Featured image: Zuzana Kronerova, Hot Summer '68, GUnaGU Theatre, photograph by Ctibor Bachraty
Opening with the events of the Holocaust, Tamas Reczei’s Ghetto Love elaborates on the aftermath of World War II and examines the post-traumatic experiences of subsequent generations. The play is based on a real story: in Auschwitz, a Jewish boy saves a Gypsy girl by dragging her into a latrine. This unexpected, selfless act leads to their marriage.
After the survivor ages and grows terminally ill, his wife, daughter, and granddaughter visit his doctor. The women reveal their own stories and sorrows by means of inner monologue. We can hear their questions and the overlapping issues they deal with, however, we can only guess the answers. Dialectical tensions loom large: Jewishness and communism, assimilation and self-deception, constraint and voluntariness. The play touches on sensitive themes as Jewish-Gypsy cohabitation as well as how psychological burdens impact the second and third generations of Holocaust survivors.
Ghetto Love (Hungary). Playwright: Tamas Reczei. Director: Lisa Arrindell. Cast: Jane Arnfield (Edit), Rebecca Gever (Eszter), Kathryn Grody (Emese). Translated by: Borbala Rieger. Running time: 90 min.
The reading is followed by Q&A. It is free and open to the public. Suggested donation $10. Today, we ask you to help us support our Best Mini-Drama Student Contest program by purchasing a printed copy of one of the winning plays. You will contribute to the continuation of life-changing opportunities for creative talents. > Buy student plays
The event will be broadcasted online, live on Zoom. RSVP is required to receive the Zoom link. RSVP online through Eventbrite.
TAMAS RECZEI (b. 1972) is Hungarian playwright, dramaturg, and stage director. Before graduating as a stage director he worked as a journalist, which explains his affinity to the depiction of real-life events. In 2013 he received 3rd prize at the playwriting contest of the Weöres Sándor Színház in Szombathely with a play on the political persecution of the church, titled Hangyabolydulás (Ants' Swarm). He wrote his next play, Ghetto Love, in 2014, a commission by the Jewish Summer Festival. The premiere was, however, cancelled, because the festival finally decided not to tackle the sensitive issues of the play. In 2015 he wrote a play on the founding of the Katona József Theatre in Kecskemét for the theater's jubilee, mixed with a contemporary comedy. This play was staged by the theater. In 2018 he wrote the play Mengele's Midgets as an exam performance for actors, presenting the story of a family of circus dwarfs in the Auschwitz death camp. In 2016 he began a theater series about the amorous affairs of the biggest Hungarian classic authors, which were published in two volumes by the Corvina Publishing House in January 2020.
LISA ARRINDELL was born and raised in New York City. Growing up in East Flatbush Brooklyn, she began commuting to Manhattan at eleven years old, to study dance at The Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre and later attended her now beloved alma maters, The High School of Performing Arts (a.k.a Laguardia High School of Music and the Performing Arts) and The Juilliard School, where she earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree in Theater. She enjoys a career in acting, on stage and in television and films. Starring in the upcoming features, Twelve Angry Men...Women, for AppleTV, with Wendell Pierce and BET’s Favorite Son with Johnathan McReynolds, Lisa continues to build a body of work that honors the legacy of theater and film craftspeople that paved the way for a more complete American Story to be told. She has guest starred on network episodics including, CBS’s Bull, Elementary, Madam Secretary, Law and Order SVU, Saints & Sinners, BET’s The Quad and ABC’s Notorious. Among her stage performances are, on Broadway, Cat On A Hot Tin Roof, Jubilee at Arena Stage, Reparations at The Billie Holliday Theatre, Richard III at The Delacorte Theatre, Heliotrope Bouquet at Playwrights Horizons, Earth & Sky at Second Stage. Her starring film credits include, Tyler Perry’s Medea’s Family Reunion, HBO’s A Lesson Before Dying, Disappearing Acts, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, The Sin Seer, Having Our Say:The Delany Sisters First Hundred years, Christmas Wedding Baby, First Impression, and A Christmas Blessing. Her vigorous healthy mind/spirit/body fitness lifestyle practice, daily posted on social media, encourages self care and self love as a path to a more loving, empowered and vibrant world community. She shares her passion for whole health, fortified by spiritual truth as a keynote speaker all over the country, educating and inspiring audiences. On staff at The Freeman Studio of Acting and The Youth Arts Academy of The Billie Holiday Theatre, both in New York, Lisa offers private acting coaching and masterclasses for college theatre students and professionals. She is the joyful mother of two, stunning, loving, highly creative and intelligent, people.
JANE ARNFIELD is an actor, director, writer, and associate professor in Theatre and Performance at Northumbria University, UK. As an academic her research disrupts and pushes the boundaries of contemporary (auto) biographical theatre practice through an interdisciplinary questioning of its role and function in memory studies, biographical narrative interviewing methods, performance and testimony. Jane graduated from Dartington College of Arts in Totnes, UK 1988 with a BA (Hons) in Theatre. She has been a member of three ensemble companies: Mike Alfreds Method & Madness, The David Glass Ensemble incorporating work with The Lost Child Project in South East Asia, South America and Europe and the Northern Stage Ensemble. Jane has worked with Mike Alfreds at Hampstead Theatre, The Young Vic and Shakespeare’s Globe - London and New York where Jane played Imogen in Cymbeline with Mark Rylance. Since 2010 Jane has collaborated with writer and director Mike Alfreds co adapting two monodramas: The Tin Ring by Zdenka Fantlova and Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks. Since 2011 Jane has developed a distinct practice called (LMTM) Living Memorial Theatre Methodology (2018), forensically examining the similarities, differences between creating (auto) biographical theatre and Biographical Narrative Interviewing Methods (BNIM) Sociology. Academic research projects include commissions by international, cultural organisations, Marek Edelman Dialogue Centre, Lodz, Poland, Defiant Requiem Foundation, Washington DC, USA. Jane tests methods of participatory engagement adapting material from memoir, fiction, non-fiction, diaries, letters, objects into performances. As a Leverhulme Trust International Academic Fellow (2018/19) at the University of Lodz Centre for Biographical Research and Oral History in Poland, Jane developed her LMTM on hidden sites of cultural significance. Reconstructing sourced material into contemporary transcripts, play scripts, librettos, musical compositions, choreographed sequences. LMTM cultivates a process of de-centring, of viewing events from the perspective of others, not in a purely cognitive sense but at a more holistic, emotional level enabling audiences to ‘inhabit’ the original testimony.
REBECCA GEVER is a New York-based actress and writer. On stage, Rebecca has performed at Williamstown Theater Festival, the O’Neill, The Tank, and the Annenberg Center, among others. In 2019, her solo show lemons was featured in several festivals and debuted Off-Broadway as a finalist in the United Solo Theatre Festival. She has also starred in several award-winning short films, including Stall, Stock People, and two night. Rebecca has also been an artistic resident at The Tank and trained at the Freeman Studio. She is a graduate of the National Theater Institute and Brown University.
KATHRYN GRODY - Memorable Off-Broadway: Fishing, Top Girls, Museum, 49 Years (with Estelle Parsons) Endgame (with Alvin Epstein), The Oak Tree, A Model Apartment, A Mom’s Life, falling apart....together. Film: Harry and Walter Go To New York, My Bodyguard, The Lemon Sisters, Another Woman, Men with Guns, Limbo. TV: The Sunset Gang with Uta Hagen, Execution of Private Slovik with Martin Sheen. Nominated for a Drama Desk award for her three-character solo show, A Mom’s Life. Obies for The Marriage of Bette and Boo and Top Girls, all at the Public Theatre. Kathryn was recently seen as Gaby in Susan Miller’s 20th Century Blues at The Signature, in Anna Zeigler’s The Great Moment at Seattle Rep, last pre-pandemic fall, and in Nassim at City Center. She just completed five episodes of the first pandemic, socially distanced web series, The Building. She is on the board of Dances for a Variable Population and Downtown Women for Change, is a usual suspect with NYTW, and works with the International Rescue Committee.
BORBALA RIEGER was educated in Hungary and has lived extensively in the US and the UK. She works as a translator and interpreter with a special interest in cognitive linguistics and social issues affecting women today.
ABOUT THE 2021 SPRING WEEKEND: CONCERNING HUMAN IDENTITY
The 2021 Spring Weekend: Concerning Human Identity is organized by the Vaclav Havel Library Foundation (VHLF) and Bohemian Benevolent and Literary Association (BBLA) in partnership with the Polish Cultural Institute New York and Consulate General of Slovakia in New York. Spring Weekend is part of the annual Rehearsal for Truth Theater Festival honoring the playwright and human rights activist Vaclav Havel. It showcases contemporary European plays through stage readings performed and directed by New York City–based actors and directors.
The 2021 program has been conceived in consultation with Attila Szabo, Deputy Director, Hungarian Theatre Museum and Institute; Vladislava Fekete, Director, Theatre Institute in Bratislava; Zuzana Ulicianska, Chair of the Slovak Center – International Association of Theatre Critics; Tomek Smolarski, Performing Arts Programming, Polish Cultural Institute New York; and Martina Peckova-Cerna, Head of International Cooperation Department, Arts and Theatre Institute in Prague.
The program is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council and Council Member Ben Kallos. Promotion partners include the Czech Center New York, GOH Productions/Czechoslovak-American Marionette Theatre, PACE.V4 (Performing Arts Central Europe), and Hungarian Cultural Centre London.