Occident Express - Rehearsals Started

On 10 January, rehearsals for the next big stage performance of Szigligeti Theatre started. The Hungarian premiere of Occident Express by acclaimed Romanian-French playwright Matei Vișniec will take place on 1 March. The show will be directed by Zalán Zakariás.

Occident Express is part of the author’s Balkans Trilogy, continuing the critical discourse about the poignant differences between Eastern and Western societies. The show features the distinctive characters of ex-Soviet member states as well as the so-called East-European “feeling” in the light of Western European wealth and stereotypes. Where does the West start? What is East? How does the contrast between the two cardinal directions influence the way the different cultures define themselves? What are the effects of the new age of migration? And where do human beings stand amongst all this?

It is not the first time that director Zalán Zakariás collaborates with the Oradea company. In the season of 2010/2011, he put to the stage the play Six Characters in Search of an Author by Luigi Pirandello, with a resounding success, followed by The Barber of Seville by Beaumarchais in the season of 2012/2013. Zalán Zakariás was born in Baraolt, Romania, in 1982. He started his acting studies in 2001, at the Shakespeare Academy of Acting in Budapest, which he interrupted, moving on to directing: from 2002 to 2006, he was a student of stage direction at the I. L. Caragiale Academy of Drama and Film in Bucharest. He debuted as a director with Children of the Sun by M. Gorky, the exam performance of the graduating acting class of Babeș-Bolyai University Cluj-Napoca in 2004. He has worked for the National Theatre of Budapest, the Hungarian Opera of Cluj-Napoca, the Hungarian State Opera, Csokonai Theatre Debrecen, he is a stage director of Tamási Áron Theatre Sf. Gheorghe, as well as the artistic director of Tomcsa Sándor Theatre Odorheiu Secuiesc.

Matei Vişniec (1956, Rãdãuți) is a French-Romanian playwright and journalist who has written dozens of influential dramas both in French and in Romanian. He has studied philosophy at the University of Bucharest, then, in 1977, he turned to playwriting. In the following ten years, he wrote 20 dramas, but all of them were forbidden by the Romaniai censorship. In 1987, he left for France. Since then, he publishes mainly in French, having gained French citizenship. After the fall of Communism, Matei Vişniec has become one of the most played Romanian playwrights, with over 30 plays presented on stage in Romania, his frivolous and surprising texts gaining popularity in Hungarian theatres as well.