Szilágyi, Eszter Anna szin
Szilágyi, Eszter Anna /Nyíregyháza Street
Eszter Anna Szilágyi is a playwright and stage director. She has been active in the independent theatre scene for a long time, producing her own projects. Her work Nyíregyháza Street was written with the support of the Open Forum of Contemporary Plays, a play development programme of the Hungarian Theatre Dramaturgs Guild. Her next project in the programme, Eldgja – a canyon of fire won the Vilmos-prize for best new play. Her style merges the poetic and the theatrical, often calling on the form of free verse. Her choice of topics are always touching on the controversial and/or philosophical. The style and topics make her plays wonderful additions to a balanced repertoire and allow for imaginative stage productions. Her personal CV is as following: ’About me? I write theatrical discourses.’
Daughters of Nyíregyháza Street [Nyíregyháza utca] (min 4(-12) f)
Nyíregyháza Street follows the path of four young women from Nyíregyháza, a town in easternmost Hungary, who are lured abroad by the promise of a better life and end up in the red-light district of Amsterdam. Their hopes and ambitions are then met with reality and we are met with the convoluted ideas and naïve dreams of members of the Rode Draad, the Dutch women's aid organisation about them. “We are submerged in the chaotic cloud of thoughts of the four young hookers and the Rode Draad's leader, Aletta van der Maet, staying always in the present.” – writes the author. Eszter Anna Szilágyi has no ambition to distinguish and/or separate the linguistic registers and cultural levels of the different characters' speech. The play also doesn't strive to create a false illusion in the mind of the spectator of some kind of eventual resolution or hope. We are at break point. The ideals of east and west, the dependent and seemingly independent have no real point to meet. This play takes a hard look at the female condition, the vulnerability and the ideals, and although it does not strive to give us relief, it still is cathartic.