Hazám, Hazám !
(Country, my dear Country!)
Krétakör company, Budapest
Texts by István Tasnádi, Árpád Schilling
Directed by Árpád Schilling (Hungary)
Composers Miklós Lukács, László Melis
Dramaturges Balázs Erös, András Forgách, Péter Kárpáti, Anna Veress
Choreographer Csaba Horváth
Set design Márton Agh
Costumes design Klára Varga, Julia Kiss
Masks Fruzsina Nagy
Light design Tamás Bányai
Assistant Director Péter Tóth
Project Manager Máté Gáspár
Starring
Gergely Bánki, Eszter Csákányi, József Gyabronka, László Katona, Annamária Láng, Zsoltán Mucsi, Zsolt Nagy, Borbála Péterfy, Roland Rába, Lilla Sárosdi, Péter Scherer, Sándor Terhes, Gábor Viola, Tilo Werner
Musicians Miklós Lukács, Csaba Novák, Kálmán Olah, Balázs Szokolay
Dramaturges Balázs Erös, András Forgách, Péter Kárpáti, Anna Veress
Choreographer Csaba Horváth
Set design Márton Agh
Costumes design Klára Varga, Julia Kiss
Masks Fruzsina Nagy
Light design Tamás Bányai
Assistant Director Péter Tóth
Project Manager Máté Gáspár
Starring
Gergely Bánki, Eszter Csákányi, József Gyabronka, László Katona, Annamária Láng, Zsoltán Mucsi, Zsolt Nagy, Borbála Péterfy, Roland Rába, Lilla Sárosdi, Péter Scherer, Sándor Terhes, Gábor Viola, Tilo Werner
Musicians Miklós Lukács, Csaba Novák, Kálmán Olah, Balázs Szokolay
Premiere: September 27, 2002 in the MC93 Bobigny (France) and October 23, 2002 in the Budapest Autumn Festival (Hungary)
Co-production MC93 Bobigny (France), Krétakör Szinház (Budapest, Hungary), Centre Dramatique National / Orléans-Loiret-Centre (France), La rose des Vents - Scène Nationale de Villeneuve d'Ascq (France), THEOREM (association supported by the Culture 2000 programme of the European Union), Les Samedis de Zsámbék
« It is urgent that theatre be again a strong component of social life once again. It has to be political, essential, anarchist if needed. One cannot behave in theatre as in daily life. The point is not to imitate nature neither or to re-create a reality, but to look for truth beneath appearences. Theatre can only be physical. Each gesture being a thought form. »
»« The thirteen years between 1989 and 2002 meant the beginning of a new story for our country, but they also marked, for me as for many members of our company, the passage into adulthood. We experienced the responsibility of thinking by ourselves about our own lives at the same time as we were living through the changes unfolding in our country. Lots of questions remained unanswered, crystallising into anger inside us. Since this change in 1989 so many possibilities remained unexploited, so many expectations were disappointed. I'm not really speaking about our generation, which was then 14-15 years old, but about the previous generation, that of our parents, who could not hand anything down to us, or change this state of emptiness by progressing to the next step. Today in 2002, we can’t find our place either. Since 1989, this country since has experienced almost everything it’s possible experience. It has elected every party in turn, with different parties governing from one day to the next, and we remain very sceptical about politics as well as this famous ‘freedom’. We tried to concentrate all this into the performance, which recaptures these thirteen years through a clown-like review. As we came to realise progressively throughout our work, what mattered to us was not a faithful re-transcription of history but the creation of an original theatrical history capable of succinctly expressing our attitude, questions, anger, amazement, despair.
We try to explain all this through grotesque as well as surrealist pictures and visions, through music and dance. We also convey the basic idea that none of what has happened will mean anything if we give up, and even if we don't get any further, we must at least avoid hating each other within our own country. Because lately this little country with its little history and its little despairs has been divided in half and has begun to devour itself. We would like to add this idea at the end of our show: just because it didn’t work, that’s no reason for hating anybody except perhaps our politicians who were incapable of making good use of these thirteen years of liberty.
Árpád Schilling, for the programme of the MC93 Bobigny, September 2002
»« The thirteen years between 1989 and 2002 meant the beginning of a new story for our country, but they also marked, for me as for many members of our company, the passage into adulthood. We experienced the responsibility of thinking by ourselves about our own lives at the same time as we were living through the changes unfolding in our country. Lots of questions remained unanswered, crystallising into anger inside us. Since this change in 1989 so many possibilities remained unexploited, so many expectations were disappointed. I'm not really speaking about our generation, which was then 14-15 years old, but about the previous generation, that of our parents, who could not hand anything down to us, or change this state of emptiness by progressing to the next step. Today in 2002, we can’t find our place either. Since 1989, this country since has experienced almost everything it’s possible experience. It has elected every party in turn, with different parties governing from one day to the next, and we remain very sceptical about politics as well as this famous ‘freedom’. We tried to concentrate all this into the performance, which recaptures these thirteen years through a clown-like review. As we came to realise progressively throughout our work, what mattered to us was not a faithful re-transcription of history but the creation of an original theatrical history capable of succinctly expressing our attitude, questions, anger, amazement, despair.
We try to explain all this through grotesque as well as surrealist pictures and visions, through music and dance. We also convey the basic idea that none of what has happened will mean anything if we give up, and even if we don't get any further, we must at least avoid hating each other within our own country. Because lately this little country with its little history and its little despairs has been divided in half and has begun to devour itself. We would like to add this idea at the end of our show: just because it didn’t work, that’s no reason for hating anybody except perhaps our politicians who were incapable of making good use of these thirteen years of liberty.
Árpád Schilling, for the programme of the MC93 Bobigny, September 2002
