First performance: December 12, 2019, Baltazar House
What kind of dust are we talking about anyway? The kind that itches when the wind blows it into our eyes? Or the kind that makes wondrous, magical shapes in the kaleidoscope? Maybe both.
The play Dust is a sequel to, or continuation of, our 2017 production Dandelion, so the audience may enjoy two thirty-minute plays in one evening, with one interval. Dandelion tells of love in a metaphorical, lyrical style, using poems by Hungarian poets, as well as the actors’ own thoughts. It is this delicate, idyllic pastel world that Dust challenges in the second half of the evening. István Vörös’s drama formulates sharp criticism of our unquenchable thirst for harmony, and also of ourselves and theatre itself. “Our play entitled Dust poses a series of questions. We seek to answer the questions of what we call beautiful, and what gives purpose to artistic creation or just our ordinary, everyday lives. There is a lot of irony and self-irony in there, which requires self-knowledge and demands some hard thinking from the Baltazar actors – and they do their work flawlessly,” Olívia Réti-Harmath and Dorka Farkas declare.
The absurd world of the play is based on the individuality of the actors; it attempts to shed light on the diversity that only the Baltazar actors are capable of. “There is a lot of self-reflective humour in the script, and our performance plays that up even further. At certain points, light humour meets the drama’s depth, but we try to make sure that this is a consequence of the actors’ personalities and experience. For that reason, the world of Dust builds upon their improvisation, thereby developing them and making them more coherent,” said the directors.
