 Hello, hello. My name is Rosa Maria Cisneros-Kostich and I am collaborating with the Independent Theatre Hungary. I am really honored to sit down with Rodrigo Baloch and Martin Iyes from the Independent Theatre Hungary. They are the directors, the brains behind the theater company and it's just really lovely to sit down and speak with you today about Village Day. Thank you both for joining me. As we've done in previous conversations, Martin you will be helping with translation but also feeding into the conversation and Rodrigo you will be talking to us from your perspective as director but also as part of of being very close to the work. Hello, hello. So can you introduce yourselves please? I'm greeting the audience all around and then Rodrigo Baloch the artistic director of Independent Theatre Hungary and I'm Martin Iyes, the operative leader of Independent Theatre Hungary and Rodrigo Rowe and directed the play and performance Village Day and I have the work as a dramaturg. It's a dramaturg, yes. So you two have a very close relationship in collaborating for many years. Can you tell us a little bit about the kind of idea for this work and where that came from? Our theater is fundamentally an experimental theater. So we many times do some kind of works we've never done before. But as we are usually very enthusiastic and interested in some new topic we are ensured that it will work out well either if we don't have experience on the given field. So we we met with the informal money landing which is also the topic of the performance Village Day through research. So we know a cultural anthropologist Judith Durst who has been researching this topic for a decade long. So the oratory is a quite relevant phenomena in small villages in Hungary and she shared findings of her research on this topic and based on these findings and some of the main stories we created the play in a few years. So it was the longer period and when figuring out the stories when creating the play which lasted from 2017 to 19 and then the theater rehearsal it tells what's a simpler issue and we finally performed the performance in 2010. And there's something quite I think in general this applies to the way you guys work where you spend some time researching and developing the topics or the themes or the characters. But particularly with this work it feels like you respected the space and the time for the work to come to life. Was it difficult to create some of the characters in the in the piece the writing of it the story the things that it goes through? So which was the most important for us to create the character of the protagonist who is a woman who is doing her jury in the community and to to make her character denied and credible. We worked on her character four of our colleagues. And when we fixed the main character we created the other characters in relation to her so just an example it was very important to figure out what is she really dealing with so for example we decided that she doesn't work only with moneylending but also make sure that people have a fire boot for the winter and put in the family if the children are sick then they can get the medicine also sell tobacco the only thing she doesn't work with is alcohol and then we had a look at her client that who are the ones who go and get the creation of the other characters was quite simple I also come from a village community so I'm at a very diverse career graph that what which kind of people exist in village communities and how they interact with each other and cooperate with us. Yes and there's one of the things that I found quite interesting about the work is that the character the central character is quite complex as you said and you offer a perspective from we can see the different perspectives of why she might be or not be doing something and there's also like a no judgment you know the way it's presented there's no judgment on the she's you know doing something you know I really get a sense of survival that this character and the different people are trying to survive and so can you talk I'm assuming that was perhaps intentional but maybe is there something you can talk to about that this idea of survival of many perspectives and removing judgments thank you for your question and this topic because it was also very important for us so it was our intention to show a good patron so it's important because also in Hungary and probably also another part of the world when it's about grocery and it's about informal money lending we only think on these people as criminals who ruin the lives of other people so there are quite wide stereotypes about people doing grocery and we should also declare that the the formal money lenders the fans usually don't give any other opportunities for the people living in the poverty so they can only go to the usually so we have a saying in Hungary maybe it's also in other parts of the world that if you want to get credit from the bank then first of all you should prove that you don't need the credit so as the banks don't give any opportunities for these people then only the the usually can ensure that that they can do their funerals their family celebration if anything has a problem or financial crisis then only these people can help so about informal money lending it's illegal in Hungary but the community of this play doesn't have any problem with this woman for 10 years because she ensures the existential security for these people and lending money for them the problems only start when the former user came up from the prison who was there before and made the business and this guy who comes out from the prison was not like a good one but also a very violent one who got back his money with any kind of so we draw the picture of the white conscience and the women woman who also takes responsibility for and here comes the turn of the play and in here we also show a kind of social critique of today's Hungarian night and this is also a product that the community members who are under the pressure of any authority they still support the power of authority even if the functioning of this authority is again their interest we shouldn't go very far away we should just think on Mr Orban or Prime Minister he caused a lot of harms for very diverse parts and despite this fact he's in the in the parliament again for the third time with two-thirds of the power and it's the same in small villages and communities so if you have a big pressure on you from your authority but you have the feeling that okay at least I have some existential security or there is some net under myself then I don't want to move my authorities or leaders so beside the character of Mara the president it was also very important to show the characters of her clients so financial culture of people in general Hungary is very low attempt to them so they can plan their money and carry the mom and that's also a reason why informal money landing and uh and uh functions of so we will manage that for uh credit and they don't even think on the future when they have to so actually the protocol is the only uh reflect on the demand of the society when she starts she didn't want to be uh luxury but uh she was asked once by her uh friend lady friend to get some credit and that's how this whole story starts and is there something that you remember um maybe from audience feedback or anyone who was part of the research and development phase um that saw the work was there any uh memories or feedback from anyone from those spaces that you can recall that stands out because it's it's a very sensitive topic this and as you said you know even the character in the story didn't realize and maybe reflect on credit or society in that way so I wonder if if people watching the work maybe had similar reactions or anything that you remember that you heard from feedback so it's very important to see the differences between the audience members who come from small villages and who actually know all the details of this phenomena and it's also very different if somebody comes from the academic factor and might have just met this phenomena in an article or the second part of the audience it was very shocking the performance and the story so for the audience members coming from small villages it wasn't such a big surprise how it works but it is also important for them to face the challenge of lacking financial culture and learning and things like that so there were quite a diverse reaction what it may be more interesting that at the end of the performance we invite the audience for a dinner and during the um during the dinner it's also a change so so this time we have we got a lot of interesting feedbacks like for example there is a mayor in the in the play who doesn't really work in order to develop the the village most of the town middle class audience think that this mayor is a positive character meanwhile we are showing a racist and poor and the people coming from the town or capital and middle class they don't want to see that hey this guy's great once after performance we made a play with the audience and we gave them small pieces of paper and asked them how they want to contribute to the development of the village and many of people said that they would support the mayor and they would really like the mayor so meanwhile this this character of the mayor has also a similarity to our primary and this is the real paradox from which i've been speaking about that even despite our own interest we support our our leaders who to give pressure on us and i think that's a really um lovely way that you reflect on society um you offer a moment to maybe stop and think what are we doing how are we um thinking about people in positions of power whether it's the mayor or the main character the protagonist um and so it's it's you know when i think about the work i feel like i'm a bird looking at this village from the top and seeing these various people these various um ways of kind of thinking being uh it's like a web this matrix and while when i look at one person maybe it doesn't make sense but together it's a village it makes sense to me and it works or it doesn't work but somehow it's you know there's something that moves it along um so can you tell me a little bit about the title of how you decided on village day and and um yeah a little bit about where that came from um so it's a quite uh usual practice in Hungary that once in a year in every village there's village day when everybody can eat and drink a lot and it's financed by the mayor or by the state and this story is played on this day and there is a celebration in this village but then there's a celebration turns and it's not so sweet anymore but thank you for mentioning it earlier that uh you had the feeling that that's the bird you were looking at from the village i think that the stage design has a very important uh so if you show a village in a in a traditional stage in the theater then it can be so much credible and not so realistic and that's why we choose the center part in healing the middle of Budapest um for for the scene of the performance he said so on this hill we were able to to show the structure and the function of and also for this reason the the genre of this performance is uh walking or hiking performance or gastro walking performance and the audience members are treated as uh tourists or visitors who came to this village day and it was declared by the first at the first moment of the performance and on tourists on village days usually tourists can taste the local typical foods or anything like that so and this is uh quite much as you mentioned also a taboo topic that nobody speaks about how much money you have in your wallet that so besides uh content it was also important how to find a form in which the people can accept this topic and uh not run away from hungarian spirit is quite simple people they will be also give them experiences like this also giving them nice lemonade and taste a lot of cheese and afterwards we show uh a scene where it shocks the person and can't even install all the the cheese which has been eaten maybe i pass the sheet out but you could and then we ensure uh some minutes of walk next to the uh towards the next scene in life uh and eat the cheese and think about the former so it was calculated and measured uh quite much how much walking how much interaction with the audience how much um scenes only between the actors and so on and just back to the bird you mentioned what i say is a snake which goes up on the on the hill and it makes three rounds making the work but it's end of all rounds uh by his own uh tail and also the audience and the scenes do like three consensical uh circles and always come back to the same point because i want to provide some that this is only a very hidden symbol and the only the ones that i watch from above at the bird this is a symbol that uh okay so uh this symbol that informal money landing has a thousands year of history and people always have uh need uh to to get this security that if i don't have something but you have something then i can pay us in the community so what is our opinion that it's not first to make a crime or to treat as a crime all kinds of informal money landing but it might be a bit better to handle it in some cultural or more fair uh ways but to and to prohibit it totally doesn't really function and i think that that's there there are a couple of things in there one is that you know the circular experience that you're offering to then end up in the same place is is really as you say measured and really careful and i also you know know was aware that in the middle of this major city like budapest you're doing you know a village a show on village and this experience that people are invited to come and experience this village life in this kind of you know chaos of a big city but also you know this point about um not making it illegal there wouldn't be a need for money laundering if other needs were met so it's as you say it's it's very easy to say okay you can't do this but that doesn't really solve a problem it's it just makes it you know and people will find a way to survive one way or another and so this village day kind of offers insight into how people i think are going around in circles are trying to find solutions but also are human you know they invite you to you know you experience the cheese or experience the walking and through that action through being part of that i think it gives you insights it gives you some perspective on this village life on what it means to be in that a person in part of that network and it's not so easy to just kind of remove and say okay now this is prohibitive because once you share a meal once you share um an experience i think that that's something very human um so yeah i think that the play is incredibly incredibly intelligent and so careful so many parts of it are really reflecting and holding a mirror up for people um you know i'm not when i think of banks they give money to people all the time but we don't say shame on banks but we say shame on money laundering so you know that the symbolism there is is very very intelligent and very powerful and you know that came through to me in many ways these these little touches in there so it's fantastic really congratulations on the work and it's very layered very deep very um i'm not surprised it took a long time to get it kind of to this performance level because you can see that there's a lot of thought process behind it is there anything else you'd like to share with people with our listeners and viewers around about the work or about uh many things we've discussed today i think we lot about most of the important issues maybe just a small thing that that uh when we made this performance uh when we performed it the first time it was after the lockdown of uh the first uh first period of lockdown in 2020 in in june and and it was also like the first opportunity for most of the theater goers in hundry to go to theater because this time the building theaters were still closed but it was allowed to do like walking outside so it might be also interesting too for other theaters to go out and to to use parks or any kind of outdoors then you don't have to make either your scenery so it's also cheaper and you can involve people you can't involve otherwise and even during this uh covid period or when people can't really uh enter or don't want to enter in both places also a good opportunity so maybe this is a general issue sure thank you very much thank you both thank you so much for for sharing and talking about the various layers of the work um and also during a time like like lockdown you know that performance it's it's again i think it it speaks to the kind of resilience of the community that if there's one situation we find a solution or a way around and that idea of survival so um again you know i don't know what was initially imagined but this outdoor experience just works so well um so congratulations again and it feels like it's it just came together quite nicely