2h 20' without intermission
Severus / Professor / Philologist
Balázs Bodolai
Justin, emperor of New Byzantium
Zsolt Bogdán
Justine, his wife / Wailer
Csilla Albert
Animator / Famulus, master of ceremony / Politician
András Demeter
Apologetta, poetess / Wailer / Poet
Andrea Vindis
Clitoria, Gypsy girl / Wailer / Neopornocrat
Hannah Daradics
Third soldier / Essencius / Ethnic
Csaba Marosán
Idiottus, the emperor’s illegitimate son / Second soldier
Tamás Kiss
Idiotta, the emperor’s illegitimate daughter/ Madwoman / Wailer
Eszter Román
Tarus / Fool
Áron Dimény
Constantinus, military officer, rebel / Fourth soldier
Ervin Szűcs
Florina, rebel / Wailer
Zsuzsa Tőtszegi
Libidinous, rebel / Extreme right person
Róbert Kardos M.
Sevros, builder, ethnic / Second armed person / Small Spirit
Lóránd Váta
Philip / First soldier / Revolutionary
Szabolcs Balla
Wailer, Philip’s mother / Street sweeper
Melinda Kántor
Painter / Street sweeper / Environmentalist
Attila Orbán
Sculptor
Alpár Fogarasi
Priest / Corifae / Historian
Róbert Laczkó Vass
First soldier / First armed person / Transvestite
Gedeon András
Wailer / Sex worker
Réka Csutak
Wailer
Lilla Pánczél
directed by
István Szabó K.
dramaturgy
István Bessenyei Gedő
set designer
Borbála Kiss
costume design
Bianca Imelda Jeremias
music composed by
Ovidiu Iloc
choreography
Ferenc Sinkó
costume designer's assistant
Tímea Váradi
stage manager
Enikő Albert
director's assistant
Orsolya-Erika Csengeri, Dorottya Képíró
Date of the opening: december 15, 2024
"What is pornocracy?" - the characters in the play ask obsessively. "What makes them pornocrats?" - asks even the escaped lunatic. And they answer, time and again: revolutionaries, soldiers, fallen and converted "pornocrats," those who are wholly and less than innocent, sycophants, priests, philosophers about to be executed - but their answers, however furiously defined, seem to seek some answer. Like a victim barely recovering, probing his own wounds, trying to reconstruct the aggression he has been subjected to...
But why is he only asking now? Why do we always only find out in retrospect what really happened?
The intrigue begins at the moment of the collapse: in the still ambiguous chaos of a regime-changing revolution, in which nothing is clear (everyone only knows what they don't want to).
In this chaos, like black crows, the bereaved women wander aimlessly through the ruins of what has become history - but they have no idea who they are supposed to mourn. "We are the mourners of the people." - says one of them, and then stumbles on without tears, as if she can't cry any more either.
Páskándi has written a transparent work. The allegorical structure doesn't seek to conceal, but rather to reveal its own context: the 1989 regime-change revolution in Romania, whose protagonists and main driving forces could be identified almost one by one - if that were the purpose. Except that, while we ourselves inevitably become, for a moment or two, prurient voyeurs of the pornography of power, Páskándi makes sure to embarrass us from time to time about our own innocence by asking uncomfortable questions of all of us, including "posterity", if you will, now from the other side:
Can democracy be born out of pornocracy?
Or merely a pornocratic democracy?
Is it possible to begin the purification process through a summary judgment court?
Can a genuine salvation be born in the bloody manger of a new world after the Christmas Eve massacre?
If we do not want to find ourselves in the arms of those who have been wailing for thirty-five years, we cannot do without answers today. Or at least some questions. István Bessenyei Gedő, the production's dramatist
István Bessenyei Gedő, dramaturg of performance
Due to the use of powerful visual and audio effects, the performance is not recommended for pregnant women, people with epilepsy and those who have pacemakers.