1h 20' without intermission
"At the Gyula Castle Theatre, Árpád Árkosi assigned cruel symbols to personal tragedy. Dirty children in this interpretation were represented by worn shoes, who turn into revolutionary symbols by becoming machine gun bullets in the days of the revolution. Although the play provides an opportunity to transpose it to an ensemble cast, this time only two actors portray the characters: Éva Imre and Ferenc Sinkó. András Visky is present within the play only with his voice. At times, the stage hands also make an appearance within the performance as the informants of the secret police.
Tibor Cári complemented the documetary-play’s trains of thoughts with his songs, so he can be safely mentioned as a co-author, as he created with his music precisely that which cannot be expressed through words. Gyopár Bocskai, the set and costume designer, and Ferenc Sinkó, the choreographer responsible for the stage movement, did the same within their crafts. The piece came together as a perfect team effort, to a shockingly powerful effect.”
Enikő Gurzó K.: András Visky's Porno - The Story of My Wife was presented at the Gyula Castle Theatre, magyarnemzet.hu, August 02, 2020
According to the concept in the Cluj production of Pornó – The story of my wife, it’s a two-person show, yet Sinkó Ferenc plays several parts, using masks and costumes to change into ever more characters which offer counterpoint and create frames of reference to the individual drama of the protagonist. Meanwhile, as an unnamed woman only referred to under her surveillance file codename, overflowing with affection and empathy, the audience sees Imre Éva go from being surrounded by this abundance of life to carrying a corpse inside her and seeing the world fall to ruin all around, finally becoming, in the eyes of the establishment, a tiny scrap of rubbish not even worth the ink drying on the pages of her dossier. We can see it in her face, her stirrings, as this transformation takes place. Just as the set is made up of two metal lockers containing dresses and costumes, man also deteriorates into such stark props in the universe of the play, in this world populated by the surveilled and the surveillors where their only hope of experiencing true emotion is under the obscuring sound of water splashing in the bathroom. This makes the environment of dictatorship into porn, into perversity, which the author recalls, and which, through slight abstraction from the tangible, the director proffers as something that can always happen again.
Bodó Márta: Meg kellene szülni a szabadságot
Egy színházi előadás az 1989-es fordulatról, romkat.ro, [We should give birth to freedom. A theatre production about the 1989 changes], 22 September 2020
It might be that the message in Visky András’s play – though it’s universal, since it’s about power, helplessness and suppression – is only really understood by those who’ve lived through similar situations. Or have at least lived in a dictatorship. Or was trying to make a living – the way others imposed them. But at the same time, the play offers a valuable lesson to the young and upcoming generations as well, who (thank God) have only ever learnt of the horrific deeds of the repressive system from films, or maybe books.
Nánó Csaba: Egy asszony szenvedései a diktatúrában, liget.ro, [Torments of a woman in a dictatorship], 3 June 2021
Only in the end, or, more appropriately, after leaving the audience hall, do I realise that it all began with the ancient and ubiquitously reappearing struggle with death, with the absurdity of mortal constraints. But the text is rich in metaphor and ideas which settle over time, because as long as the two actors are on stage, what they build up captivates without any hesitation. I would like to emphasise again the continuous metamorphosis of Ferenc Sinkó, tasked with protecting the heroine and, implicitly, all of us present at her show, “an open-air performance for street children among the ruins of the Executioner’s house”. The open air – an obvious metaphor. And the ruins of the Executioner’s house tie into many things that take no effort of imagination. Tibor Cári’s charming music, giving rise to not only a choreography of a biographical spring, but also a sound of its own, a clear proof of the gift a viewer takes with themselves, is an integral and essential part of this whole. Well, out of all this, death is forgotten as to its hard data. Even when the protagonist confronts its absurd constraints. Because poetry filters and refines everything.
Marius Dobrin: Not to Steal – Porno x 3 [A nu fura - Porno x 3], October 2021
In an age torn by all kinds of -isms and when, paradoxically, faith is excluded from the social space, PORNO - The Story of My Wife becomes a manifesto for humanity. An artistic manifesto fully assumed by the production team, made up of unique artistic testimonies. A show that I would classify in the sphere of political theatre, but I'm afraid I would do it the greatest disservice, so I will keep it in the horizon of art theatre, where interrogations are at home.
Nona Rapotan: Nimic pornografic în povestea soției [Nothing pornographic in the wife's story], bookhub.ro, 12 December 2021
Date of the opening: August 01, 2020
Location of the opening: Gyula, Hungary
“Dictatorship / is not an exceptional state, / what is exceptional is its absence, / if dictatorship is inexistent, / and freedom reigns the space. // There is no explanation /
not for why a dictatorship exists, / but for why there is none, / when there is none, / if there is none; / but I doubt / that there isn’t one / when there is none... ”
For twenty years I carried with me a truly personal story, one that I believed to be unutterable, until, one day, a request was made by The National Theatre of Budapest, and I decided I will no longer put it off, whatever may come.
In 1989, we were waiting for our third child to be born. The due date was very close when it decided, however, not to come into this world. It died inside its mother’s body. It gave up before its birth, not unlike Becket’s self, who was holding monologues in its mother’s womb, wanting not to be born, ending up being stillborn on April 13, on Good Friday.
Since four years prior to that time, I had already been personally declared an enemy of the system – and not just for being my father’s son -, they ransacked our home, locked me in various police and internal affairs rooms for a shorter or longer period of time. And then, after I was released, they followed my every step.
Our baby would have been born on Christmas, arriving alongside the Revolution, however, our Christmas that year ended up becoming not a celebration of birth, but the mourning of our stillborn baby. Its heart stopped beating, it never moved again, it has come to the end of a life it did not even live - who can even understand such a thing?
He should have been birthed dead like that, but he refused to do so. And in turn, our doctors did not intervene, they invoked the strict abortion ban that was in effect, saying that a spontaneous abortion would resolve the situation.
However, by no means did the latter want to occur.
The days went by, we asked them to do something, but they pointed to the internal affairs officer camped out at the end of the corridor: they cannot do anything, they said, I can clearly see why. A dictatorship also rules over the body, for it is not enough for it to cripple the soul. It mainly targets the female body, humiliating it with the most cruel, indiscriminate means.
Also does the same to the bodies of children and the elderly.
A beautiful woman turned into a two-legged coffin: the horror of horrors.
And then we started counting back the days. I learned a word, sepsis, and a phrase, septic shock, they have been with me ever since.
You should go, beautiful little man, don't take anyone with you from here, let the living stay with the living, the dead with the dead.
Pornography: do not get your hopes up, dear viewer, you will not see naked actors on stage.
Pornography: do not get your hopes up, dear viewer, you will only see nudity on stage, the plethora of political pornography.
Porn: A fictitious pseudonym. The pseudonym does not obscure reality: it uncovers and rapes it.
None of us can escape the scope of political pornography, even the blind can see what is happening: our votes are not enough, it is never enough, our bodies are also wanted, alongside our thoughts, our souls, our bedrooms. The most intimate spaces of our lives are no exception, there are no excuses, there are always three of us in bed, you, your love and the country’s generous leader.
We need to stand in front of our children and the children of our children and tell our own stories. To banish dictatorship from our language, our eyes, our touch, our cells. Until we do, we will live in a dictatorship-addiction. There is no bolder act than to own our story of cowardice.
I always know less about the texts I wrote than the actors who, with their flesh-blood-breath, tear the words out from the realm of abstraction and breathe life into them. As I watch the performance, I suddenly, unnoticeably turn from an author into a spectator, like everyone who is there with me. I forget that I wrote the piece. I cannot even imagine a happier transformation.
András Visky
