Staged reading of a contemporary tragicomedy, a paraphrase of the biblical brothers Cain and Abel, which tells a story of love, friendship and the hatred of otherness fueled by the far-right National Socialists.
Excerpts from Czech plays that use Vaclav Havel's character, Vanek, originally created as a stand-in for himself (a dissident playwright) during the Communist era in the former Czechoslovakia. The character was then adapted by numerous other Czech dissident playwrights, such as Pavel Landovsky and Pavel Kohout.
Staged reading of a comic thriller that mixes wall street-style misdeeds with mafia-style consequences, based on the real Estonian banking scandal in which Russian oligarchs used Estonian banks to launder their money into the EU.
Staged reading of a contemporary play dealing with the current war in Ukraine. A story about a Ukrainian family on a farm and a Russian soldier who stumbles into their farm.
Stage reading of a play that has the intonation of contemporary absurdism. The heroine finds herself in someone else’s apartment and doesn’t remember how she got there. Strange sounds out of nowhere, overly friendly hosts and uncomfortable silence.
A biting commentary on a Hungarian society marked by hatred, recrimination, and ultimately sorrow.
The threads of the past and present collide and interweave as four friends and their families take radically different paths in an effort to give themselves new lives after the dissolution of their home country.
Set in Ceausescu's Romania, Lowlands is both a memory play and surrealist vision animated from a child's perspective. It is with awe and love that we call on community to gather around this version of Herta Müller’s text on its 40th anniversary of a first publication. Together with her words we will celebrate the divine resistance that girls carry in their soul the world over for all of us.
Songs and sketches from Terezin from the anthology of rediscovered scripts, Performing Captivity, Performing Escape: Cabarets and Plays from the Terezin/Theresienstadt Ghetto, authored by Dr. Lisa Peschel. Full of satire, bitter humor, and hope, these pieces demonstrate how art became a vital survival technique for the inmates.
Detroit. The History of a Hand centers on the fulfillment and downfall of the American Dream. The play is based on Diego Rivera’s mural at the Detroit Institute of Arts.
Opening with the events of the Holocaust, Tamas Reczei’s Ghetto Love elaborates on the aftermath of World War II and examines the post-traumatic experiences of subsequent generations. The play is based on a real story: in Auschwitz, a Jewish boy saves a Gypsy girl by dragging her into a latrine. This unexpected, selfless act leads to their marriage.
Historical tragicomedy based on a story of three Slovak women who decided to emigrate after the occupation of Czechoslovakia by Warsaw Pact troops in 1968. Following the protagonists’ journeys as they emigrate to Vienna, London, Haifa, and New York before they finally reconvene in Toronto, the play recounts key historical events through the banalities of daily life.
Excerpts from plays by Dodo Gombar that employ absurdist humor as they explore issues related to Eastern European transitions to democracy followed by one experimental stream of words, thoughts, and dialogues.
![2021 [Virtual] Spring Weekend: Ghetto Love](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5ce70b2812dd200001e1fa59/1617462834826-BAFO1W7CWAXK417X5FVK/VHLF-SpringWknd2021-544x326-yellow.jpg)
![2021 [Virtual] Spring Weekend: Hot Summer of '68 (How We Ran)](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5ce70b2812dd200001e1fa59/1617461708154-2VOJ1CBAXT0YO9WFSR9O/VHLF-SpringWknd2021-544x326-orange.jpg)
![2021 [Virtual] Spring Weekend: Money, The Third Age, Portal](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5ce70b2812dd200001e1fa59/1617459930344-EP7OZ5Y9JUHYPR8E012C/VHLF-SpringWknd2021-544x326-blue.jpg)