[tab name=”Show”]A world famous psychiatric hospital in Hungary was forced to close down a few months ago. The building has since become dilapidated; the garden is overgrown with weeds and a handful of patients have been left to vegetate alone on the fourth floor. The patients with developed dementia are living in the empire of amnesia… We have to face the following questions: How could society ever profit from one mental patient living a few years longer? What is the point of helping those who suffer when it all leads to death anyway? And besides, suffering is what propels humanity. When we numb ourselves with modern medicine we forget about religion and philosophy for good, albeit humanity found shelter in them before. May we presume the contradiction that death is Man’s only hope and main human right?
This latest production of the Proton Theatre, which shifts from documentary-like realism to a more abstract world of the subconscious, manages to create an operetta-like reality wrapped in a postmodern melodrama that is frighteningly similar to our own daily life, insofar as every society is best characterized by how it treats its elderly and those livings with disabilities.
Proton Theatre
DEMENTIA
Korn?l Mundrucz?-Kata W?ber
Bartonek – Ervin NAGY
Dr. Szatm?ry – Roland R?BA
D?ra, nurse – Kata W?BER/Annam?ria L?NG
Merc?desz S?pi – Lili MONORI
Henrik Hol?nyi – Bal?zs TEMESV?RI
Lady Oci – Orsi T?TH
Luk?cs – Gerg? B?NKI
Dentist – L?szl? KATONA
Director – Korn?l MUNDRUCZ?
Set, costumes – M?rton ?GH
Dramaturg – Vikt?ria PETR?NYI, G?bor THURY
Music – J?nos SZEMENYEI
Assistant director – Zs?fia CSAT?
Producer – D?ra B?KI
Production assistant – ?gota KISS
Technical director, light designer – Andr?s ?LTET?
Sound technician – Zolt?n BEL?NYESI
Prop master – Gergely NAGY
Video technician – Zolt?n GYORGYOVICS
Dresser – Melinda DOM?N
Running time: 1 hrs 55 mins
Opened: 15th October 2013 Traf? House of Contemporary Arts, Budapest
CO-PRODUCERS:
HAU Hebbel am Ufer, Berlin, Germany; Theatre National de Bordeaux Aquitaine, France;
HELLERAU – European Center for the Arts, Dresden, Germany; Traf? House of Contemporary Arts, Budapest, Hungary;
Festival De Keuze/Rotterdamse Schouwburg, The Netherlands;
Noorderzon Performing Arts Festival, Groningen, The Netherlands;
SPIELART Festival, Munich, Germany; Festival Automne en Normandie, Rouen, France;
Maria Matos Teatro Municipal, Lisboa, Portugal; K?nstlerhaus Mousonturm, Frankfurt am Main, Germany; Kunstenfestivaldesarts, Brussels, Belgium
SUPPORTERS:
A House on Fire and NXTSTP coproduction with the support of the Cultural Program of the European Union.
[/tab][tab name=”Photo”](c) – Marcell R?V
[/tab][tab name=”Video”][youtube_sc url=”hvRbrAX4Veo”][/tab][tab name=”Press”]“Entering the psychiatric hospital and walking beside the patients’ hospital beds, we become part of the world of the performance, its physical space, from very first moment. Moreover, we immediately assume a role, as Professor Szatm?ry (Roland R?ba) welcomes us as visitors on the open day of the Dementia Hospital. We soon receive the first request: a small financial contribution to save the clinic. Within the first five minutes of the performance, a great burden and social responsibility has been placed on our shoulders. What soon becomes apparent is that if we let this psychiatric hospital, highly respected all over Europe, shut down; the plot’s further developments, the fate of the patients, and collective suicide will all be our responsibility. But do we have any means to forestall this conclusion? The figure of the rich and cunning Bartonek (Ervin Nagy), who emerges from the audience, seems to suggest there is none: only money counts. Thanks to his wealth and connections, Bartonek can buy the hospital from the state and eject the incapacitated patients onto the streets. Nevertheless, we cannot totally blame him, since his point is correct. Out of the budget to hospitalize these vegetative patients, dozens of children from the poorest regions of Hungary could be saved from starvation. And why should we want to prolong the life of the elderly, who are a burden on society, if we all die at some point anyway?
This latest production by Mundrucz? is embarrassingly humorous, parodying elements of operetta and comedy in order to address important social matters. What we find here is the surrealist, comic endgame of human life.” (szinhaz.net)
“The play doesn’t even give its characters a chance. It invites in Death and treats it as freedom, since these people are not needed by anyone anywhere.” (index.hu)[/tab][end_tabset]
