Eiswind's (Cold Winds) much-fêted premiere was held at the Viennese Burgtheater’s Akademietheater performance hall. Thanks to Karin Bergmann for the invitation. I wrote the piece with Éva Zabezsinszkij and Annamári Láng, and its subject is how aggressive, Eastern European responses to the refugee crisis are transforming formerly liberal societies in the East and West alike. In the performance, in addition to actors of the Burgtheater’s own company, I worked with two former Krétakör colleagues: Zsolt Nagy and Lilla Sárosdi. I’d like to highlight especially my encounter with the theatre’s dramaturge, Hans Mrak, who was a remarkably devoted supporter of the production. It was a great production, which was superbly received. Although it was not our intention, political changes after the premiere confirmed our predictions: Europe’s winds are growing ever colder.

Together with Hungarian activists, we created an interactive theatrical event treating the general conditions presently reigning in Hungary through the story and situations of József Katona’s masterwork, Bánk bán. The young activists featured in the project re-appropriated this national symbol by scraping away the romantic clichés and stereotypes which have built up on it over time. They confronted the opera’s musty protagonists to shape thereby their own national identity, that is to answer the question: what is a society worth calling home, worth fighting and being active for, like? Bánk bán – ACT came about through an international opera project initiated by Novoflot, a German alternative opera company. The premiere was held in Berlin in the cultural space called Radialsystem. Our dramaturge was Miron Hakenbeck.

In Montenegro, I directed a performance titled As far as the eye can see for the Cetinje-based Royal Montenegro Theatre – Zetski Dom company at the request of artistic director Lidija Dedović. In the play, realized under the aegis of the EU Collective Plays! program, we spoke about a kind of Eastern-Europeanism, a general sense of life, drawing on personal material brought by the actors, as well as my own Hungarian and European experiences. The actors played several roles and the loosely-related études were linked up by superb minimalist music composed by Nina Perovic and performed by the actors. The performance was enormously successful; we appeared at almost every significant festival in the former Yugoslavia: Ljubljana, Zagreb, Sarajevo, Podgorica. The production won the special prize at the Montenegro Theatrical Biennale and several other prizes. In 2018 it made it all the way to Paris for a guest performance. I got to know brilliant actors in Montenegro, with whom we understood each other immediately. Special thanks to Kata Gyarmati, who facilitated my work as an interpreter, translator, and dramaturge.

In France I held a three week-long workshop in the theatre workshop of Les Chantiers Nomades. It was a true privilege to work in the Maison Jacques Copeau, where the great French master lived and worked. We held the exercises inside the house and its environs: the one-time rooms, the library, the fabulous garden. For the end of the master class we put together a show written together with the participants, which we performed for the local audience – the village’s 30-odd inhabitants.

I too believe that the foundation of every society is its educational system. How and what we teach determines how new generations relate to reality. Even if this relationship is one of total rejection. The Orbán government effected substantial transformations to education: centralization, retrograde views, overwhelming students and teachers with learning materials and administration, religious views to the detriment of open thinking, etc. As a committed democrat and responsible parent I felt I had to help the teachers who accepted a heavy burden and danger to stand up for a modern and democratic educational system. To help they invited me to take on a role as an organiser of the I Would Teach Movement’s March 15th demonstrations. Many tens of thousands of people took part in the demonstration on Kossuth square, in front of Parliament. This brave and responsible act gave many of us hope. It was good to see simple secondary school teachers and students as they declared war for Hungary’s future. I was a permanent activist and key agent in the movement for a year after the demonstration. We believed our cause would speak to a growing number of people. Unfortunately not even many of the intelligentsia, of cultured individuals, grasped the movement’s significance. And the opposition parties were occupied with their own power plays. The possibility of freedom of teaching and learning in Hungary was ended for a long time.

I found the Orbán government’s handling of the migration crisis intolerable. With their racist campaign against refugees they ignited the Hungarian people’s latent xenophobia. They harangued their voters with lies and aggressive messages. They built a fence and, in the media and in enormous roadside posters, presented people not of the Christian faith and with non-white skin as potential terrorists. Their politics, reminiscent of the darkest periods of the 20th century, terrified and outraged me. We decided with Krétakör’s manager, Dóra Papp, that it was a moral imperative to give voice to our oppositional convictions through a live event. We demonstrated against the government’s infamous quota referendum. The See the person! refugee crisis protest was realised as an act of solidarity between citizens and artists rejecting hate propaganda. The face of our campaign was Róbert Alföldi, who stood up consistently for the rights of refugees all along. During the demonstration I too gave a speech and read out Béla Tarr’s message sent from Sarajevo. Although we could not alter the unwarranted fear and hate inundating Hungarians, I am proud that we were the only ones to assume our sentiment and thoughts openly, on the streets, in an age when even those with the most goodwill in Hungary were silent.

This was the year I created my official Facebook page, where I regularly posted publications as well as opinions in political, social and artistic questions.

The European Cultural Foundation (ECF) and its director, Katherine Watson, awarded the Krétakör Foundation one of Europe’s most prestigious cultural decorations for its cultural work, beneficial too from the social perspective, over the past years. The ECF Princess Margriet Award for Culture is a great honour and recognition of all our work in Hungary for a better and fairer world. In Hungary we received only assaults from the authorities; as in the case of the Krétakör Theatre at the end of the 90s, so now too the useful and uplifting support came from Western Europe. Unfortunately it happened that I was unable to appear personally at the award ceremony in Amsterdam: the event took place on the same day, March 15, as the I Would Teach Movement demonstration which I helped organise. The award jury highlighted especially the Krétakör Foundation’s school-based and educational activities in its laudation: “Their work conducted in high schools is particularly important, as they come into contact with youths who gain through them the opportunity to make their voices heard,” they wrote in the justification. At the reception of the prize three of our former Free School students gave speeches: Ágnes Márton, Miklós Posta and Nóra Schultz.