Our Secrets

In a culture of mass surveillance, will our deepest secrets be turned against us?

1980. Soviet-era Hungary. In a dance hall, a musician confesses his private sexual desire for his seven-year-old step-daughter. And his government is taping his every word. Under threat of being exposed as a pedophile, he is pressured into becoming a government informant which leads to the arrest and murder of his best friend, the head of an underground, anti-Communism newspaper. Our Secrets is an epic tale combining folk music, dance, staggering ensemble work and no-holds-barred theatricality to tell a story of what it is like when there is no such thing as a right to privacy, and your deepest secrets are turned against you.

From George Orwell’s 1984 to Edward Snowden, mass surveillance and its devastating consequences are not just a fictional cautionary tale but are an everyday reality all over the world— whether it be Budapest or America. Today, under Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s increasingly nationalist government, Hungary’s cultural scene has been rocked by a rapid return to government control of artistic choice. Director/playwright Béla Pintér and Company have created contemporary productions based on critical and ironic observations of Hungarian society, and Our Secrets may be their most poignant work yet.