MY DRIVE
September 2021
Jurányi Produkciós és Inkubátorház
Conceived, written, directed, acted:
Anna Nemes, Lili Raubinek, Zita Szenteczki
Music by Rozi Mákó
Assistant: Beke Anna
Scene "Fate makes way for the never expected" edited by Zsófia Bódi
Light technician: Zoltán Vida
Sound engineer: Tibor Kiefer
"...I will cheat death, many people will fall with their backs straight to the ground. A stern stage manager comes up to me and tells me not to interfere. People still fall backwards with their backs straight. Then we watch the show, my brother puts his arm around me. A fat uncle is covering the whole thing. All you can see of it is people whispering German words passionately to each other outside, my older friends must be on the ferry on the Danube by now, but maybe it was years ago, I'm just that late. S. is quite old now, so unpleasantly brown and his hair yellowish and telling great anecdotes about how you have to talk on stage like the sound spreads in the Balaton when you throw stones and he hits the train with his fist like this, and I wonder if he's told me this before..."How can a performance be dislocated from its usual temporal and spatial structure and hierarchy? We don't know, but we try. From step 0 to the presentation, we planned everything together. We planned and failed, we imagined and it was different. It's not bad, just not like that. We're in a trance zone, digesting our reality and planning for a bright future.
My Drive is an exploration on many levels. Three female artists explore the co-creation process, three young adults explore how their identities are shaped by childhood cultural experiences and how their shared anxieties and performative accounts of significant events in their lives enter into dialogue on stage to examine the very essential yet problematic mechanism of identification. The performance creates a new mythology from the old myths and makes reality and fiction interchangeable in the process. My Drive is a deeply personal yet relatable, funny and thought-provoking performance.
Lili I am quiet and wise.
Anna Tyrant.
Lili I am reserved and enchanting.
Anna I train animals.
Lili Princess.
Zita I speak many languages and run a theatre in every country.
Lili I can be a boy. ...
Zita I'll spread the tablecloth and decorate it with amber, I'll sit at the head of the table, my wife sits opposite, our five children around us.
Anna I didn't bring Gyuri sunflowers to the hospice house, damn it.
Lili Captain Jack Sparrow
Zita No need to ask permission when you eat something ever.
Anna Rory Gilmore.
Together Rory Gilmor, ouch, five children ouch, Zsiga, Jonas ouch, Jane Raubinek, Mrs. Bródy, Szenteczki Warlord Jennifer, Aniston Andzselika Nemes, Mrs. Boda, Mrs. Csuja, Mrs. Bródy, Mrs. Pitt, Mrs. Mikkelsen, Mrs. Adam Driver, Rabbi, Queen Bee, Boss lady, President, Tyranna, Anna Gilmor, Queen.
My Drive is a cultural anthropological and psychological project realised in the form of a theatre performance. It relies exclusively on the memories and lived experiences of the creators, seeking out the sources and patterns behind their shared anxieties. It sets out to explore the common mythology of a generation of women through identity defining childhood memories, role models and pop culture influences in a deeply personal yet often funny manner where even the remotest things are – as it turns out - somehow connected. Anna Nemes (painter, filmmaker, actress), Lili Raubinek (dancer, choreographer, actress) and Zita Szenteczki (director, actress) dismantled/disregard the hierarchy traditionally involved in creating for the stage. They are the researchers and the research subjects, the writers, the dramaturges, the directors and the performers. They worked together from day one looking at their childhood and young adult cultural influences. They examined novels and their protagonists, for example Mary Poppins, who always leaves and while she is a mythical creature, she is also a questionable feminist prototype . They worked with songs uncovering and exploring the relationship of the different interpretations of their lyrics that they are simultaneously aware of: an emotionally constructed interpretation of a child and the adult’s interpretation uncovering the more abstract meaning. The little crocodile who wanders away from home, the Lenci (Lencsi) doll, a once expensive and desired toy that is trapped in an eternal loop of a mother-daughter interdependency, the paralysing fear so beautifully conveyed in the lullaby of famous 20th century poet, Zoltán Zelk, a child trying to resist in vain and falling to sleep in a mother’s arms or a person dying held by a loved one while the world is melting away. Seemingly matter of fact situations, benign childhood topics yet also the most dramatic events and traumas that affect our lives. My Drive is a catalogue of influences from childhood to teenage years from Kastner’s Lottie and Lisa to the American television series, Gilmore Girls, from Homer to Lord off the Rings, to Dumbledore, to Brad Pitt.
Photos by János R. Szabó