A roll about aspects of theatrical and cultural life.
A review of Örkény Theatre’s production of Shakespeare’s Hamlet (dir. Bagossy László) by Rónyai Kitty Many may find the latest adaptation of Hamlet in Örkény Theatre quite unusual, for some it may even seem unrecognisable. Instead of a court we are beside a football pitch with a madly cheering crowd. The dresses and the props…
As older students probably know, December marks one of the most enjoyable events of the English Institute, which is the annual Christmas Party. This year it was held on 9 December, at Horánszky Street. Probably it was because of the new venue that the number of guests was surprisingly low, since the Christmas Party is…
Recently I have been very fortunate with conferences on theatre. To be honest, I have been more fortunate with them than with actual theatre performances, as the last several productions I happened to watch proved to be fairly poor choices. Nevertheless, last Friday I attended the Yeats 150 Symposium, a symposium on Yeats, the dramatist. And…
As was promised in the first post, we’ll be kicking off our choice-laden journey with a great leap by venturing into space with the Mass Effect trilogy developed by BioWare. The games are set towards the end of the twenty-second century, across a multitude of planets including Earth, and follow the story of Commander Shepard,…
“This summer school can change lives”, as Margaret Mills Harper, former director of the International Yeats Summer School has put it. And she is absolutely right. This summer, I had the pleasure to spend two weeks in Yeats Country, Sligo, among the most determined Yeatsians, and I am looking forward to sharing this amazing experience…
Recognized as one of the best all-male choirs of the US and having a 100-year-long history, the Notre Dame Glee Club is soon to arrive at Budapest on their one-month European tour to sing for us (free!) at 7pm, after the 6 o’clock mass on Tuesday, 26th May in Matthias Church, heart of the Buda Castle. Following the concerts…
“What does travel ultimately produce if it is not, by a sort of reversal, ‘an exploration of the deserted places of my memory’, the return to nearby exoticism by way of detour through distant places, and the ‘discovery’ of relics and legends […]” Michel de Certeau If we have become a bit too familiar with…
The year 2015 has brought the winds of change in the reception of Yeats not only in Ireland but also in Europe and in the entire contemporary world. Yeats has been reborn in the occasion of his 150th birthday in 2015, and his second coming is manifested in the fine arts, musical productions, poetry and…
“Humankind lingers unregenerately in Plato’s cave, still reveling, its age-old habit, in mere images of the truth.” This is how Susan Sontag opens the first essay in her collection On Photography (1977), titled “In Plato’s Cave.” Like the quote and the title suggest, she goes on to examine ways in which photography connects and disconnects…
So far, there have been only few attempts to film or stage Yeats’s work, and I find it very interesting that Yeats’s presence in pop culture has been, in fact, restricted to some catchy, well-known lines from his major poems in the titles and scenes of certain film productions and in book titles. However, it…