presentation of work-in-progress
HOTEL-LABORATORY

This summer Krétakör was reorganised. The second part of its name, "Theatre", has been dropped, the company dissolved, the brand itself remains. It is now a smaller group under the management of Máté Gáspár, specializing in project management with a circle of freelancing artists. These actors are being called together by Árpád Schilling for each of his projects. Instead of producing theatre performances and playing them in repertory, their aim now is to plan, organise and execute one-off and irreproducible interdisciplinary public art actions in all kinds of public spaces: occupied or vacant buildings, a village, a district, a city in Hungary or abroad. Schilling's first experiment of this kind was the international project The Astronomer's Dream in June 2006. It was performed as part of the Kapolcs Valley of Arts festival. This philosophical fantasy-play evolved from the lives and with the participation of the local residents. The second was the first public appearance of the new, reorganised Krétakör. The Apology of the Escapologist was produced and performed at the MC93 Bobigny Theatre in Paris in May 2008. Collaborating with the communities of the Parisian suburb, where the theatre is and which is home to members of all minorities living in France, the international team of Krétakör invited the representatives of various cultures to its own cultural home to talk and to play together followed by the gaze of an audience that came all the way from central Paris.

In November 2008 Krétakör will begin to take over its new base. It's going to be a legal squat in a 600 square metre half-restored, half-run-down "flat" on the second floor of an old Budapest block. Visitors will enter into a laboratory, where professional researchers will be analyzing the ontogenesis of a hotel's residents. According to our plans, the creators will call the block's and the district's residents and communities to join them in this hotel as playmates and to ponder over the issues of existence and co-existence. Krétakör still considers public appearance an experiment, a work-in-progress. Familiarization with a method, acquisition of a skill and answering a question, whether, as the only guarantee of its personal development, it's able to turn its many years of theatrical experience for the use of common good.

In the second half of their visit our guests can take part in discussions. Some of the issues will be the relationship between theatre and philosophy, the personal "self-writing", and the communication directed towards and coming from the audience.