Zsolt NAGY
Set, costumes: Márton ÁGH
Dramaturg: Viktória PETRÁNYI, Gábor THURY
Music: János SZEMENYEI
Assistant director: Zsófia CSATÓ
Director: Kornél MUNDRUCZÓ
“Entering the psychiatric hospital and walking beside the patients’ hospital beds, we become part of the world of the performance, its physical space, from very first moment. Moreover, we immediately assume a role, as Professor Szatmáry (Roland Rába) welcomes us as visitors on the open day of the Dementia Hospital. We soon receive the first request: a small financial contribution to save the clinic. Within the first five minutes of the performance, a great burden and social responsibility has been placed on our shoulders. What soon becomes apparent is that if we let this psychiatric hospital, highly respected all over Europe, shut down; the plot’s further developments, the fate of the patients, and collective suicide will all be our responsibility. But do we have any means to forestall this conclusion? The figure of the rich and cunning Bartonek (Ervin Nagy), who emerges from the audience, seems to suggest there is none: only money counts. Thanks to his wealth and connections, Bartonek can buy the hospital from the state and eject the incapacitated patients onto the streets. Nevertheless, we cannot totally blame him, since his point is correct. Out of the budget to hospitalize these vegetative patients, dozens of children from the poorest regions of Hungary could be saved from starvation. And why should we want to prolong the life of the elderly, who are a burden on society, if we all die at some point anyway?
“The play doesn’t even give its characters a chance. It invites in Death and treats it as freedom, since these people are not needed by anyone anywhere.” (Kalas Györgyi, index.hu)
Opened: 15th October 2013 Trafó House of Contemporary Arts, Budapest
CO-PRODUCERS:
HAU Hebbel am Ufer, Berlin, Germany; Theatre National de Bordeaux Aquitaine, France;
HELLERAU - European Center for the Arts, Dresden, Germany; Trafó House of Contemporary Arts, Budapest, Hungary;
Festival De Keuze/Rotterdamse Schouwburg, The Netherlands;
Noorderzon Performing Arts Festival, Groningen, The Netherlands;
SPIELART Festival, Munich, Germany; Festival Automne en Normandie, Rouen, France;
Maria Matos Teatro Municipal, Lisboa, Portugal; Künstlerhaus Mousonturm, Frankfurt am Main, Germany; Kunstenfestivaldesarts, Brussels, Belgium
SUPPORTERS:
A House on Fire and NXTSTP coproduction with the support of the Cultural Program of the European Union.
PROTON THEATRE was founded in 2009 for managing the independent theatre performances of the film and theatre director Kornél Mundruczó. The ensemble runned by Dóra Büki has currently six performances on repertoire: THE ICE by Vladimir Sorokin; FRANKENSTEIN-PROJECT, which has been touring extensively for some years now, from Strasbourg through Wiesbaden to Nitra, Paris, Cracow, Brussels, Vienna, Ljubljana, Vilnius, Riga, Rotterdam, Karlsruhe, Belgrade, Seoul, Santarcangelo and Berlin; HARD TO BE A GOD, which is an international co-production of the following festivals: Alkantara Festival, Lisbon, Portugal; Baltoscandal, Rakvere, Estonia; Culturgest, Lisbon, Portugal; KunstenFestivalDesArts, Brussels, Belgium; Rotterdamse Schouwburg, The Netherlands; Theater der Welt 2010, Essen, Germany; Théâtre National de Bordeaux, France and Trafó House of Contemporary Arts, Budapest, Hungary; DISGRACE by J.M. Coetzee is an international co-production of Wiener Festwochen, Festival d’Avignon, KunstenFestivalDesArts, Trafó House of Contemporary Arts, Malta Festival, Hebbel am Ufer and Romaeuropa Festival and DEMENTIA.
The latest performance of the company, LAST directed by Roland Rába has premiered in autumn 2014.
KORNÉL MUNDRUCZÓ was born in Hungary in 1975. He studied at the Hungarian University of Film and Drama and is now a renowned European film-director, whose films premier at the most prestigious festivals all over the world. He directed his short film AFTA shortly after leaving school. It went on to win numerous international awards. PLEASANT DAYS, his first feature film, was awarded the Silver Leopard in Locarno in 2002 for best first and second feature. He entered in the Cannes Residence in 2003. His second feature film, JOHANNA –an operatic adaptation of the story of Joan of Arc- was presented in the Un Certain Regard in 2005. His third feature film, DELTA won the FIPRESCI Critics' Award in Cannes 2008. And his fouth, TENDER SON was shown in the Offical Selection of Cannes 2010. His latest film WHITE GOD won the Un Certain Regard Prize of Cannes 2014.
He has been working for the stage for some years now, with Krétakör Theatre, National Theatre of Hungary, Thalia Theater Hamburg, Schauspiel Hannover and TR Warsawa among others, but basically whenever he finds a topic, a group or a venue which inspires him. During the working process he tries to build a team and often ends up inviting some of the same actors, who become creative partners. It is with them that he devises the productions. After freelancing with more or less the same group of people for several years, in 2009 he founded his independent theatre company, PROTON THEATRE together with Dóra Büki.