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Béla Pintér and Company

KAISERS TV, UNGARN

INTERNATIONAL FIRST NIGHT PERFORMANCE

Hungarian with English subtitles

photo by Balázs Czitrovszky
Galéria ►

Béla Pintér (director, writer, actor) was born in Budapest in 1970 and started as a performer with several leading experimental theatre companies in the ’80s, ’90s including the Arvisura, Artus, Krétakör. He joined Budapest’s Szkéné Theatre in 1987 and created his first production, Common Bondage, in 1998. Then he formed his own theatre company to establish his unique aesthetics of irony, folk art and high-brow culture.

The performance deals with the contemporary present through the Hungarian past of the time of the Revolution of 1848. It uses ironic humour to talk about political takeovers, unprofessionalism, and the sackings of those previously in power. During a trip through time we get a glimpse into the private life of a fictional hero of the 1848 Hungary's War of Independence. Thirty-three years after his mysterious death, his daughter  transcends time, returns to 1848 and gets a job at the already operating imperial television. Slowly it becomes clear to her that her father wasn’t as flawless as the nation remembers, or the way she imagined. The performance shows us an 1848 period where television is already invented – this way during our virtual journey we can get to know how a television studio operates, how its staff live their daily life.

“There is artistic maneuvering going on stage, because it would be too easy to fall into directness, of someone becoming identical to the real person behind the played character. Of course Pintér – unsurprisingly – maneuvers brilliantly. For a couple of moments the scenes seem familiar, but there isn’t a specific, exact compliance with reality. There are trends. There are figures. All these combined with tabloid narratives reversed inside out, and thus ridiculed.” (István Ugrai, 7ora7.hu)