Just like Emma Bovary, we all lost contact with reality under the present, changed circumstances. Or with what we thought to be real. The borderline between fiction and reality has blurred, this era (which has past, but still stayed present) often seems as if we were in a dream. The everyday life is not everyday anymore.
Emma Bovary leaves home, she is heading from her husband to her lover. Her walk in the city is the reflection of her inner journey. At certain points of her route, we can hear her hidden thoughts, or we can see her husband, Károly – as if we were in Emma’s head. The consecutive stations draw a dramatic line between the desire to meet her lover and the unfulfillment of this desire. The question remains: will the two characters meet also in reality?
The situation caused by the coronavirus brought new aspects of intimate relationships up – and that of secret lovers is one of the most intriguing ones, as it has to get multiple obstacles and difficulties over.
Our walk starts from a relatively unknown and deserted area of Buda and arrives to a well-known and – normally – crowded part of Pest.
The walk is a site-specific adaptation of the performance Bovary Emma created in 2012 with Je Suis Belle
performed by Emőke Kiss-Végh, Tamás Ördög
costume: Je Suis Belle
Emőke Kiss-Végh and Tamás Ördög are young Hungarian actors and theatre-makers. Their theatre workshop, Dollár Papa Gyermekei (dollardaddy’s) founded in 2009, is known for its unorthodox shows and projects staged in flats and unusual venues. They experiment on the boundaries of real life and theatre in a minimalistic style, with very little set or costume. They re-narrate Ibsen and other classic playwrights, while keeping the characters, the situations and the conflicts, but speaking the lines in their own words. Their original acting style, inspired by the Dogma films, invites the audience to be part of a uniquely intimate relationship with the performers. Since 2013 they create performances for Trafó – House of Contemporary Art, but they also present shows in private flats, in a designer showroom or on a tram.
Dollár Papa Gyermekei is a recurring participant at Placcc Festivals. In their project One in one they collaborated with a Dutch-Italian artists couple in a long-term project happening in a private flat. In Closeness randomly coupled people could have intimate conversations at hidden places of Budapest.