THERE WAS A CHILD
Two-act composition of the Pantomime Exam 2005’s scenes
Duration: 60 + 45 minutes
Dramaturge – director of art: Veronika Karsai
Performers: New Generation Pantomime Company
“There was a Child… – this is the title of the New Generation Pantomime Company’s performance and also of a Walt Whitman poem. It is about a child, the one-off child’s life stages in lyric form, drama, gags, and scenes with absurd humour added; with a constantly changing main hero and with basic figures which return or recur in another way. There is little speech, and if there is some, it is witty and slams jam in the middle of things. There is much more music: clocks tick and tinkle, romantic melodies ripple, sublime classic compositions and beating rock music vary according to what best fits to the actual scene – it is an excellent combination. Someone reads István Örkény, some else reads a magazine on the beach; these are smacks of differences in this frolicsome but sometimes very lonely world. On the stage, nothing comes real; the performers live within and do not desecrate the great possibilities of the pantomime genre; they draw objects and emotions in the air; and the series of these pictures follow one another without error, generally. […] The scenes lead straight to the conclusion by Whitman; the audience gives three cheers to the There was a Child. The performers are students, but there is no point being indulgent: it does not come to our mind that we are at a student performance, not for a moment. I am informed later that the performance was composed from the scenes of the Pantomime Examination of 2005 with speeches, choreographies, and small acts by the director of art, Veronika Karsai. I must add she did an amazing job. So becomes the whole full circle. It was an entirely professional performance.”
Gábor Képes
First performance: March 2006. Budapest, AKG (Alternative Secondary School of Economy)
Eszter Derda, Hanna Eichner, Sára Anna Gábor, Ádám Gregorics, Réka Halász, András J. Karsai, Olga Kelenhegyi, Máté Labus, Júlia Mayer, Tímea Mihályi, Dávid Mikola, Nóra Papcsik, Anna Pálinkás, Panna Szabó, Rebeka Kata Szűcs, Gergely Takács, Barbara Virágh
Creators and scenes in the play
Act one:
Dávid Mikola: The Great March
Sára Anna Gábor: Mosquitoes
Eszter Derda: …Yet Alone
Ádám Gregorics – András J. Karsai – Sára Anna Gábor: T-shirt, Slacks, etc.
Nóra Papcsik: Time Has Stopped!?
Olga Kelenhegyi: Victims
Interval
Act Two:
András J. Karsai: Finding the…
Máté Labus: Vending Machines
Ádám Gregorics: One and another
Júlia Mayer: Fragment