'A House in Asia' at Trafó

9/11 reframed as videogame - the shocking opening to 'A House in Asia' 

On a huge screen behind the Trafó stage, an airplane simulator plays. We fly over banal, almost-pixelated towns and fields. Then it crosses a wide river and angles up towards its iconic destination: twin slabs of white tower. We've seen the planes hitting the World Trade Centre a thousand times, but never in this first-person videogame format. As the whine of the engines grows deafening, we actually brace for impact.

What follows is the story of the hunt for Osama Bin Laden, played out using tiny models and toy figures. The 'performers' are video camera operators, moving deftly around the 'set' to focus on a range of scenarios that are then broadcast on to the screen. Toy cowboys and 'indians' massacre each other, soldier/cowboys rehearse their attack on a compound, a drive-in with a lone jeep is lit by a small flashing red light. And the eponymous house, a model of Bin Laden's compound, unfolds to become a range of other locations, from the Oval Office to a 'Risk' board that explains the history of the the West's battles with the East. Later, it more literally becomes the hideout of the 'World's Number One Most Wanted'. Or is it?

"Reflections... I see reflections... They come and go... Who am I? Just a warrior. That's all."

'A House in Asia' is about reflections and echoes, multiplying to dazzle us. Our narrator is Matt Bisonette, the man who shot Bin Laden. On stage, he is embodied by a lone actor in a cowboy hat. The first reflection is the figure we see on the screen: a toy cowboy in a toy car, at the drive-in, watching a Western. "I've seen things you wouldn't believe. Attack tanks on fire off the shoreline of Kabul..." It's Roy Batty's final, tragic soliloquy from 'Blade Runner', the sci-fi poetry appropriated to lend reality to one man's unreal experience. 

This is the genius of theatre company Agrupácion Senor Serrano. They sample familiar pop culture - 'cowboys and indians', 'Moby Dick', the Marx Brothers, even Take That - and use these disparate elements to tell a tale that still defies belief: the most powerful country in the world seemingly at war with one man.

Human performers pose like their plastic miniature counterparts, blown-up to enormity on the screen. This is the simplest level of reflection. The company's narrative is far more ambitious. At one point, toy figure/actors playing Navy SEALs discuss their eagerness for the strike on bin Laden's compound to begin. Talk to turns to who would play them in a movie of their impending mission. Abruptly, the model backdrop is pulled away to reveal a film set (including a tiny Kathryn Bigelow toy), with the same figures now playing Hollywood actors, reflecting on their role in 'Zero Dark Thirty'... who then muse on how their lot is better than theatre actors. Another toy set is whipped away and we see a miniature model of the theatre we ourselves are sat in, watching the figures who are playing us. The effect is moving, dazzlingly inventive, and also very funny.



There are not just reflections, but also echoes. Bushes Snr and Jnr - and later Obama - give speeches mimed by a sampled clip of Captain Ahab from 'Moby Dick'. He is labelled, in his screened social media exhortations, as The Sheriff. He is played on the stage by a crude plastic cowboy toy. Bin Laden tweets encouragement to his 'Apaches' (playing al-Qaeda): he is personified, in toy and movie-form, as 'Geronimo' (the genuine codename American forces used). It's a straightforward point, well-made: America falling back on their oldest mythology to make sense of contemporary events. But then the references (and doubles) multiply further to reveal a more complex portrayal. If Bush is Ahab, then Bin Laden is the Whale; so how co-dependent are they? Many have said Bush's presidency was completely unremarkable until the planes hit New York. From that point on, it became mythic. What would one be without the other? 

'The Sheriff' celebrates the assassination of his target: Geronimo AKA Osama bin Laden AKA The Whale, as echoes and reflections collide.

This theme is explored later when Bin Laden's assassination is heralded by a full-on, stetson-twitching line dancing routine... to Take That's "I Want You Back". This isn't an amusing digression, it's another double, another layer of meaning. 'Mark Owen' is the both the name of one member of the boy-band, and the pen-name used by Bisonnette to write his controversial memoir. 

Paradoxically, the amalgamation of these echoes offers us an insight into the 'reality' of the story. And this is the startling cumulative effect of what we see. Each movie reference or musical cue or incredibly detailed toy diorama does not distract us from the subject matter. Instead, it seems like this is the only way it can be told (as Bisonnette's narration repeatedly tells us): as layer upon layer upon layer of reflections.

'A House in Asia' is part of the CAFeBudapest festival.

Story Slam at Brody Studios

Here I go! Taking the stage at Story Slam

As I take to the stage, the crowd cheers me on. I swallow any nerves, draw on the bottle of wine that has lent me the confidence to do this... and launch into my tale.

This is Story Slam at Brody Studios. The format is simple: the audience volunteer to tell a story linked to a theme (suitably for a maiden event, this week it is 'Beginner's Luck'), they put their names in a hat and Nis, the host, draws them randomly. Each storyteller takes the stage, and members of the audience are asked to award them marks out of ten for delivery and for the tale itself. At the end, points are added up and the winner is announced. There are only two rules: the story has to be true, and it can be no longer than five minutes. It's hilarious, often moving, and incredibly diverse: there are yarn-spinners from the USA and UK, but also Denmark, Finland and Syria.

Later, I catch up with Nis Sperling - host, organiser and brave first storyteller of the night - to ask him about his inspirations, fears when starting a new event, and where he sees Story Slam going in the future.

Nils Sperling, host and organiser of Story Slam

"As a trained rhetorician I have always been very fond of all forms of public presentation. Adding a (friendly) competition element just makes it all the more enjoyable, and puts everybody on their toes. I find Poetry Slams a bit too elitist and, honestly speaking, a little earnest and boring. Stand-up comedy, on the other hand, is a bit too daunting to properly entice the audience into becoming performers. So for me, Story Slam is the perfect middle ground where the experts can show off and the enthusiast amateurs can practice their skills (and the occasional super talents can be discovered).

"I have participated in a few Story Slams in Denmark but never hosted one before. Budapest is a good place to start due to the relatively large expat-community who are often curious to try new things and meet new people gathered around a cool activity.

"For me the main fear was that no one would show up and that no one would volunteer to share their stories. I have experienced a few story slams in Denmark, where ten people showed up and only three people told a story. This means the whole shebang comes to an awkward halt after 15 minutes and that can be a bit of an anti-climax. Fortunately, this was not the case with the first Brody Story Slam, where we had 12 story-tellers: around the perfect number providing entertainment for around an hour and a half. For me, the most enjoyable part of the evening was to experience the diversity in the stories and presentation-styles and to see how differently people enjoy and evaluate stories. Each has a preference and this is what makes story-telling such a great art-form.

"Brody Studios is a great partner for slightly bold cultural events in Budapest. It’s a curious venue who welcome new and different types of social activities because they want a big diversity in audience as well. If you have the idea they will really lift the logistical and technical aspect and contribute to a proper and smooth execution.

"For the future, I of course hope we will continuously have a great showing and lots of engaged story-tellers who get to discover their own potential. But I think it could also be really cool to have a group of repeat offenders who do battle month after month and go for the 'crown'."

They say the world is a patchwork of stories, and events like this make it clear how colourful and diverse that patchwork is. The next Story Slam is at Brody Studios on Tuesday 25th October.

Another brave yarn-spinner begins...

CAFeBudapest Festival: 'A Lake'

Hands and arms behave like legs and feet. Feet and legs act like arms and hands. And, with the most subtle twist of wrist or ankle, they can all transform into the necks and heads of flirting swans. 

This is Eszter Kálmán's A Lake, a playful and beautiful performance for two dancers that somehow manages to hover at the borders between ballet, puppetry, voguing and, erm, synchronised swimming. 

The starting point is Swan Lake - and snatches of Tchaikovsky can be heard in the modern electronic score. But there's far more than re-interpretation going on here. The stage is a jet black mirrored surface, littered at the start with what seem to be origami swans, but which we later realise are discarded tissues from a sneezing male dancer (Péter Bercsényi). Or are they? At one point he ceases his sniffling, lifts out a tissue from his pack and with the simplest hand gestures, he transforms a crumpled Kleenex into an egg, unfolded to become the wings of a bird. A female dancer in traditional tutu (Viktória Dányi), emerges en pointe. The music turns to house, she frees her hair and proceeds to use her arms to vogue the ballet moves, striding towards us like a drag queen on a Harlem runway. Later, both strip to Victorian striped swimwear and caps, 'dive' into the surface of the lake, turn on to their backs and perform a routine that reminds us that synchronised swimming is really upside-down ballet.

The theme is transformation, yet the tone is playful rather than tragic: a beach towel and red clothes-peg are stretched, twisted and pinched into a swan's wings, neck and beak; Dányi lifts a white dress over her head and it turns inside-out, dropping to become a black gown. Tissues, towels, clothes-hangers are animated into birds by the dancers. 

These elements of puppetry reach a climax in a routine in which Bercsényi uses a black marker to draw crosses onto the knees, elbows and neck of the frozen Dányi. From each X, he then draws out an invisible string, manipulating her moves like a puppet-master. She pirouettes and lunges, while he circles her, arms inscribing their own patterns in the air as he controls her. Once again, the worlds of voguing and ballet collide.

A Lake is part of the CAFeBudapest festival, a 17-day celebration of the avant-garde, from modern classical to electronic music (including new projects from UK artists The Bug and Squarepusher), theatre, dance and fine art. The descriptions in the programme (that is thick enough to be a guidebook) can be a little pretentious and give the impression that events are pretty cerebral. But the performance tonight is anything but: it is ingenious but also moving, funny, and tender.

It's Dumping Day in District 5 and 7!

Over the course of the chilly morning, large mounds of rubbish have begun to litter the normally beautifully-kept streets of District V and VI. Broken mirrors and decrepit sofas; abandoned toys and stacks of moldy books; smashed boxes, torn down blinds and piles of flattened cardboard. They amass outside chic designer shops on Andrássy út, congregate behind the Opera House, vie for pavement space with café chairs in the Jewish district. Every now and again, a passerby pauses, gasps and pulls some item of 'treasure' from a heap of dusty detritus. Along Bajcsy-Zsilinszky út, I see opportunist students sat on sofas they've co-opted, sharing cans of beer as they wait for friends-with-a-van to arrive and transport their booty.

Apparently, it is Dumping Day in Budapest! Every year, usually the first Saturday of October, the residents can throw out anything they don't want anymore into the street and they will be disposed of for free, collected by garbage trucks on the Saturday morning. 

There's an air of catharsis as businesses take the opportunity to clear out before refurbishment (there's an awful lot of deconstructed air-ducts, deep-fat fryers encrusted with grease and lots of old chairs). Residents decide to finally throw away that stained couch and broken-legged dining table. But there is also that feeling of opportunity. "You can take whatever you want," explains one local lady as she carts away a pretty nice wooden-framed mirror. As apartments are emptied of the old, so by tomorrow they will have been redecorated with the 'nearly new'.

The weather's turned in the past few days, the temperature plummeting from 20 degrees last Friday to near freezing point this morning. An unusually warm September extended the summer season, but now the ruin bar kerts (gardens), have closed, restaurants are dismantling their terraces - and the remains are thrown into the street. It's like an alternate spring clean: announcing summer's end and a chance to refresh your living spaces before winter properly arrives.

Budapest International Documentary Festival: 'Those' review

The BIFD ran between the 24th Sept and 2nd Oct. There was a huge range of films screened, almost all followed by Q&As with the filmmakers. I only managed to see three, but even this limited amount gave me an idea of the scope and relevance of the festival, and the power of the documentary form to be both specific and universal.

"One day, a new kind of creature was spotted in the woods... soon they were everywhere."

Those / Azok (dir: Krisztina Meggyes) is a startling insight into a sentiment that has become common as our refugee crisis intensifies. Unlike many recent docs that seek to show the travails of the migrants, Those instead presents us with the people that fear them. The film starts with fairy-tale narration ("There once was a village...") and charming hand-drawn animation. It then becomes an insightful and sympathetic study of a wealthy rural village in Hungary, and its response to the establishment of a refugee camp not far from its border. 

On Oct 2nd 2016, there was a Hungarian referendum to decide whether the country should reject EU quotas for housing migrants; the BIDF pertinently screened Those a number of times in the two weeks leading up to the vote. Most of the film is composed of single, straight to camera testimonies of the villagers in their homes. The locations are comfy, homely; the feelings they explain are less so. The referendum result is still under dispute: less than 50% voted, but 98% of those who did vote chose to reject the EU quota. Those provides a valuable insight into the origins of sentiments that can be too easily dismissed by liberals (like me) as 'racist' or 'xenophobic'. But the villagers are not knee-jerk reactionaries or incensed right-wingers. They are concerned parents, elderly people who cling to their traditions; human beings whose feelings of danger and insecurity run deeper. Many remember the Communist era, others remember the Nazi occupation. They fought for their way of life and when it is threatened - whether or not you agree with the validity of their fears - we can empathise with their response. 

There is a glimmer of hope towards the end when some of the more elderly residents begin to thaw. They are encouraged by many of the refugees' commitment to church-going, and religion provides a valuable bridge between race, culture and circumstance.

But this is still an unsettling but ultimately human portrait of intolerance, and of a community that could be anywhere in Europe (not least Brexit-era UK) during this migration crisis. Fueled by lack of education and lack of empathy, fanned by exploitative politicians for whom fear is just an election opportunity, these fires need to be understood to be combated.

The National Gallop

Heroes' Square transformed into a racing circuit

In a thunder of hooves and flying sand, horsemen in ornate Hussar uniforms gallop past, swords aloft, so close you can hear the jangle of their spurs. This is the National Gallop. It's one quarter Hunger Games opening ceremony (chariots! Pageantry! Stirring music and victory wreaths!) and three quarters Budapest’s version of Il Palio. The already magnificent Heroes’ Square is transformed into a sand racing track, and over two days you can go and watch national and international championship races along with host of other equestrian events.

Andrassy utca, the wide avenue leading from the centre of town up to Heroes’ Square, is closed to traffic and filled with food vans and stalls. Each represents a Hungarian town or villages who are showcasing their various folk arts. Vendors selling beers and langos (deep-fried pizza bread), are wedged between stalls with an amazing variety of unusual crafts. Equestrian armour and a blacksmith making horseshoes are stand-outs.

A blacksmith peddles his wares on Andrassy utca

The Gallop itself is pretty breathtaking. There’s paid-for VIP stalls surrounding the track, but we decide to spectate from the centre. Gates open for a short time between each event and we cross the track into the central square (which is actually a circle). For such a popular event, it is remarkably easy to find a place near the front, where you can really feel the thud of hooves as the horses tear around the circuit.

Horses have played a major role in Hungarian culture since the first settlers in the 10th century. The National Gallop is a celebration of this tradition, and particularly of the Hussars, the Hungarian light cavalry that was one of the most efficient fighting forces in pre-20th century Europe. The pageantry is impressive. Riders decked out in armour and ornate uniforms from the 10th to 19th-century gallop past, swords drawn, flags billowing, soundtracked by majestic orchestral anthems.

But the races themselves are the highlight. Each rider and horse represents a town or village in Hungary (similar to the competing Sienna districts in Il Palio).

Chariots!

The chariot race is, for me, the most exhilarating. The final is a hard-fought battle, the drivers clinging to their flimsy-seeming chariots as they hurtle around the circuit. The crack of whips and thunder of hooves makes me flinch as they bolt past. The green team lead until the final few metres when suddenly the gold team pull out and surge forward to victory. There’s a huge fanfare as the winners canter to the podium and a victory wreaths are placed around their necks. Forget the recent Ben Hur remake… this is the real thing.

The Railway Children on the Children's Railway

On a tiny forest rail platform, the sombre-faced teenage boy in a starched uniform politely approaches to sell us tickets and check departure times. Shortly after, the train itself pulls up, the carriage-door opened by an equally earnest teenage girl. Along the platform, a young boy with a flag signals the departure, and we set off, our tickets checked by a more ebullient lad of about ten.

The Gyermekvasut (Children's Railway of Budapest)

By turns both charming and slightly sinister, this is the Children's Railway of Budapest.  It's a leftover from the city's Soviet past, restored in 1990. During the Thirties, the Communist government created these 'Pioneer' railways, run by the highest-achieving members of the party's youth wing. It was a good way to build team spirit and identify future leaders. They opened Pioneer railways all across the USSR, this one in 1947.

The schoolchildren's solemnity is appropriate. This is serious business. Only the highest academic performers may apply. They are trained for four months and take the same professional exams as adult rail workers. They form elite cadre, and to be selected is one of the highest privileges for a young person in Budapest. Though adults still actually drive the trains (boo!) the kids work as conductors, sell and check tickets, and even man the points.

Despite their sincere demeanours there is a fun element. They are given two days off school every month for their services, and during the holidays they attend summer camps similar to those in America - like railway-themed scouts.

The Zugliget libegő (chairlift): a surprisingly serene way to reach Budapest's highest point

It's a delightful and eccentric way to get around the beautiful forests of the Buda hills. We initially take a chairlift from Zugliget to János Hill, to visit the Elizabeth Tower. Like most 'Elizabethan' locations in the city, this is named after 'Sisi', the beloved 19th century Austrian Empress who adored Hungary and pushed for it to be self-governed despite disapproval in Vienna. The tower is the highest point in Budapest and when we turn our gaze away from the city, to the hills and valleys to the east... we can see Slovenia!

The view from the top of Elizabeth's Tower. In the distance: Slovenia!

It's a short walk through wooded glades, down to the Children's Railway. We catch the train down to the small town of Namafa for delicious lunch at Gyurgi's Bistro. Then the Cogwheel Railway back down to Buda proper. Three unusual transport methods in one afternoon!

As we pass each station, the uniformed children salute the train and passengers. Some, beneath their stern caps, even crack a smile.