Bitef

press women... it is scary to understand freedom in Eastern Europe, to understand the freedom of a specific individual. The Buckow Elegies were written at the time of the revolutionary workers'revolt in East Germany in the 19S0s, placed on the same level with that of Hungary in 1956 even though they are not the same. The Elegies are also a kind of a record of disillusionment. My host Felix takes us in his old Wartburg from Berlin to Buckow where Brecht lived; his family is still there. We take the former Stalin Alley, now Karl Marx Alley. As we circle, I look through the window at the street. I find a discarded, dirty workman's glove. I don't remember if it was the right or the left hand one. In that town, regardless of the direction which the authorities took, this was interpreted very specifically. Months later, a very similar glove was presented to me after the premiere by our Hungarian producer Joszef Balog who, waiting for the performance, walked around and found an identical glove on Alexanderplatz. He picked it up for me and brought it in a fancy plastic bag. I laugh:The gauntlet is thrown... I read the graffiti; Rosa Luxembourg is a terrorist; as we look for the exhibitions of Eastern artists, I find a small art gallery with Herman Nietzsche's paintings ... with my actors I cross the line of the erstwhile wall as a small tourist-pilgrimage performance, I keep asking myself how it is possible to live amidst all these memories. There is no mercy, one can live... The actors are in an excellent shape. Month-long training with Henni Varga, for four hours daily. I agree that she should not do any choreography and that the purpose of the training is only to turn the actors into active bodies, to make them all get into their own physical world, without any intellectual, emotive sphere

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