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Kompánia Theatre Studio

Kompánia Theatre Studio was set up in 2001 at the Budakeszi Basic school of Arts by the class of one of its teachers László Lukács. At this Arts school, beside drama education, an important role is given to music and motion training as well, thus, it is quite natural that the members of the company often create the music to their shows by themselves- occasionally giving concerts with their own folk – jazz band called Angara – or that the motion (authentic and contemporary dance) forms an integral part of their performances. The actor’s play, music and dance are all coherently present in the performances of the group, and thus form an organic whole.

The company, being quite young, operates as an alternative theatre studio and experimental international studio, as well. Under the name Back to Babylon the international studio gathers all the persons, actors, creators etc., who emphasize the role of theater in its man-to-man communication, assembles all who search for the common basis of communication. The theatre studio Kompánia continually experiments with new form, style and theatre language, which has resulted in a number of national and international prizes and a wide recognition so far- this year it has been given the national Csokonai Prize for the style-setting work in alternative theatre.

members:

Násfa Hantos, Zita Mayer, Rozália Kemény, Henrietta Szalay, Anna Alföldy, Erzsébet Bezeczky, Miklós Heppes, Bottyán Németh, Zoltán Mózes, Márton Debreczeni, László Lukács

Objectives and philosophy of the Studio

1. “From the clean source”

To dip from the national traditions, roots and process them to contemporary methods of education and contemporary art.

2. “Back to Babylon”

Searching together the ways of expression over the languages, the common, universal coherence in communcation (dance, music, gesture, human voice).

3. “United diversity”

Developing the dialogue between the cultures. To understand and show the cultural diversity as a unity. To focus and react on current social issues.

4. “Learning to teach, teaching to learn”

Making the knowlegde aquired transferable and accesible.

Back to Babylon International Studio

As the result of friendly encounters of international tours and festivals in 2004 we laid down the funding stones of an International Studio, which has a year by year increasing importance in the work of Kompánia. From 2005 we made the cooperation possible not only in the summer, but throughout the year.

The Studio gathers experimental groups for the aim of research, to assure its members’ mobility and regular training possibility, to animate a director’s studio, and to show the achievements of the long term research trough projects and performances. Emphasis is put on the action carried out by common effort, on the process in which different ways of thinking meet in a personal, cultural and theatrical aspect. The basis of this work is the personal and professional openness, pre-studies, trainings and long time needed for its completion.

In our studio we would like to build a community of people who assign a special importance to the theatre in the person-to-person communication, who believe that the theatre is able to ease the “translation” difficulties, who are seeking for the common basis of human interaction.

Partners:

Zsámbék Theatre Base – Zsámbék, HU

Szkéné Theatre – Budapest, HU

One Poem Theatre – Opole, PL

Aglija Studio – Telsiai, LT

Poton – Levice, SK

ZKOS – Ljubljana, SLO

Oleg Zhukovsky – Dresden, DE

Angara

The band was set up in 2003 from the actors of the Kompánia Theatre Studio. The band is searching for new harmonies, experimenting with music forms, playing modern and ancient Hungarian musical instruments (gardon, pipe, bass guitar, Hungarian folk flute etc.).

It merges authentic folk music with improvisation techniques of modern jazz. The group constantly searches for and is interested in collections of old music, traditional folk songs, polyphonic singing and studying different rhythmical systems. As most of the group’s members are actors of the theatre company; and theatre and music is always closely connected in the work of Kompania, the band often gives concerts at different theatre festivals,  as part of the tour of the Studio, e.g. Slovenia, Estonia, Czech Republic, Poland etc.

From the summer of 2008 the world famous jazz-saxophonist Gyula Csepregi joined the band as special guest.

Mezei Mária Art School

The artistic base of the Studio is our art school, in which the members of Kompania were educated, and where they are presently teaching. 270 young people between the age of 6 and 22 learn at the faculties of drama, folk dance, Indian dance, building arts, graphics and contemporary dance.

The higher classes, that cooperate with Polish aond Slovak art schools as well, function as a studio of Kompánia, too.

Shakespeare: Romeo and Juliet

Juliet awakes after she had drunk the poison and finds herself alone in the dark crypt, where no healthsome air breathes in. She rewounds her story through the memories and visions of her developing madness. The scenes are get slowly more and more absurd and dreamlike, tension increases with every Juliet’s scene of madness, which reaches its peak in the very last scene, which strengthened by the live music creates the overall dashing effect of the performance.

„With an unadorned dramaturgy concentrating on the most important moments of the well-known story, with the perfect harmonisation of the language of the music and the dance, with the marvellous choreography and space-management, with the means of modern theatre, László Lukács has created an unforgettable piece.Wonderful, shaking, unforgettable vision… we cry, we rejoice, we win new life”

White Elephant

Othello commentaries

dance comments on Shakespeare’s play

„Lovers, gratified in each other, I am asking you about us.
You hold each other. Where is your proof? [...]
But who would dare to exist, just for that?
You, though, who in the other’s passion grow until, overwhelmed, he begs you:
“No more . . . “; you who beneath his hands swell with abundance,

like autumn grapes; you who may disappear because the other has wholly emerged:

I am asking you about us.”

Rainer Maria Rilke: Duino Elegies, Elegy II.

Translated by Stephen Mitchell

The show comments on the illusion of certainty in the language of dance and composes images running along Shakespeare’s Othello. Two lovers cling onto each other, they turn into each other and it locks them up in their own separate microcosm, where they just keep wandering around in the labyrinth of obsessions they formed about their own situation, emotions and passions. The closer they want to get, the further they end up from each other.

As a word or a comma can rewrite the meaning of a sentence, the fine vibrations direct our attention from the well-known classic Othello drama to other elements. This series of etudes aims at altering our thoughts by using the familiar elements of the play. However, it’ll only succeed if we let ourselves be captivated by the comments emerging from the music, the set or the dance.

Carneval, wedding feast

based on the Midsummer night’s dream by Shakespeare

„ … the spring, the summer, the childing autumn,

angry winter, change their wonted liveries,

and the mazed world, by their increase,

now knows not which is which.”

The play represents a unique adaptation of the famous Shakespeare’s play: A Midsummer Night’s Dream pointing out its carnival, nuptial atmosphere and placing it into Hungarian tradition. The performance tries to give the answer to the questions of importance of myths, inner moves of a man in search for his place in the world. Moreover, it tries to find a form most suitable to express these complicated issues. The play draws its inspiration from the folk puppet theatre tradition, theatre of the fair, using the dramaturgy of ancient mysteries as well, and attempts to talk about the themes that these theatre genres are mainly concerned with: themes of life and death, where do we come from and whereto we go, who we are and how we live/love…Through using the elements of fairy tales and mysteries, which mirror the world of adults, we learn to cope with our fears and nightmares. The gods direct our lives, like skilful puppet players, and we move around and get lost in the wood. This carnival does not necessarily draw near the conventional carnival of happiness.

Andrus Kivirähk: Devilish times

„…It is the right relation to theft that forms the base of a good character. The most tangible sign of hard work is the professional stealing one has to know how to steal, ’cause those who steal from each other without any principles, regardless of deliberation are immoral beings, and those who do not steal at all, are to be considered, with grand simplicity, dumb.

The point is to be a moral thief. Draw a border for yourself that you keep thereafter, or explain, upon the strain of strict principles, why the law wished, and what is more, downright demanded that you violate it.”

Andrus Kivirähk belongs to one of the most exciting and significant contemporary Estonian writers. He has managed to get into the hearts of critiques (winner of several prizes), as well as into the hearts of his readers, which is illustrated by the number of sold books and his growing popularity.

The Devilish Times can be perceived as a historical satire or a satirical fairy tale, filled up with irony and humour, where the poor peasants and their oppressors, blood-thirsty funny figures as well as mythological beings appear and disappear and thus enable the spectator to have a look into a peculiar Estonian world in the cold month of November.

Péter Kárpáti: Tótferi

The world of our story is the world of “gruesome” poverty, the world of a homeless, who makes a house for himself out of a cardboard which he carefully folds up every day before he starts off for his usual tour around the city, till he discovers one day, that the whole “home” was taken away by a dust car. Or the world of Hrabal’s waste paper factory under the ground, where the light gets in only through a little hole in the ceiling, and where the face of the man who works there day and night starts to resemble the grey plasterwork. Or the life of the poor lonely old woman, who is not capable to understand, comprehend, or even see the world surrounding her. The judgement day is coming, the kids smoke already in their mother’s bellies- they are the new generation. And it is this world, that the Father Creator and St. Peter enter in the form of two beggars, coming back home from the New World, Eldorado, the paradise…and search for the Good Man. They meet the poor old woman, who gives them food and bed. The guests make miracles, the poor old woman turns young and rich, and she even gets pregnant. The boy to be born is: Totferi. The greatest hero of the world if… And it is his story we tell.