Saturday, 22nd January, 2011 20:00 Trafó (120')
Forte Company
Waiting for Godot

Forte is a young company founded by its director, choreographer Csaba Horváth, in 2005. This group of actors and dancers is experimenting with a form of expression previously unknown in Hungary. Their aim is to create a new, homogenous language with the help of bodies, voices, dance, music and text. The genre of "physical theatre" thus redefined tries to think in a different way about storytelling, situation, scene-building, stage time, performance space, dramaturgy. It calls forth a particularly exciting and original method of acting.

Besides dance, other art forms play a significant role in the company's performances. Their collaborators include internationally acknowledged scenographer Csaba Antal and composer Nils Petter, both of whom play an active role in the creative process, and Nigel Charnock, founder of DV8 in their recent cooperation entitled Revolution (opening in February 2011).

Though Forte is a relatively young company, its work has already achieved significant success, judging by the reactions of audiences and professionals. Their performance Kalevala appeared in the program of the festival organised by the Union des Théâtres de l'Europe in 2008 .

“We are working and searching. We are trying to hold and put together the materials, and indeed, our goal is often the creation of complexity, but sometimes the opposite happens: we get rid of the tools of expression and go for simplicity. The composition of dance, script, music and fine arts comes naturally in the modern theatre. It’s called contemporary theatre. Dance itself is fine art.” (Csaba Horváth)

A tight unity of speech and movement gives rise to that coherent language, the clear enunciation of which is the task of the artist, and to the search for which Horváth Csaba and the Forte Company have committed themselves. According to Beckett’s esthetic self-definition, “there is nothing to express, nothing with which or by which to express, no power to express exists, no desire to express, only the obligation to express”; he dreamt of an art which did not “rebel against its own sublime lack of meaning”.
The choreographer/director and his company try to present the special relationship of Beckett’s world to death, silence and music through spoken language and visual representation. The important element of the performance is the resourceless body and its relation to mortality.

Vladimir – József Kádas
Estragon - Csaba Krisztik
Lucky - Virgil Horváth
Pozzo - Máté Andrássy
Fiú - Borbála Blaskó

Set: Milorad KRSTIĆ
Costume: Mari BENEDEK
Light: Ferenc PAYER
Sound: Gábor KERESZTES
Choreographer, director: Csaba HORVÁTH

They play and wait. They play a game while waiting. More precisely: waiting is a game to them. Thus we gradually get the feeling that they’re more excited by the roundness of the ball than they would be by Godot himself. Vladimir always spins the football on his index finger when he reminds Estragon of Godot’s arrival, and he almost dismissively answers: right. Right – and they keep on kicking the leather around. Time runs on relentlessly as the galactic football called Earth spins swiftly around its axis.
Waiting for Godot is a game. Waiting for Godot is a terribly exciting pastime. In light of this, the spectator isn’t too keen on the thought of what would happen if… If Godot were, after all, to  arrive.

Csaba Králl, revizoronline.com

Suppoerted by: NKA, NEFMI, Trafó