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January 19, 2017 | What Did You Think?,
What Did You Think of Our Secrets
Thank you for joining us for Bela Pinter’s Our Secrets. There is much to be mined from the complex production that gives insight to the contemporary political climate through the lens of communist Hungary. Please take a moment to leave your thoughts in the comments below.
If you have not already, take a moment to read this blog from Co-Artistic Director David Dower, and this look into Hungarian dance house culture.
We would also like to thank Emerson College’s Violence Prevention and Response team for providing us so many great resources for how to have these difficult conversations. You can find some of those resources here.
Have you ever watched a play with subtitles? Well, last night I did. The actors performed in Hungarian while I read the subtitles in English. It was challenging to appreciate the performances because I was busy reading, but I still enjoyed it!
I had never heard Hungarian before. I used to have a Hungarian student when I used to be a Spanish tutor at UMass Boston, but she never spoke Hungarian to me. She said that Spanish and Hungarian share a word: “Torta” for cake. Who knew!
I thought it was interesting how they used such taboo topics and pin them against each other almost as if you have to decide which one is worse: Pedophilia or government espionage/oppression.
Thank you for bringing this play to Boston. I really enjoyed listening to people speak Hungarian and watching people from another culture share their cultural pains. Amazing!
My initial reaction was that this is terrible–the acting, the drama, the set, the stilted dialogue in translation. Then it made sense that this was an incredible parody and portrayal of Hungary in the 1980s. With this in mind, the awful folk music, the amateurish dancing, and the stick characters all fit together for a controlled, revealing, and entertaining performance.
When I saw that the female child, the dream mother and the final megaphone were all played by the same actor, it could only have been done in faltering communist satellite at the end of the Soviet rule.
A compelling performance by the whole troupe, and after watching part of the Hungarian documentary about the 1980’s folk revival on the ArtsEmerson blog, I was impressed by the ensemble’s re-creation of that era in the opening scene – just as earnest and unpolished as the folk music & dance groups here in the US.
The one really false note, for me, was Pintér’s presentation of the young girl’s happy, fun-filled participation in abuse and degradation – I didn’t find it credible.