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Cannibals - independent theater hungaryCannibals
The butcher has disappeared.
131 Roma were convicted.
No bodies. 41 Roma were publicly executed.
Still no bodies, no evidence.
Only confessions extracted under torture.
The performance of Independent Theater of Hungary commemorates a story reminiscent of the Dark Ages.
"What do they want from us?
What do they charge us with? Why do they torture us, why do they interrogate us for hours? Do you want to conceal the fact that the police is disorganised, that public safety is in ruins, by bringing in hundreds of Gypsies from three villages just because one man’s disappeared? Finally, a good reason for you to obliterate us from your midst. Two birds, one stone, right, Géza?"
Creators
Background
In 1782, in Hont County, the butcher disappeared. Although his body was never found, hundreds of Roma were arrested as a result of the incident. As mass hysteria took precedence over the law, due process and common sense were temporarily suspended. Based on confessions extracted through brutal torture, 131 people were convicted, 41 were publicly hanged, beheaded, or broken on the wheel. The survivors were sentenced to forced labor, and their children were taken away from them and placed in orphanages or with peasant families.
Focus scene
Reviews
‘In other performances by the Independent Theater of Hungary, it is common for actors to play multiple roles, constantly transforming from one character to another—in Cannibals, they have taken this to a new level: Dávid Csányi and Nóra Nemcsók play at least four or five major roles and dozens of minor ones in only fifty minutes.'
Revizoronline.com‘The performance begins wittily, with Dávid Csányi's narrator changing personalities every two lines in his ringing rhymes and playing a new caricature: as if the authorities (or viewers) of the time (or even today) were imagining the persecuted Gypsies hiding in the dark.'
Ot.hu
Materials to read
excerpts from the playphoto credits
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©Béla Váradi