Juliet is a work of both real life and poetry: a story of a woman arrested and deported with her seven children to the Romanian wilderness under the communist regime of the 1950s.
Juliet, Hungary. Playwright: Andras Visky. Director: Michael Sexton. Cast: Kate Forbes. Translated by: David Robert Evans. With revisions by Ailisha O’Sullivan and Jozefina Komporaly.
Juliet was written in tribute to the author’s mother. Visky, a Hungarian-Romanian playwright, poet, and essayist, was born in 1957, the youngest of seven children. One year later, his father was sentenced to 22 years in prison and forced labor by the Romanian communist authorities. Andras Visky, his mother, and his siblings were then deported to a remote encampment, where they subsisted on the sheer determination of a despairing mother and enterprising eldest brother who somehow kept the family alive.
The play tells the story from the perspective of the children who rescued their mother from death. The poetic language offers the chance to convey a specific historical incident through a recognizable and universal dramatic situation, transposing into our times a recurrent theme from Ancient Greek theater: the struggles of a woman for her freedom.
Andras Visky will introduce the work from Romania via livestreaming.
“After the Hungarian Revolution in 1956, my father was sentenced for 22 years, and he disappeared in a prison. The place of his detention was not known to us. One year after my father’s incarceration, the communist authorities decided to deport us to a gulag prison camp, located in the southeast part of the country. For my Austrian-born mother, who at that time didn’t speak Romanian, it was extremely hard, practically unachievable to keep her seven kids alive, while performing the daily amount of work as a forced laborer. After several months she collapsed because of a heart attack, and she ended up in a morgue.”
Free and open to the public. Online registration through Eventbrite is required.
The 2022 Spring Stage Readings: Bridging the Worlds is dedicated to the people of Ukraine fighting for their independence. 🇺🇦 Suggested donation ($10) will be used to support Ukrainian refugees. All collected funds will be donated to People in Need, a Czech non-governmental, non-profit organization with over 20 years of experience in helping people in emergencies all over the world.
Proof of vaccination and wearing of a face mask during the event is required.
For more information about this reading and the 2022 Spring Stage Readings program, visit www.rehearsalfortruth.org.
ABOUT THE 2022 SPRING STAGE READINGS
The 2022 Spring Stage Readings: Bridging the Worlds is organized by the Vaclav Havel Library Foundation and the Bohemian Benevolent and Literary Association in partnership with the Polish Cultural Institute New York, Untitled Theater Company #61, Consulate General of the Czech Republic in New York, GOH Productions, and Romanian Cultural Institute. The festival is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council. Spring Stage Readings is part of the Rehearsal for Truth Theater Festival honoring the playwright and human rights activist Vaclav Havel.
The 2022 edition has been conceived in consultation with Attila Szabo, Deputy Director, Hungarian Theatre Museum and Institute; Martina Peckova-Cerna, Head, International Cooperation Department, Arts and Theatre Institute, Prague; Tomek Smolarski, Performing Arts Programming, Polish Cultural Institute New York; Raluca Cimpoiasu, Program Manager, Romanian Cultural Institute; Vladislava Fekete, Director, Theatre Institute in Bratislava; and Andrea Domeova, Head of the Centre for Editorial Activities, Theatre Institute in Bratislava.