Theater under House Arrest

The apartment theatre operating in Dohány Street in the counterculture environment of the 60s and 70s in Budapest is known to many from urban legends, photographs, and written documents – in a second-hand, fragmented way. It is the photographic capturing of mostly spontaneous, continuously changing performances which is able to “picture” these events, places, and people, however, at the same time it is in conflict with the basics of the initiative, inasmuch as it makes picture space – however involuntarily – stage-like.

The exhibition of Trapéz Gallery highlights episodes from a theatrical experiment running between 1972 and 1976 in Budapest, directing its attention primarily to the interrelations of space, freedom, and the lack of these. As compared to the confined public space controlled by the dictatorship, the personal space, the flat could offer an intermediate space, which was not entirely free but was suitable for creation and re-thinking the relations between the stage and the auditorium. The tension of in and out, the possibility produced by necessity is not freedom yet, however, sometimes it does look quite similar to it.

Exhibition installation: Katarina Sevic.