Táp Theatre and Cultural Foundation started its official, legitimate work as a company in 2004; with the reason of providing the creation of high quality productions after more than 10 years of practice as Táp Theatre.

Táp Theatre works in different alternative theatres and social meeting points, (it also appears in the studion space of Katona József Theatre – Kamra) to declare war on traditional theatre making and rigid forms – Táp Theatre experiments with unconventional theatrical methods.

For a long period of time, the productions were based on the spirit of Vilmos Vajdai, the establisher and head of the company; but in the last few years he gave freedom and space to other artists to create their own productions as well. Táp Theatre recently leads workshops with actors and non-actors who apply to joing the company; where we regularly work on our upcoming performances with them.

We think it is substantial to appear in a wide range of activity, to create theatre anywhere and anytime, in any circumstances; it may be the Moszkva Square, Cafe Zappa, Tűzraktér, Sziget Festival, a school’s gym, a theatre’s bar, or theatres like the Merlin and Trafó. We don’t wait for the circumstances and opportunities to make theatre, but creating theatre under any circumstances and opportunities! We directly respond to our social and natural environment; we co-work in social activities and propagandas of collective problems and validations of non-govermental organisations.

 

Cserenadrág

Katona József Theatre and Táp Theatre presents

Vladimir and Oleg Presnakov:
Черенадраг (Swimming Suit)

Murder in a window, in a swimming pool and in a Japanese restaurant. A guy in a baseball cap with South Park on the front, he eats his soup with chopsticks. A mother who lives with his husband’s brother, a police captain who collects memorable objects from the stamped locations of the crimes. And a Japanese woman, who has a difficult fate, and a few more…

Hamlet story in the contemporary Moscow. Yes, Valja’s father was poisoned by his own wife, and because of that, or even irrespectively he is in a strange relationship with Olga. He’s over 30 and we know what that means. His job is to be an ’official victim’, he plays the victim’s role in crime reconstructions. What does he afraid of? And what happens when the roles get mixed up…

The Siberian born Vladimir and Oleg Presnakov are writers, playwriters, actors and directors all in one, and belong to that young generation of Russian playwriters who got well-known in Western-Europe int he last few years. The Presnakov Brothers’ play is a diagnosis, a satire of a young, thirty-something generation who grew up in the chaos after the political changeover of the Eastern-European region.

How do people decide that they want to stay together?

Swimming Suit analises the absurdity and disasterous failure of relationships, however the primary need of these relationships.

The ancient Hamlet-like murder, where the woman kills her husband out of love and marriages his brother – here it is a banal action – food poisoning – which is generated from practicallity and the crave for life. Not a sin, but the natural accompany of the world. How the boy’s revenge isn’t a dramatic failure either, but a natural failure of conquesting death. A somehow adolescent curiosity of the boundries of the human being. All of this has a fatal risk, but stays unabashedly cinical and playfully evil.

We see a human-experiment. Provocation and desperate drowning. The absence and impossibility of communication. The triumph of missunderstandings. Languidity for each other paired with sexual extreme.

I had always been interrogating Dad about how they were with Mother, how did they meet and how did they decide that I should born… This all looks like an investigation attempt… A real crime, of getting toghether, making a child, throwing him into this life, explaining him that this whole thing will disappear… And nobody can help that. I am surely not attached to anybody now, now I understand that I don’t exist therefore the end doesn’t exist either if I don’t exist?

The play of the Presnakov Brothers shows us a world where the characters look real figures at first, but through devious situations and voluble dialogues that this world of real people that appears to be liging - is dead. Reality opens up through the build up of dramatic situations, towards real but irrational dimensions.

 

Roló

Táp Theatre
ROLÓ
Based on the scenes of András Vinnai

„Ladies and Gentlemen. I have my skills to get into Lajos’ brain. It may seem crazy, because I may not ever get out of there. That this huge cow would just simply forget me! But nooooo! He won’t be able to do that! I’ve warranted that! That if you scummily forget me – I won’t be forgotten anyway!”

A man without memories – Lajos – heroic and hopeless battle with the unreasonable and unknowable world. Nowhere is a familiar face, an object that we’d hold comfortably, the mood of home – no grips. Only momentarily and insecure impressions. Cruel and entertaining human-experiment. The presentation of Dr.Miklós Pumánszky, on the border of reality and simulation. Is it a vision of the professor, a gigantic scam, a performance? How did Lajos lose his capability to remember? Childhood trauma? Unfortunate accident? Or a crime in the background? I can assure you that you’ll never know. Or nor will what happened the owl-like monophthonges in a healthy and an amnesiac human brain. And Cloild? Maybe she doesn’t even need that surgery…

„Táp Theatre is like Everything Bad Vaudeville again, the actors consciously enchance and perform badly, the regular dance-pieces’ choreography is deliberately crap, the songs are purposefully embarrassing, etc. – we could use the expression, parody… Vajdai as a director emphasies visuallity.”

Bálint Kovács

 

Keresők

Anxiety Ltd, or The Name of the Game

The people of cafés and parties in Budapest are so absorbed in harrassed idleness that the agents of the mysterious Anxiety Ltd can easily pursue their unnoticed undermining activities. Everybody expects solution to their lives' problems of somebody else, as our hero András now of Ági then Hanna or the first girl he bumps into and who allows him to love her.

The story of the play is an ironic fairy tale set in Budapest. The protagonist, András, had just become interested in a girl when an agent of the Anxiety Ltd came up to him. The agent tells him that he will have seven days to save that very girl, otherwise the Ltd will make her unhappy for ever, furthermore, if he fails, he himself will become a recruited agent. It all sounds absurd but the man is speaking in such a convincing manner and the girl is so beautiful that András' doubts evaporate. So does the girl and the search can start. The public and private spaces of the city, its subway network, poetry and trees – all interfere with the course of events. Each in its own way.

 

Minden Rossz Varieté

Everything Bad Vaudeville

The company of Táp Theatre is put together by the passionate commitment of bad theatre making. There are too many good theatres. Too many good actors, too many good directors. Too many good plays, too many good productions. Who doesn’t get bored with brilliant lighting, set designs or costumes? Who doesn’t fall asleep from the great music? Bad theatre is a rare treasure, and the rarity grows. We have to appreciate this treasure. We have to take care of and nourish the ancient tradition of bad theatre and protect and keep it alive for the next generations.

 

Alatta Felette

Under Above

There are a dozen actors, directors, musicians, everyday people… Everybody has a story. These stories are going around, get paused, we don’t really know whose story it was after a while. Private and public, personal and common are getting mixed up…

 

Etchno

„The Etchno is basically a folklore production dressed into techno costumes, music and set. … Táp Theatre discovered that the electronic sound, the techno music that consists of various styles of music – is very similar to the Hungarian folk music and dance. This traditional folk-dancing can live with the electronic techno and vice versa.” Kata Gyürke, Népszabadság

 

Kuznyecki esőzések

Rainings in Kuznyeck

Sawing, Chipping and other destroying excersises.

We all want to travel to Crimea. For vacation, holiday, carefree resting. But fate is kinky. It happens, that we find ourselves in Mezsdulecsenszky. Interesting things are going on here as well of course. Tiny bugs, bloodsuckers, murins and other exotic animals. And some of them are dead.

 

Para-frázis

Para-phrase

The ’old’ say, if we dream something, don’t find an explanation and especially don’t share it with others for discussing it….

 

Picadilly Cirkusz

Picadilly Circus

Chaos – it’s not really the state which a war-survivor wishes. But if one gets accompanied by dead soldiers while LikeThese are shooting LikeThose on the streets (and vice versa), moreover waiters and hookers are chasing with solidarity, one could think that this is an extraordinary situation. Which one can’t solve or stop very easily.

The heroes of Picadilly Circus are trying to re-and preorganise their messy lives in a messy world. With humor, pain, music, silence and wooden bridge.

Attention! Feading the actors during the performance is prohibited!

 

Hamupipőke

Cinderella

How would you tell a story without actors? Could you tell it only with lights? With Sound? What happens, if we take the actor, the human off stage, and give the role of storytelling to a machine? Can production elements substitude the human and revive?

This Cinderella is: theatre. An experiment with theatre without actors, which however has the human in the centre. Its absence on stage and its presence – as an audience member, a spectator. Can the spectators force their sensory organs to concentrate on something else on a different, new way as they use to?

 

Kurátorok

Curators

Táp Theatre started a peculiar theatrical experience. We all know, that there are problems with the financial support of theatres in our new democracy. How do boards of trustees work? What production gets how much? Why that production? What are the criterias? How do we feel about the decisions?

 

Virtuális Valóság

Virtual Reality

Virtual travel, NOT with the help of modern technology. The spectators – participants – can get to the lands of their own fantasy with the guidance of the staff – actors. They can reach unkown places, planets, ages… The staff gives shrouds to the participants, which makes it certain that the travellers will experience the story and the performance through only their sensory organs apart from sights.

 

Teliholdkor az emberek olyan bolondosok

People are getting funny at fullmoon

The play is a round dance-like scene-order about agression in a big city. Because the performance (with live music) takes place on the street and the spectators are looking through a railing – hiding – the story has spontaneous elements. Because people are getting funny at fullmoon…

 

Odüsszeisz

Odysseus

Táp Theatre brings closer the culturally aged story of Odysseus through an extatic concert, in rap-opera style.

 

Színek háborúja

The War of Colours

The red, the yellow and the blue are discussing art. They discover that the only authentic form of art is war. The take action….