About the Artists

Béla Pintér and Company was founded in 1998 under the leadership of Béla Pintér, who stages his own plays and performs in them. It is the company’s intention to create contemporary productions based on critical-ironic observations of society and itself. The surreal world which generally characterizes the company’s productions is constructed from a combination of reality and dream, of authentic and kitsch, and from sundry elements of Hungarian culture. Thanks to its success, the company is nowadays regarded as one of the most significant and inventive creative workshops.

BÉLA PINTÉR (Playwright, Director, Actor) was born in 1970 in Budapest, Hungary. Pintér, who stages his own plays in which he also performs, founded his theatre ensemble called Béla Pintér and Company in 1998. The Company is dedicated to creating contemporary productions based on analytical, critical and ironic observations of Hungarian society. Developing subjects from a personal perspective, focusing on one’s own issues, Pintér’s plays give an objective and characteristic portrayal of the current circumstances within Hungarian reality. His dramaturgy is unique and original, and deeply rooted in the classical drama-tradition. With his clear understanding of life’s absurdity, he creates an unmistakable fusion of tragedy and comedy, accentuated with live music that is performed directly on the stage, all of which ensures notable popularity. Despite divisions within Hungarian society that have been created by the recent aggressive political discourse, Pintér has successfully managed to create a coherent and enjoyable understanding that can be recieved by also a worldwide audience. Béla Pintér and Company is regarded as one of the most significant and innovative workshops today.

AWARDS

• 2016 Vámos László Award
• 2014 Artisjus Literary Grand Prize
• 2012 Szép Ernő Award—for his dramatic scripts with an original world view
• 2007 Knight’s Cross of the Order of Merit of the Hungarian Republic
• 2007 György Fehér Award
• 2005 Sándor Hevesi Award
• 2003 Mari Jászai Award
• 2002 Soros Scholarship
• 2002 István Örkény Playwright Scholarship
• 2000 Népszabadság Comet Award (a “Shooting Stars Award” in Hungary)
• 1996 Best Actor, 13th István Horváth Theater Festival, Kazincbarcika, Hungary

From the Company

“Our performance seeks to, by any chance, find an answer to why none of the governments, whether left- or right-wing, have made the list of Communists’ informers publically known since the cessation of the Communist rule in Hungary. The stage play introduces a fictitious story to present an alleged way of how those informers may have been recruited and lived their lives.

In the story the venue – the dramatic environment – is a dance house, the main conflict is being recruited as an informer, and the ‘secret sin’ by the threat of exposure of which one can be pressured by the Communist authorities to become involved in making reports on people, that is, to become their informer, is pedophilia. It was not unusual, for that matter, those recruited had a ‘sexually criminal’ background. Being a homosexual, for instance, was then considered a crime and could be used as a ground to put a pressure on one to be making such reports.”