Elfriede Jelinek: Rod, Staff and Crook (Stecken, Stab und Stangl) - the first Hungarian production of a Jelinek-play

Hungarian translation commissioned by PanoDrama: Zoltán HALASI

With: Eszter  CSÁKÁNYI, Ágnes KASZÁS , Péter  SCHERER,  Marianna SZALAY

Set and costume design: Lili IZSÁK

Light design: Balázs CSONTOS

Directing assistant: Zsófia Tüű

Directed by: Róbert PEJÓ

Associate director and creative producer: Anna LENGYEL

Opening night: 21 April 2010 at Trafó, House of Contemporary Arts

Production Photos

The Nobel Laureate playwright’s first Hungarian premiere is produced by PanoDrama, an organisation devoted to producing new international plays in Hungary and new Hungarian drama abroad. Stecken, Stab und Stangl was voted Best Play of the year in 1996 and is Jelinek’s first theatre work directly inspired by social events. A racist’s bomb murdered four young Roma in the Austrian Burgenland in 1995, just because “they made the mistake of not putting on in time the looks and names of our acquaintances”. Jelinek stands against the crime committed by a racist, who is in the minority, but condemns even more the chorus of the hypocrite mourners of the majority, for thanks to them life goes on as if nothing had happened.

The award-winning Austrian-Hungarian film director, Robert Pejo’s first stage work draws on the theme of his film Dallas Pashamende, but its form is defined by the poetic text, barely divided into roles by Elfriede Jelinek. Beyond the - in Hungary - painfully timely subject matter PanoDrama’s production examines one of the most exciting phenomena of the Hungarian theatre, the appearance of young film directors on Hungarian stages from Mundruczó to Gigor.

In a theatre culture of rather few outstanding contemporary playwrights, Hungarian stages offer almost no reaction to some of the most crucial issues of today’s society. Even devised pieces tend to refrain from discussing the most burning issues - in a country famous for its political theatre during the Communist regime, when artists knew how to wink at the audience and spectators knew how to read the critical political thought between the Shakespearean lines.

Hunting Feast and B-Sector - with Jelinek against racism

“Life without memory is no life at all, just as an intelligence without the possibility of expression is not really an intelligence. Our memory is our coherence, our reason, our feeling, even our action. Without it, we are nothing.”

Luis Buñuel

I never liked political theatre. But what I would like even less is not talking about what’s going on in Hungary today. That we perform Chekhov and Feydeau as if murderous racism weren’t back on the streets and as if we weren’t forced to read slogans from the thirties on the walls and in some papers.

It is the whys and wherefores that we are searching for in these three days. But one thing is certain: Hungary never faced its fascist past. Just like Austria hasn’t until very recently. And since Hungarian dramatists don’t yet seem to want to write about what is happening around them, it is with Elfriede Jelinek that we try to find the cause and start discussing possible solutions.

Anna Lengyel, founder of PanoDrama

 Sponsored by: Kulturforum Österreich, OSI

Trailer Hunting Feast and B-Sector

Facing the Past, Dealing with the Present with Hope for the Future

8 March 2010 Monday

19h-0h30 Elfriede Jelinek: Sportsplay

Einar Schleef’s legendary performance recorded from the Vienna Burgtheater about the fascism of sports.

9  March 2010 Tuesday

Open University Lecture Series:  The Pathology of Hating What’s Different

20h 30 Eszter Fischer, psychologist: Enough of calling them Jews jolly names! - Let’s face our past and learn from it like Germany does

22h Elfriede Jelinek: Rechnitz

rehearsed reading directed by Csaba Polgár

with Andor Lukáts, Zsolt Máthé, Judit Pogány, Csilla Radnay, Kálmán Somody, Nóra Dia Takács

180 forced labour worker Jews were humiliated and slaughtered by Countess Battyhány and her company in 1944 at her castle in Rechnitz in the framework of a jolly hunting party.

The Hungarian countess was never tried for this monstrous deed, nor were her fellow-partiers. The mass grave still hasn’t been found.

10 March 2010 Wednesday

18h Roma/Non-Roma - where does the hatred come from? 

 ten-day workshop led by the TIE teacher and actor Yvette Feuer

The actor and TIE teacher Yvette Feuer has been working with  for almost a year including all age groups from small children to young adults. PanoDrama commissioned her to do a ten-day workshop with young Romanies from Barcs, Pécs, Hétes and Kaposvár  and young people of all colours from Budapest in the theme of hatred and discrimination against the Roma.

20h Elfriede Jelinek: Rod, Staff and Crook

rehearsed reading

Preceding the April premiere of PanoDrama we organize a workshop and present its result this evening about the four Hungarian Roma murdered by a racist in Burgenland.

With: Eszter Csákányi, Ágnes Kaszás, Péter Scherer, Marianna Szalay, Ádám Tompa

Workshop led by: Róbert Pejó and Anna Lengyel

Chaos by Mika Myllyaho- a workshop at the Nordwind Festival Berlin

Workshop Presentation im HAU 1st October 2009

coproduction with the Nordwind Festival 

workshop led by Martina Marti and Anna Lengyel

With: 

Judica Albrecht, Johanna Falckner, Katharina Hauck, Nicola Hecker, Simone Henn, Nicole Janze, Claudia Schwartz, Verena Specht-Ronique, Claudia Steiger

PanoDrama's concept of workshopping this wonderful dark comedy for three with nine women has proved a hit in Hungary, so now we have repeated the exercise with a group of German actresses in the framework of Nordwind Festival. The one-week workshop was co-led by the Swiss translator/director Martina Marti, who has been living and working in Finland for years and PanoDrama's founder Anna Lengyel. The most interesting lesson we learned was how similarly Finnish and Hungarian people seem to approach a Myllyaho-play, taking their cue from the situations and the characters which the Finnish playwright is so famous for, while the initial German approach seemed to regard these texts more as only that, wanting to work against the situation, but then quickly got the hang of the playwright's special sense of humour. 

The presentation was fairly full in the foyer of HAU1 and the audience enjoyed the evening clearly. 

Nordwind Festival focuses on Nordic theatre and as such has a Finnish focus in common with PanoDrama. A Smeds-evening shed light on the brilliant director and playwright Miss Lengyel worked with while still at Krétakör.