Monday, although it's Thursday.

On Sunday evening, Sarah G., an American play write/director who lives in Budapest (for a few months more anyway)arrived. I liked her. Monday we explored this shut-down town. I finally got to sit under one of these white parasols outside the cafés. In our walking and talking we made it as far as tranzit, left.


It's a converted synagogue, with an internet café, bar, exhibition space and they show films too. The walls of the café are decorated with cartoons. I could compare it to several places in Bristol... Attila T. was asked to curate, but he, S & C have a proposal to open a restaurant in the space upstairs. This would be so beautiful... If they do, I'm coming back next summer to work!

That evening (Monday), we went to Long Friday. It's based on Imre Kertész's 'Kaddish for an unborn child'. Kaddish is the Jewish memorial prayer. Aaron Dimény played the central character B. The play opens with the others reading a psalm. The background is the Holocaust and in particular Auschwitz. There was a lot I didn't understand.

On the most basic level, B. and his wife, played by Hilda, survived Auschwitz, she goes onto divorce him and marry a 'non-Jew' and have children - which he didnt want to do. B had isolated himself in his writing - in the middle of the stage was a phone booth containing a typewriter. H slams herself against this, climbs on top of it, trying to get through to him. She throws herself into the arms of men watching. It almost looks like suicide attempts, seemed she was aiming to run off of the stage.
You see the faces in the picture? B tells a story about his childhood, walking in on his aunt, finding a bald-headed woman in a red dress. This is reference to a particular sect that shave their hair. The theme continues throughout, he says "I'll always be a..". It's shameful, intimate. It's also a haunting image, the skull masks. As though they're carrying around memories of the dead community, as part of their identity.
In another scene, the chorus line call out the names of places they were moved to, walking around the stage grinning at us, "Siberia, Andrássy Ut.." One man (not B, he and his wife are watching) says "Auschwitz" and the others applaud, shake his hand. Proud self-pity. They talk about how they'll never forget the atrocity.
B says it would be more strange if it had never happened. Man's inhumanity is inevitable. He tells a story of surprising good. When he was sick and couldn't get his ration, he thought it had been taken. He was angry but understood. It turned out that somebody else had collected it for him.

After the show, we ate with András V. and two gentlemen from America who will feature later. I had a pasta with truffle- or rather 2,4 -dithiapentane infused sauce.There was a lot of shop-talk and dropping names that meant nothing to me.. well, actually even I knew some of them. Plus I have a worse confession.

In the show I was listening to the audio-translation (S did it this time, very well), entirely oblivious to the fact that Aretha Franklin was singing Respect out of my bag. It got to a quiet point in what was quite a quiet point in the monologue. I realised, and turned it off.. Not before noting the four missed calls, and cringing even more. Given my front row seat - and it was a studio performance again, this personal performance was very obvious, and I'm sure once the post is running again I'll receive the death threats. Or, my idols will blank me at the party, not sure which would be worse.

OK, there's a brother who's turned 16 today that could do with a phone call, before it's tomorrow.