Karaoke Europe Festival | PanoDrama: Slaves of Justice

Performed by: Kata BARTSCH, Róbert KARDOS, József KÁDAS, Viktor NAGY, Tamás ÖRDÖG, Emőke KISS-VÉGH, Krisztina URBANOVITS and 12 laypeople in the jury

Dramaturgy: Judit GARAI, Anna HÁRS Anna, Anna MERÉNYI
Video design: Balázs BALOGH, Éva TASKOVICS
Lighting designer: Balázs CSONTOS
Original drama teachers of the community project: Yvette FEUER, Veronika SZABÓ
Karaoke collaboration partners: Jana SVOBODOVÁ, Philipp SCHENKER, Ted van LEEUWEN

Directed by: Anna LENGYEL

A PanoDrama production in coproduction with Archa Theatre, Truc Sphérique, 5te Kwartier in the framework of Karaoke Europe

About PanoDrama

    “Outstanding names in the (independent) theatre are Schilling and Krétakör, Mundruczó, Béla Pintér, Viktor Bodó (Sputnik) and among the up and coming HOPPart, Péter Kárpáti and the Secret Company, some works of Maladype and PanoDrama is becoming a new member of the club.”
György Szabó, managing director of Trafó, House of Contemporary Arts in his farewell interview
 
The only verbatim documentary theatre, PanoDrama is an organisation founded by the dramaturg and producer Anna Lengyel, originally devoted to the better trafficking of new drama and emerging theatre artists between countries on the one hand and developing new plays and documentary pieces on the other.
    In 2009 PanoDrama conceived and produced a three-month playwrighting workshop for beginners and launched its first documentary theatre project - also the first in Hungary - to be followed by others, always based on verbatim interviews and research, always related to acute social issues and always involving a theatre-in-education programme with those concerned.
    Full productions have included the Hungarian award-wiming premiere of Martin Crimp’s Attempts on Her Life, as well as Sarah Ruhl’s Hungarian award-winning premiere of The Clean House and the Tony-winner US-Hungarian coproduction of Untitled Mars directed by Jay Scheib.

Social-political theatre
    In an effort to fulfill theatre’s primary role of “holding a mirror to nature”, promoting discussion and furthering social change, PanoDrama launched an ambitious project whose first year focuses on prejudices and racism against Roma in 2010.
     The first project was a three-day public festival bearing the title “Fighting racism with Elfriede Jelinek” and included related rehearsed readings, workshops, lectures, discussions and a theater-in-education workshop and presentation about racism against Roma with Romany and white youths.
    A full production of Elfriede Jelinek’s award-winning Rod, Crook and Staff discussing the racist murders of Roma in Burgenland followed in April directed by the renowned filmmaker Robert Pejo, whose award-winning Dallas Pashamende presented another face of Roma misery. A parallel TIE programme includes school visits and workshops with young Roma and non-Roma.

    Word for Word (2010) was the first Hungarian verbatim production, based on over sixty hours of interviews with victims, family members, survivors, mayors, minority representatives, men - and women - on the street, the killers’ employer and many others, about the murderous random racist attacks against Gypsies in 2008-2009, which resulted in six deaths, dozens of injured and hundreds of thousands terrorized and in fear for their lives among the Roma community.  Word for Word opened to great critical and popular acclaim and has been touring internationally since including a stop at the Archa Theatre’s Akzent Festival in 2012.

    In April 2012 PanoDrama premiered its cross-section verbatim piece on education in Hungary called To Learn, To Learn, To Learn which included three civilian experts and was also received by positive reviews. A revival of this piece premiered in February 2014 with half of the scenes entirely new, reflecting the dire changes in the public education system is Hungary and with new music from Karaoke partner, Ted van Leeuwen.
    
    The most significant workshop readings in 2013 alone included Moisés Kaufman’s The Laramie Project and Peter Weiss’ The Investigation on the Holocaust Memorial Day at the National Theatre.