Performances

Inspired by the screenplay of "Festen” by Thomas Vinterberg, the performance starts from the premise of a festive family gathering: the birthday of the patriarch of a respectable bourgeois family. As they sit down to dinner, the eldest son raises a toast that shatters the celebratory convention and reveals a history of abuse and silence that runs through the entire family. From that moment on, the dinner table becomes a battlefield between memory and denial, between truth and the social mechanisms that repress it. The stage space becomes an ambiguous place, where the birthday guests are also spectators, and the performance turns into a ceremony of revelation, unfolding through a succession of show-like moments shaped by the seduction of entertainment and the violence of confession. In this way, the performance constantly moves between the intimacy of trauma and the political dimension of collective silence. "Festen" is not just the story of a family, but a radiography of how communities—whether familial, social, or institutional—protect their own secrets. The birthday becomes the context in which this complicity is exposed, and a space where the truth becomes impossible to ignore.

Presented by agreement with Nordiska ApS - www.nordiska.dk

Based on the film Festen by Thomas Vinterberg & Mogens Rukov, stage adaptation by Bo hr. Hansen.

Macbeth is the tragedy of disorder, a plunge into the depths of the human soul, but it is also the tragedy of power—a violent, anarchic power. The protagonist’s ascent to the throne is extremely rapid, as is his downfall. We thus witness the annihilation of a system of values, from whose ashes a new world will ultimately emerge. The staging is choral: the performers are always on stage, moving as a single body from which scenes and characters emerge. All die, yet none remain on the ground. Each is reabsorbed into the chorus in a continuous cycle, symbolizing power which, like life, renews itself again and again.

The production of Macbeth is possible thanks to support from the Italian Cultural institute in Bucharest.

There was a little girl from Szekely Land who, one day, noticed that she was no longer a little girl, but a divorced woman in her forties. She also had cute nicknames: Tiny, Squirrel, Puffy. She even had a portrait made for her. It's really a shame that it was never finished. Who will finish it? In fact, is she really the one in the painting? Is the story about her? Who knows how this fairytale ends? Dad always used to say: "Everything will fall into place."

Somewhere on the back of the old Earth lives a curious, entirely ordinary teenage boy. Not far from him, in the shadow of a cemetery, dwells a young vampire of about the same age who—strangely enough—can’t stand hemoglobin: he has a food intolerance! Both of them are deathly bored of birthday parties and of relatives who bombard them with intrusive questions—it’s only natural they become friends. Why wouldn’t they? A vampire sister joins them, and as a trio they slip past parents, hungry vampires, and an overzealous vampire hunter, drifting from one adventure to the next: in the children’s room, around the coffin-home, amid the suffocating clouds of scent at a perfume competition. And together they imagine what a shared future might look like - one in which they no longer have to hide their friendship.

“My Friend, the Vampire” is a puppet performance by MárkuszZínház and the Csiky Gergely Hungarian State Theatre of Timișoara, created for younger audiences while equally addressing adults. In it, Timișoara appears through the eyes of teenagers and is constantly transforming: at times an old city steeped in secrets, at others a futuristic metropolis where puppets come alive through expressive movement set to contemporary music. The performance offers multiple perspectives: children discover adventure, while adults encounter a reflection of their own world.

This play is recommended for children aged eight and above.

“It is quite clear that the legacy of Cseh Tamás goes far beyond the actual songs and performances. Just think about it: people do not say, ‘Will you sing a Cseh Tamás song?’, they simply say, ‘Will you sing Csehtamás?’

“In any case, I like to believe in a kind of continuity – that creative worlds are connected, that they influence and reflect one another.”

Words by Beck Zoli from Sándor Fodor’s book Will You Sing Csehtamás?

Something very similar is also the starting point of In all our Dreams. That is how we gathered. All of us would sing. And we will! One by one, together. We celebrate, because that is always possible. This time we celebrate the fact that we can sing, that we can sing Csehtamás, that our creative worlds can influence and reflect each other, that we have dreams, and that there is something that returns in all of them.

This is what will happen in the jungle of the House with Lions.

“I figured it all out in a laundry room, what it would be.” Cseh Tamás – Ten Years After

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The performance was realized with the support of the Pro Teszt Association.

Ernesztó is recovering from an anterior cruciate ligament tear. They took away his favourite role at the theatre, and they also took away what had always been his reliable crutch: the euphoria of football. Some crutch, right! But still, who took it away? Life? Fate? As always? Is it possible that he wasn’t even happy before? It’s time to pick up the scalpel! Our hero looks inside himself and sees that the threads lead all the way back to 1994, when, in the Italy–Bulgaria World Cup semi-final, Gianluca Pagliuca steps out in perfect timing to intercept Lechkov’s through ball… But the Grasshopper and the Ant also appear, the golden team of Șimian, a compensation of 50,000 euros, grandma’s leg ointment, and a birthday table bending under the weight of food. Everything is connected – that’s why healing is so difficult.

Once upon a time, beyond nine seas and nine lands, there where the map hangs on a nail, where the pig roots about with its curly tail, there lived long ago a poor man by the name of Witty Pete. He was mischievous and forever up to tricks: he poked fun at people, teased them, and joked on and on. But not with just anyone, only with those who deserved it: the vain, the arrogant, the gloomy, the loud-mouthed, the conceited, the braggarts and, above all… Well now, it wouldn’t do to tell everything right from the start. Better you see it with your own eyes!

They live among us. We heard about their stories, we watched it over the news, we heard the neighborhood gossip. They are the ones sitting on the farthest bench in the park, the ones always apologizing, the ones never really looking in other people's eye, the ones with just too much makeup, and the ones we turn away from, because the look in their eyes just makes us uncomfortable. We see them but do we really know them? Have we ever asked them, about the choices they made, about the path they walked, about the battles they fought, about the lingering sadness around them, about the cuts and bruises? About their strength to keep going, to keep breathing, to keep longing for a better life, for a calm destination, for 12A Happiness Street.

Let this text be their voices. The unspoken, uncomfortable truth of these women. 

The performance was produced within the framework of the European project “FemminiCity”, funded by the CERV programme.

The Tót family lives somewhere in a Banat village. Their only son is on the front during the Second World War. At the boy’s suggestion, a major suffering from nervous breakdown arrives at the family home on leave. The parents and the boy’s sister receive the officer as if their son’s fate depended solely on their hospitality: they walk on tiptoe, adjusting to his every demand, even though it becomes uncertain whether the son and the major are still fighting on the same side of the front. At first, submission is guided by hope; later, faced with madness, obedience becomes the only remaining response. How long can vulnerability be endured when decisions are driven by love? When does fear take control, and how does this state come to be perceived as normal?

In Horváth Hunor’s staging, The Tót Family becomes a memento marked by black humor: the disintegration of the world is not a single spectacular moment, but rather a small crack in the plaster that spreads slowly and insidiously.

Ordinary people are swept away by the vibrant chaos of festival lights. They are lost. Disappointed. Unsatisfied. And long for more than the tight limits each day allows. Caught in the whirlwind of loud music and overflowing crowd, they desperately try to convince themselves that they still have control over their own lives. Old loves fall apart, new illusions emerge. They all search for the same thing: a single breath of freedom, a moment of tenderness, a sincere touch, before being swallowed once again by the aimless crowd.

Let’s pretend play…
We could easily give this title to the half-hour musical and animation performance. Because everything moves, comes to life, and rejoices under the hands of the four sailors: the soft, colorful shapes transform before our very eyes into a huge whale, a swift seahorse, or a mysterious octopus. Naturally, the game becomes truly real only if everyone takes part in it, children, grandparents, kindergarten teachers alike.

“...the sea with its caps of foam is dancing, 

on the boat so many people keep on prancing…”

This interactive musical play is recommended for children aged three and above.

There is a world where anything can be sold — morality, murder, grief. All it takes is a good story — preferably one’s own, moving, and with a life lesson. Or at least one that looks good as a headline. The hunger for stories is endless, but the truth in them no longer matters. Justice becomes a show, where everyone plays a part, and the truth is whatever’s delivered most convincingly. But when the mask falls, what stares back at us is a world we know all too well. Our own. Where truth is just a slick PR trick, and money is the new moral authority.

It is the story of a special friendship. Of the bars that imprison us, that we inherit, that we build for ourselves, that we hide behind for protection, and that leave marks forever. And of freedom, as well. Of childhood, dreams, the endless sky, and the longing to fly. At the heart of this stage adaptation, inspired by William Wharton’s novel, lies the friendship and coming of age of two boys who, at a first glance, have nothing in common. Birdy’s desire to fly and fascination with birds lock him inside the cage of his own mind—a sensitive boy unable to cope with the cruelty of the everyday world. Al, on the other hand, tries to escape the cage of poverty, violence, and a fate he inherited, only to become trapped in his own mind by the horrors he lived through during the war.

Will the two boys, through their shared past, friendship, and the rediscovery of one another, find their way back to themselves and, at last, become free?

Little Red Riding Hood set off through the forest to visit her grandmother. By herself? Not quite. A wolf soon joined her. A real one? Very real. And what happened? Well, you know the story. How about Grandma? Her too... But the hunter, didn’t he…? He arrived, and everything ended well. And this is what’s being performed here? Absolutely! But Isn’t that a bit too scary? It’s a show where you can laugh at what frightens you! How brilliant! And what exactly is operetta? It is like Opera but for little ones. It’s called that because the story is told through song. Wow! And… Pssst! It’s starting!

The performance "Underneath the wound" is a personal reflection on the struggles of childhood, adolescence, and early adulthood. It unfolds as a lyrical dialogue with the self and with the audience. With dedication, it seeks the essence of the soul in a world that moves too fast, trying to find peace amid the constant winds of change.

How do we see ourselves in the world around us? Can we speak our most closely guarded thoughts aloud? How do we face ourselves after being broken? Can anxiety ever truly be put down for good? What lies underneath the wound?