Onassis
What’s OnTransitions 3. Central Europe
Part of: Transitions 3. Central Europe
Theater

Transitions Central Europe: The Day of Fury

Árpád Schilling

Dates

Prices

4 — 10 €

Location

Onassis Stegi

Time & Date

Day
Time
Venue
Day
Wednesday-Thursday
Time
21:00
Venue
Main Stage

Information

Tickets

Full price: 10 € , Reduced: 5 €
Small groups (5-9 people): 9 €
Large groups (10+ people): 8 €
Unemployed, People with disabilities: 4 €
Companions: 5 €

Language

With English subtitles.

Transitions 3 opens with the world première of Árpád Schilling’s new and eagerly-awaited play. A musical of those in revolt: a tragi-comic work inspired by a Hungarian nurse in black heralds the much anticipated return to Athens of the award-winning director.

ΗUNGARY

A passionate doubter of staged compromises, the acclaimed Hungarian director Árpád Schilling (b. 1974) returns to Athens with a work inspired by a real-life story: a nurse who stepped forward in early 2015 to make a public speech of unprecedented honesty. This woman exposed the medieval state of Hungary’s health system. Handing in her resignation immediately after, she dressed in black and called on her co-workers to take to the streets in protest against unprofessional and inhumane conditions in their country’s hospitals. Her personality inspired Schilling to create a comic tragedy with songs for all those who find themselves on the margins of contemporary European history.

It has already been eight years since the theatre group Krétakör last performed in Greece, in the context of the 2007 Athens festival, with the unforgettable production of Chekhov’s "The Seagull", a hymn to raw beauty and ‘bare’ truth. Since then, however, Schilling has moved away from repertory theatre. Embracing a theatre of political and social responsibility on the borders of fiction and reality, dedicated to those who manage to escape ruling systems, Schilling savages the totalitarian practices of the Hungarian government under communism.

Such is the production "The Day of Fury", subtitled ‘Musical didactics with catharsis’, which will have its world premiere in a co-production with the Onassis Cultural Centre, the pioneering theatre Trafo, Budapest, and the theatre group Krétakör. ‘If the main principle of a free market is that each struggles for one’s self, then who will protect the victims of this new battle?’, asks Schilling. Indeed his work defends a new kind of humanity and a new theatre, playful as well as pedagogical on the tracks of Bertolt Brecht, who has also inspired the name of Schilling’s company.

Photo: Stavros Petropoulos

DIRECTOR’S NOTE

"The day of fury
Or the song of a foolish heart"

"I am filled with despondency seeing the growing number of all those who vegetate in misery. The civic consciousness is waking up across Europe in vain for people fall apart as unbound sheaf without the institution of state. Although free trade can guarantee democracy but democracy in itself cannot protect those who cannot afford a roof over their heads, or food, or do not have a supportive social network. Be it either a refugee, or an unemployed, the weak man is fallible, vulnerable, and inviable. While we could repeat as our mantra that everybody is responsible for themselves, competition is favored only by the strong, those who live safely or are in possession of special knowledge. If it does not protect those who fall out of the competition, or if it does not stand behind the vulnerable, then what is the state for?

Our show reveals the life of a 40-year-old woman. The woman, who works in the neonatal intensive care unit, is raising her 17-year-old daughter alone while she takes care of her 71- year-old mom. Due to reorganization, which is so common in Eastern Europe, her unit is eliminated. Because she was one of the organizers of the healthcare workers’ demonstration, she is not welcome anywhere. Eventually she finds work as a janitor as she falls to the bottom of the society, slowly loses everything, her mother gets blind, and her daughter leaves them.

What is this life like? What pleasures could such a slow decay hold? Is there a way out, and if not, why do we continue living?

It is not the people who are inhumane as everybody has an explanation about why they think and do what they do; nobody has the goal to eliminate the others. Yet if we add the roots up, the final result will be zero."
—Árpád Schilling

Parallel events

Wednesday 11 and Thursday 12 November

After performance talk with Árpád Schilling (Language: English, with simultaneous translation)
Moderated by:
Katia Arfara, Artistic Director of the Theatre and Dance Department at Onassis Stegi (Wednesday 11 November)
Grigoris Ioannidis, theater critic and assistant professor of Drama Studies, University of Athens
(Thursday 12 November)

Friday 13 and Saturday 14 November

Theater workshop with Árpád Schilling

Credits

  • Director

    Árpád Schilling

  • Performers

    Lilla Sárosdi, Annamária Láng, Roland Rába, Judit Meszléry, Milla Kata Kovács

  • Script

    Éva Zabezsinszkij, Árpád Schilling and the performers

  • Music

    Krisztián Vranik

  • Lyrics

    Péter Závada

  • Costume design

    Borbála Keszei

  • Technical Director

    András Éltető

  • Sound

    Andras Bartha

  • Assistant

    Csilla Bereczki

  • Production Manager

    Edina Schőn

  • Executive Manager

    Linda Potyondi

  • Translation into Greek

    Manouela Berki

  • Co-production

    Krétakör, Onassis Cultural Centre-Athens, TRAFÓ

  • World Premiere

    Onassis Stegi-Athens

Biography

Sponsoring / partnerships

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