The theatre association Front e.V. brought her “Off Theater” to Chemnitz in 2018 for the first time. “Off Theater” is a festival of contemporary theatre, performance and dance art and has since then been held simultaneously in Leipzig, Dresden and Chemnitz. Every year the festival has a different European country of origin as its motto, in 2018 it was all about dance and theatre from Hungary – “Open Hungary”.

From 24 to 26 May 2018, four contributions were performed on the Sonnenberg:

In the off-theatre “Komplex” Veronika Szabó + Mummy`s Sloppy Honey showed their live art performance installation “War Paint”. Three women are getting ready to go out. The audience is invited to watch them doing so and is exposed to an intimate situation, which is transformed into an almost real encounter through the spatial proximity. “War Paint” tells of beauty and strength, but also of insecurity and vulnerability, exploring the relationship of women to their bodies. The accompanying audio installation consisted of small autobiographical stories, which honestly and precisely reveal often unspoken things. The performance has already been performed in London, Exeter and Berlin.

Also in the complex, Valencia James danced her piece “Between the World and Me”, about which she herself said: “‘Between the World and Me’ is a reflection on living in a pre-dominantly white central European society as a woman of Afro-Caribbean origin, with all the awkward encounters and complex questions of identity it involves. Taking its title and starting point from the award-winning bestseller by African American writer Ta-Nehisi Coates, the piece explores the dehumanising violence of stereotypes. The dance performance was followed by an open discussion with the artist.

The film Underdog (Fehér isten) by Kornél Mundruczó was also one of the contributions to the “Off Theater” festival. It tells the story of a dog. What begins like a children’s film quickly develops into a horror trip. The film is often described as a parable of present-day Hungary, was nominated for an Oscar and won the “Un Certain Regard” prize in Cannes, among other things.

Kristóf Kelemen and Bence György Pálinkás’ piece “Magyar akác” (Hungarian Acacia) was the final part of the concert. The piece is about the robinia (or “false acacia”), which many Hungarians consider to be the most “Hungarian” of all Hungarian trees. And this although the Robinia comes from North America. The immigrated plant could therefore be a symbol for an open society. From such an idea, the authors developed their “post-factual documentary piece”, a mixture of poetry slam and installation, of sampled documentary theatre and post-dramatic history piece.