Had my 'The Land of Promises' show last night, at the Merlin International Theatre (Budapest, Hungary). It was not a full house, due to the four days long May Day holiday and the warm weather. A number of my old high school mates came, with their wives. Those whom I do not personally know came because they have heard the annuncement of the show on public radio. The several hundred e-mailed invites I sent out did not bring in more than a 2-3 people. As usual none of the invited members of the Szépírók Társasága (a writers' association, which I am a member of) showed up. Using some found footage on the late Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh (Osho) I created a video piece for the event. The show went well. I opened with the 12 minutes video piece, after which I talked freely about the art and culture of lying. First I outlined the life and times of Karl May, Laszlo Havas (the Spions's first and last manager, a four times convicted spy and international swindler) and as of Osho, then gave an account about my personal experiences with the flowering culture of lying in present day Hungary. In the third part of the show I answered questions from the audience. After the show I had a pleasant discussion with the poet and performance artist Katalin Ladik, one of my main collaborators in my Joyce inspired theatrical pieces. We talked for about an hour. It helped me unwind a bit. Katalin invited me to her performance at the Gödör club, on the 3rd of May. I reached an agreement with the management of the Merlin theatre on doing another show there in this season, on Friday, June 6, 2008. ............... On April 30 I attended the opening of the Terror Háza (House of Terror) museum's 'Freedom Under the Blanket' exhibit. It was supposedly about the sexual revolution of the 1960-70s in Hungary, during the Bolshevik dictature, but the exhibited images, video pieces and objects had little to do with sex. It was rather a design exhibit. They used the video interview I gave to them earlier, without my permission. The heavily edited interview was shown in the company of interviews by other people, most of whom had little, or nothing to do with the independent (banned) art movement of that age. Tamás Madácsy, one of the organizers of the show and the interviewer of my oral history video interview has promised that he will come to see my Merlin show, but he did not come. I still have not heard back from Maria Schmidt, the directress of the museum, regarding my Theremin exhibit proposal. ............... Still no news from Mr. Pados about the publishing date of the 'Yippie' book. If the book would come out at the end of May, as it was promised last time, it would still have a chance to generate a sizeable media response, due to the anniversary of the 1968 student riots. ..............
Saturday, May 3, 2008
A day after
Had my 'The Land of Promises' show last night, at the Merlin International Theatre (Budapest, Hungary). It was not a full house, due to the four days long May Day holiday and the warm weather. A number of my old high school mates came, with their wives. Those whom I do not personally know came because they have heard the annuncement of the show on public radio. The several hundred e-mailed invites I sent out did not bring in more than a 2-3 people. As usual none of the invited members of the Szépírók Társasága (a writers' association, which I am a member of) showed up. Using some found footage on the late Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh (Osho) I created a video piece for the event. The show went well. I opened with the 12 minutes video piece, after which I talked freely about the art and culture of lying. First I outlined the life and times of Karl May, Laszlo Havas (the Spions's first and last manager, a four times convicted spy and international swindler) and as of Osho, then gave an account about my personal experiences with the flowering culture of lying in present day Hungary. In the third part of the show I answered questions from the audience. After the show I had a pleasant discussion with the poet and performance artist Katalin Ladik, one of my main collaborators in my Joyce inspired theatrical pieces. We talked for about an hour. It helped me unwind a bit. Katalin invited me to her performance at the Gödör club, on the 3rd of May. I reached an agreement with the management of the Merlin theatre on doing another show there in this season, on Friday, June 6, 2008. ............... On April 30 I attended the opening of the Terror Háza (House of Terror) museum's 'Freedom Under the Blanket' exhibit. It was supposedly about the sexual revolution of the 1960-70s in Hungary, during the Bolshevik dictature, but the exhibited images, video pieces and objects had little to do with sex. It was rather a design exhibit. They used the video interview I gave to them earlier, without my permission. The heavily edited interview was shown in the company of interviews by other people, most of whom had little, or nothing to do with the independent (banned) art movement of that age. Tamás Madácsy, one of the organizers of the show and the interviewer of my oral history video interview has promised that he will come to see my Merlin show, but he did not come. I still have not heard back from Maria Schmidt, the directress of the museum, regarding my Theremin exhibit proposal. ............... Still no news from Mr. Pados about the publishing date of the 'Yippie' book. If the book would come out at the end of May, as it was promised last time, it would still have a chance to generate a sizeable media response, due to the anniversary of the 1968 student riots. ..............
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