VISKY, ANDRÁS – MEGÖLTEM AZ ANYÁMAT
I Killed My Mother
(2009. Identity play in seventeen scenes, prose. Characters: 2 women)
’The title of my play was met with outrage everywhere, while it actually aims to open up the path to acceptation. This, however, is a point where the performance only can take the viewer, words are not enough.’
The two-character identity play by András Visky starts during the years before the Romanian regime change. The work is the biography of an orphan gypsy girl, Bernadett, built up of her fragmentary memories. In the 1980-s Romania was on the cover of world magazines – among many other reasons – for the dismay state of its secluded, horrible orphanages. In these homes children were defenceless not only to the caregivers, the society of the adults, but also to history. Bernadett makes an attempt to uncover her own roots, but even if she gets to meet her relatives, she is unable to find a connection with them.
András Viskywas born in 1957 in Targu Mures / Marosvásárhely as the seventh child of a reformed priest. He spent his childhood in one of the lager villages of the Romanian Gulag. At present he is an associate professor of the Television and Theatre Department of the Babes-Bolyai University of Cluj and the artistic director of the State Hungarian Theatre of Cluj. His works (poems, prose, drama, essay and studies) were published in Hungarian, Romanian, English, Bulgarian, Russian, French and Slovenian. His plays have been performed by Hungarian, Romanian, Serbian and American theatres, in the staging of notable directors, many of his plays have been presented as radio plays by the Hungarian Radio and Radio Romania Cultural in Bucharest. He published several books. In 2009-2010 he was a guest professor at the Calvin College in the USA. His literary achievements have been awarded, among others, with the Szép Ernő Prize and the József Attila Prize.