Past plays
The birds that rot
Second part of the trilogy "Fathers and sons"
Contributors
Szereplők: Dávid Varga , Orsolya Balogh
Dramaturg: Tímea Éva Bogya
Music: Dávid Varga
Set design: Gyenei Péter
Music contributor Babindák István
Short description
Grandpa Imre sues his grandson József. The grandfather claims that József has insulted him, his deceased relatives and his current wife in his novel. His social relationships were damaged, his personality was destroyed and he even contracted a fatal illness because of the content of the book in question.
József says that this is fiction, that the novel is a figment of his imagination. Who is right? The story paints a picture of a family that is self-destructive, disintegrating, and carrying generational curses.
“The greatness of the idea is shown by the fact that the audience cannot contain themselves and bursts into laughter. Can a director receive greater recognition? And can he trust that the play will achieve the desired effect and make you think about the life, situation, vulnerability, and sensitivity of the Roma? Can theater be taken home, or can it be put down as a matter of course when leaving the performance space, like a temporarily possessed object? Like every worthwhile play, Rodrigó Balogh’s asks questions. It is a work of art.”
Frogtales
Contributors
Written by Rodrigó Balogh, Márton Illés
Directed by Rodrigó Balogh
Performed by István Babindák, Orsolya Balogh, Nora Nemcsók, Norbert Oláh / András Tamás Szegedi, Dávid Varga
Music – István Babindák, Máté Kovács
Technical leader – Tamás András Szegedi
Director’s assistant – Ágnes Sarlós
"My role will be,
As a decorative frog, to prove,
How beautiful and inclusive the non-frog world is!"
Short description
The play is preceded the experimental short film ‘Batrachian’s Ballad’ by Leonor Teles. In the film, the artist breaks frog statues exposed at the entrance of Portuguese shops, drawing attention to a discriminatory practice. These seemingly charming frog statues are signs: they keep the Roma away from shops throughout Portugal. We have been aware of many stories about security guards following the Roma in the shops, and that the Roma are not even allowed into many clubs.
But the frogs themselves are rarely mentioned. Who are these frogs? In many cases, they are the members of the Roma minority themselves since majority societies have always preferred employing members of minorities to keep away or regulate their own kind.
In the performance directed by Rodrigó Balogh, we learn about the history of three generations of a family of frogs, two generations of which can get a job as guardians, bouncers, thus, they are often confronted with the members of their own community. The different family members of the story develop from generation to generation, while the youngest one, as a musician, can change from a ‘guardian-frog’ into a ‘honorary frog’. With his art, he already softens the heart of the princess, who will fall in love with the frog-boy. Of course, from the kiss of the princess, frogs become princes.
Ogre Freak
- or face the truth!
Contributors
Tamás Szegedi – Ádám / Captain Ogre
Rita Alexits – Töttös / Mommy
Viktória Németh – Lili / Teacher
Norbert Varga – Pufi / Policeman buddy
Producer – Rodrigó Balogh
Director, Writer, Set design – and Puppet designer – Tamás András Szegedi
Assistant Director – Szilárd Szegedi
Soundtrack- István Babindák
Sight /visual – Norbert Oláh
Short description
Ogre freak, or face the truth!” is a puppet show which depicts the high school years of a young Roma boy whose greatest fear is that his origins will be revealed. The story is about overcoming this fear, about taking pride in ourselves and it is about the fact that we all have difficulties that we don’t have to hide.
What difficulties does a young person have to face in a new environment? What could be the secret to success? How can he be popular in the new environment? “Ogre freak” makes life difficult for a twelve year old boy. In order to escape his fears, he has to work hard to keep his secrets hidden from his new friends in his new school. Adam, the protagonist, seizes every opportunity to be popular, but recognition and success are not given for free and sooner or later the truth will come to light. Then friendship, trust, courage and all-encompassing love will have a real role to play!
Panna Czinka
– Boszorkánycsárdás
Contributors
Panna Czinka – Ramóna Farkas
Soldier/father/clown – Máté Pásztor
Clarinet – István Babindák
Violin – Zoltán Baranyi
Cymbalo – Béla Vidák
Producer: Rodrigó Balogh
Writer: Barnabás Boda-Novy
Director: Emília Boda-Novy
Director’s assistant: Adrienn Szűcs
Costumes: Tekla Inotay
“In addition, it’s important that Panna takes a different kind of female path than what was assigned to her, and what is usually assigned to Gypsy girls even today in many places. You can choose love and a profession at the same time, since something can
happen to women, too.”
Short description
The grueling fated girl, Panna Czinka already at the age of 9, played her violin in such a way that people marveled. Thanks to her talent, her landowner taught her to play the violin with his own money, and by the age of 12, the little Gypsy girl had become a real virtuoso artist. She traveled the country in a Gypsy caravan, practiced, played music diligently, when she had to: she hide, when she was allowed to play: she played music. The caravan once farmed close to the camp of a Hungarian regiment when a southern company military officer appeared. Despite all the bitterness of the young woman’s fate, she greeted him with an open heart. The love unfolded minute by minute between the two of them. The Hungarian soldier and the Gypsy girl were on a joint journey. But the persecution of the Gypsies affected the lives of both of them. Their love is overshadowed by a lot of hurt, malice, and a sense of love for their own people.
Is the saying that love defeats everything true? If you had to choose between a relationship and a career, what would you choose? Can a different origin put an end to capitalized love? The love thread of our story is fictitious, but the performance describes historically accurate events. Seventy minutes of time jump awaits the audience in the soft lap of nature. Accompanied by authentic live music, we show the age and the woman who was the first to make a breakthrough in Gypsy music.
Animal Comedy
Contributors
Producer – Rodrigó Balogh
Writer, director – Dávid Csányi
Director’s assistant – Bóra Dömötörfy
Performed by Orsolya Balogh, Dávid Csányi, Nóra Nemcsók, Rómeó Pápai
Dramaturge – Márton Illés
Music – Tamás Sebesi
Costumes – Luca Szabó
Make-up – Judit Szabó
"Our color is different, our race is different, we think differently,
but somehow we get along more easily together."
Short description
The Animal’s Play (based on a play by Péter Valcz) is a fun, interactive family performance about friendship and theater, where children and adults alike can have fun. It’s about a theatre company of different animals who can’t compete with today’s needs, so they’re forced to break up, they have to stand their ground alone in the big world, without theater. Among the members of the company we can get to know the aged company leader cobra, the comic monkey, the young heartbreaking tiger, the primadonna cat and the helpful mole.
Members need to stay afloat to learn what’s good, what needs to change to eventually become a more cohesive team. By the end of the story, they realize they’re going to do much more together than alone. Theater can give everyone something that virtual reality may not be able to do. What is the strength of a community? How can we achieve change together? The presentation revolves around these issues, among others.
The performance is recommended for everyone from the age of five.
Village Day
Contributors
Director – Rodrigó Balogh
Protagonist – Emília Boda-Novy, Dávid Csányi, Béla Stubnya, Cristopher Pászik, Orsolya Balogh, Judit Kőszegi
Movement director – Henrik Nagy
Dramaturg – Márton Illés
Music – Dávid Csányi and Máté Kovács A.
Assistant Director – Bóra Dömötörfy
Short description
How much chance does a Gypsy woman have if she raises her child on her own without any opportunity to work? Where is hope when the biggest goodwill turns the most important people of our lives against us? What is needed when we take the road of unscrupulousness because we cannot get out of the woods? Where is the boundary between humanity and inhumanity? Similar questions arise when the tourists are walking on the lush side of Gellért Hill, Budapest during the performance by Independent Theatre Hungary and they can taste the special delicacies of the village during the premiere, too.
Lápos can be any village in Hungary today: with inhabitants who struggle for their daily living, better or worse but they are lovable residents. Misery-tourists visit the village day every year and the participants of the gastro-theatre performance meet real human tragedies in the pokey but inventive village.
Az előadást Durst Judit évtizedes kutatása inspirálta, amely olyan arcát mutatja meg a magyar vidéknek, és a hátrányos helyzetű közösségeknek, amelyet legtöbben aligha ismerhetünk. A darabot roma és nem roma színészek sokszínű társulata adja elő – éppen olyan sokszínű közösség, mint amilyenek a magyar falvak zömének lakosságát alkotják.
The performance is supported by Summa Artium and the European Union's "Creative Europe" program.
Shoddies
Contributors
Directed by Rodrigó Balogh
Dramaturgy by – Márton Illés
Performed by Barbara Balázs, Irén Godó, Katalin Godó and Dániel Lakatos
Movement director – Gyula Antal Horváth
Visual – Alina Vincze, Péter Illés
English translation – Tímea Sipos
Short description
What are the general experiences about health care system? How embarrassing is it to just wait and wait when we are ill and vulnerable? What are our experiences or stereotypes on the Roma, addict or extremist youngsters that who might be our neighbors in a ward? Health care system has a lot of weak points and we all have at least one horror story about a quirky nurse, a grumpy doctor, a dirty ward or an insupportable patient. But have a look at this question from an other angle, let’s see what we can do for a change! Independent Theater Hungary’s play shows different viewpoints on health care as well as coexistence in general and draws attention to the importance of taking action.
The production of the Independent Theatre Hungary raises different aspects regarding healthcare and coexistence in general. The performance presents the stories of four young people, we learn about their illnesses, their relationships with each other, their prejudices against each other and the world. Yet the young people move beyond complaining and the differences between them, and try to do something together.
The hardest word
Contributors
Writer – Richard R. O’Neill
Performer– Edina Dömök
Translation – Viktória Kondi
Hungarian translation supervised by – Ágnes Stemler
Screenplay – Illés Márton
Director – Rodrigó Balogh
The presentation is 30 minutes long
The interactive processing session is 60 minutes long
Short description
The monodrama displays both the vulnerability and the firm character of Jess. From her confession, we learn what challenges she has to face while fighting steadily for her goals – against her own family, the society or the authority.
Sometimes civil disobedience is the only way to maintain our dignity, she believes.
Background and impact of the play
Richard R O’Neill’s play, based on the story of Jess Smith, was first performet at Edinburgh Storytelling Festival in 2008. The issue of the centuries long persecution caught the attention of the Church of Scotland when one of the priests, Russel McLarty attended Jess Smith’s show at the festival.
After the premiere, Jess met the church leaders and this experience initiated long-lasting changes in the church’s approach to Traveller’s history. When Jess Smith told her friend, the playwright Richard R. O’Neill about her plan to demand a statement of apology from the state, he offered to write a monologue for Jess – so this play is the demand itself. Although neither the state nor the first minister apologised to the Traveller communities for the violation of their human rights, on 25 May 2012 the Church of Scotland did so. In the UK, the performance brought countrywide recognition for the artists, inspired the everyday work of health care and community development organisations, and encouraged Roma women to write.
ROMA HEROES – Retrospective series
European roma dramas online
Independent Theater Hungary launches an on-line series starting on 11 June 2020 and presents a European Roma theatre performance each week. The theatrical company has been organising the only international Roma theatre festival of the world for years. Responding to the current situation in a unique way, Independent Theater makes the festival performance videos available on its video sharing portal. The first piece, The Hardest Word by Richard O’Neill will be available from 11 June 2020 (21 p.m.). The aim of Independent Theater Hungary is to show the artistic and thematic diversity of Roma theatre. In the forthcoming three months, twelve video recordings of notable festival performances from the past years will be presented. Each Thursday at 21 p.m. a new Roma play will be made available for a week on the official YouTube channel of the Theater.
Even though there have been Roma theatres for more than 100 years in Europe, and nowadays there are numerous active and inspiring Roma theatre companies in several counties, there’s hardly any possibility to get to know them unless you visit the Roma Heroes International Festival or watch our retrospective series online. The series unveils the varied but unknown face and fate of the Roma people beginning from the world of the British Travellers to the Roma heroines of the Spanish Civil War, from the inhabitants of present-day Italian Gipsy settlements to the young Roma people facing unusual challenges in Romania.
‘Through these stories we can get hold of a lot of knowledge regarding the past and present of the different European societies. If we find the hero in the other person and in ourselves, we can finally understand each-other and can feel able to shape our world. Roma theatre, as part of the cultural heritage, has an important role.’ – said Rodrigó Balogh, the artistic director of Independent Theater Hungary. The IV. Roma Heroes International Theatre Festival will be held again, in October 2020. Based on the dramas and performance recordings collected during the past years, the Theater will create a digital archive with the purpose to make the values of Roma theatre available for the future generations.
Beside the performance videos, various interviews made with Roma theatre makers and actors will also be shared with the public.
Venue: Independent Theater Hungary's a Független Színház Magyarország YouTube channel
Peer Gyn’s children – Sin Village
– Sin Village
The adaptation of the world-famous Peer Gynt by Ibsen tells the story of a young boy living in a small, corrupt village where nobody has the courage to take actions against the mayor’s crime organisation. The boy is very popular among women, especially the mayor’s daughter is fond of him, but he needs a lot of luck when he mentions the discrepancies occurring in the village.
The United Nation Prize and Ibsen Award winning performance by the Independent Theatre Hungary can be seen during the three-hour long excursion to Gellért Hill and is performed by young Roma and non-Roma actors. The different scenes take place in various points of the picturesque hill. The participants can never know what will happen next, the only stable thing is that at the end of the excursion, on the green field they have dinner together with the creators of the unusual initiative.
Contributors
Witten and directed by – Rodrigó Balogh
Dramaturgy and director’s assistant – Márton Illés
Performed by – András Nyárai, Anna Barabás, Edmond Oláh, Franciska Farkas, Gellért Csiki, Orsolya Ádám, Péter Ónodi, Tamás Boros
Feather picking
Contributors
Writer-director: Rodrigó Balogh
Dramaturgy by: Márton Illés
Performed by
Babrinka – Emília Lovas
Rambo – Alfréd Roberto Német
Index – József Szkiba
Mónika – Mercedes Kalocsay
Szotyi – Tamás András Szegedi / Edmond Oláh (Mizó)
PROFESSIONAL SUPPORT ORGANISATIONS:
National and Ethnic Minority Rights Protection Office (NEKI);
The Movement for Desegregation Foundation; Bálint House
Short description
Five young people escape from a summer camp for gypsy children, where they dared to speak out about some wrongdoings. They want to get home. Along the way, they encounter many realistic and dreamlike situations, as well as each other's stories, which also come to life. Through the eyes of the children, we can learn about the intricacies of a world about which only limited and mostly distorted information reaches most of us.
The play that was written from recent legal cases and from personal stories by Rodrigó Balogh, United Nations Prize-winner theatre director and Junior Prima Awards-winner instructor, exposes several discrepancies of Roma integration that never appear in public discourse, not to mention literature. Even if Roma art has received greater attention lately, especially authentic pieces of art made in the style of Romanticism were highlighted, while Hungarian culture hardly ever dealt with today’s problems of the Roma.
Feather Picking shows today’s society and the reality of Roma integration full of absurdity, hypocrisy and horrors.
Mirad, a boy from Bosnia
Mirad, Fazila, Djuka…Exotic names….The people bearing these names can be Kurdish, Afghan, Iraqi, Palestinian, Somalian. Several examples of hotbeds of crisis on Earth could be provided. We listen to the news and read the newspapers with the certainty ’That’s not gonna happen to us…’.
The Mouth Organ-playing Boy by István Simon was brought to us by World War II. Rodrigo Balogh’s Mirad is weeping with his moth-organ for the past, the present and the future, thus, for everything. This studio drama is imminent in time and space. What’s left for a man when the Yugoslav Wars have just destroyed all his world?
Contributors
Writer – Ad de Bont
Director – Rodrigó Balogh
Dramaturg – Tamás Török
Translater – Márta Simon
Graphic designer – Zoltán Oláh
Performers
Mirad – Gábor Jászberényi
Djuka – Szabolcs Jáger
Fazila – Erika Gergely
“Ouch…”
2004 – musical pe
The play shows the troubles and success of the protagonist, Rupi, the Sheep. Its main message is that no matter who we are, where we come from or what colour our skin is, we all have the same problems. The performance is built on tolerance which is one of the most fundamental human values. Its most important tool is humour. In the play we can hear authentic Gypsy songs in Greek, Romanian, Serbian, Hungarian, Slovene, Russian and Czech Roma languages.
The prose materials of the performance were inspired by the tales of Károly Bari. It is rich in idioms, word puns, and the folksy narrative is blended with today’s language.
Contributors
Director – Rodrigó Balogh
