Video clips and literary fiction, cultural historical myths and modern commerce, psychology and horoscopes, in short components of our chaotic world mingle in Ágnes Kuthy’s paper, light and shadow theatre. Where Faust meets the Matrix, graffiti meets the Bible, philosophy meets advertising. And various puppet, visual and acting techniques also “meet”. Within their own particular order these different techniques give a picture of what cannot be ordered: our world that we commonly describe as chaotic and baffling. Ágnes Kuthy studied puppet and theatre directing in Berlin, she has directed in Berlin and Slovakia, at the Budapest Puppet Theatre, the Krétakör Társulat, in Pécs, Eger and Kaposvár. Her previous performance, Androgyne, was presented with great success at a number of Hungarian and international theatre festivals and won the main prize at the Fringe Festival this spring.

[In the framework of the ARTIST OT THE FUTURE - ARTISTS FOR THE FUTURE supported by the National Cultural Fund.]

Acropolis, a work written by Stanisław Wyspiański in 1904 is an opera without music rather than a play. On Easter Saturday night, in Cracow, the statues come to life, angels and Trojan heroes mingle with the stone figures of the cathedral to demonstrate with their own existence that the constantly repeated cycle of life is stronger than death. The subject almost begs to be presented in music and is being created in the studio of László Sáry for the Autumn Festival and the Maladype company. The opera version of this piece by Wyspiański, who was so enamoured of the Gesamtkunstwerk, will crown years of joint work by the composer and the company. An interesting feature of the new production will be that not only director Zoltán Balázs will take part in the work but also Sándor Zsótér, a great admirer of Wyspiański, so that the production will be shaped by two approaches to directing that, although having many points in common, also differ.

Perhaps some readers still remember the indignation aroused three years ago at the Autumn Festival by Michael Thalheimer’s direction. At that time he brought – and many people claimed trampled on – Ferenc Molnár’s Liliom, to confront Hungarian theatre-goers with a very striking theatre language independent of theatre traditions in the Carpathian Basin. This year he is coming to Budapest as artistic director of the Deutsches Theater Berlin, at the head of his company, with the greatest German classic. It is easy to guess that for him, the respect of tradition does not mean use of the traditional theatre language; the production first staged in 2004 sweeps aside conventions and gives a spare, stripped down interpretation that has evoked extreme responses from audiences. The Faust adaptation set in a modern environment relies on the intellectual force of the ideas and the suggestivity of the acting and is one of the most important German theatre events of recent years.

Acropolis, a work written by Stanisław Wyspiański in 1904 is an opera without music rather than a play. On Easter Saturday night, in Cracow, the statues come to life, angels and Trojan heroes mingle with the stone figures of the cathedral to demonstrate with their own existence that the constantly repeated cycle of life is stronger than death. The subject almost begs to be presented in music and is being created in the studio of László Sáry for the Autumn Festival and the Maladype company. The opera version of this piece by Wyspiański, who was so enamoured of the Gesamtkunstwerk, will crown years of joint work by the composer and the company. An interesting feature of the new production will be that not only director Zoltán Balázs will take part in the work but also Sándor Zsótér, a great admirer of Wyspiański, so that the production will be shaped by two approaches to directing that, although having many points in common, also differ.

Perhaps some readers still remember the indignation aroused three years ago at the Autumn Festival by Michael Thalheimer’s direction. At that time he brought – and many people claimed trampled on – Ferenc Molnár’s Liliom, to confront Hungarian theatre-goers with a very striking theatre language independent of theatre traditions in the Carpathian Basin. This year he is coming to Budapest as artistic director of the Deutsches Theater Berlin, at the head of his company, with the greatest German classic. It is easy to guess that for him, the respect of tradition does not mean use of the traditional theatre language; the production first staged in 2004 sweeps aside conventions and gives a spare, stripped down interpretation that has evoked extreme responses from audiences. The Faust adaptation set in a modern environment relies on the intellectual force of the ideas and the suggestivity of the acting and is one of the most important German theatre events of recent years.