Planned premiere: january 12, 2024.
In Bálint Botos’ direction, which faithfully captures the atmosphere of the first and only novel by poet Szilárd Borbély, who tragically passed away exactly ten years ago, we witness the absence of freedom and its desperate search. This takes place in a village that both fears and provides safety, that remembers yet easily forgets. It is simultaneously realistic and dreamlike, hopeless and hopeful, cruel and sensitive.
Szilárd Borbély portrays the very grounded reality of a struggling family in a small village on the Great Hungarian Plain, while also encompassing a multi-layered, complex world: the mysterious rivers flowing beneath the village and perhaps all of Eastern Europe’s forgotten, impoverished, struggling poor. Here, naturalism intertwines with poetry as seamlessly as the myths hidden in the silence of the plains mix with the wild curses of the tavern’s patrons.
Borbély creates a world that is both unfamiliar and entirely familiar, at once banal yet extraordinary. He creates a home — a familiar, difficult home. This is what is reflected on stage as well.
Director: Bálint Botos
