Deborah Pearson: HISTORY, HISTORY, HISTORY (GB, Canada)

Photo: archive Deborah Pearson

Wednesday, 23 November 2016 at 7pm
Second Gymnasium amphitheatre

Free entrance.

The performance is in English.

On 23 October 1956, revolution broke out in Hungary with student demonstrations, as a spontaneous rise against the communist government and Soviet hegemony. Many perished during the following insurrection, over 200,000 emigrated, among them the grandfather of Deborah Pearson; an actor appearing in a film comedy / political satire about the Hungarian national football team which was incidentally to be premiered on that very day … the day Soviet tanks rolled into Budapest.

History History History is a nuanced, comical yet painful tale in which global momentum collides with personal history. Pearson builds upon the film farce featuring a simple pen peddler who is, due to a series of outlandish coincidences, mistaken for the football superstar Ferenc Puskáš, to a degree so extreme he is contracted to play for a South American dictator (tycoon). There’s more to the funny piece than meets the eye, though. Through a brilliant interplay of reality and illusion, Pearson illuminates the subversive piece as a “commentator” exploring its satirizing of the tyranny of dictatorship, the struggles of a diaspora descendent weighed down by history, the spirit of the times, by familial tragedy and linguistic embarrassment. A Hungarian football comedy from 1956 subliminally weaving the story of a writer who loses his name, an actor who loses his voice, a nation that loses its revolution.

The performance is followed by a talk with the author.

90 minutes

Author: Deborah Pearson
Dramaturgy: Daniel Kitson
Artistic advisors: Tania El Khoury and Laura Danneqin
The project was developed with the assistance of the National Theatre Studio
Production: A House on Fire in partnership with Theatre Garonne (Toulouse, FR) and BIT Teatergarasjen (Bergen, Norway)