"O how long we will not be, as the world goes on
– neither name, nor sign shall remain after us.
Before it we were not and missed it not
after it, when we are gone, it’ll be as before.”

From the poem of Omar Khayyam, 11th century Persian poet

Before / After (Előtte-utána) is an exciting formal experiment of poetic beauty, not a series of scenes following conventional dramaturgy; its construction is comparable to a musical composition’s. It might best be called a word-opera, in which each character plays their own separate part, yet a kind of wholeness emerges from it all. The text, which contains more description and authorial instruction than dialogue or action, leaves ample room for inspiration in the director, the actor – and the spectator.

The fragmentary stories, ‘cut’ akin to film, condense life’s improbability and secretiveness, its triviality and banality, its fragility and unpredictability, its happiness and unhappiness; the apparently accidentally appearing and disappearing figures’ stories are woven together. The author pieces together a panorama of human existence from everyday, curious or surreal elements, something like the experience recounted by those who return from clinical death, who can look at their whole lives ‘laid out’ as if in a single picture. Threaded through the play are the motifs of decay, of infertility, of time’s merciless destruction, and of irreversible change, after which ‘nothing shall be the same again as it was before it’. Alongside pain however another ground note sounds: that of gaiety. The author looks with humour, playfulness and a loving irony, upon his stumbling and drifting, love-making and quarrelling, remembering and questioning heroes.

Roland Schimmelpfennig is one of the most important members of the new playwright generation that emerged in contemporary German theatre in recent years. Dozens of his plays have been awarded several prizes and translated to numerous languages. Before / After originally premiered in 2003 at the Hamburg Schauspielhaus and has since been performed at numerous theatres across Germany and Europe.

Written by Roland Schimmelpfennig 
Hungarian translation: Anna Veress

CAST

Performers, in order of appearance: Mari Törőcsik, Zoltán Mucsi, Borbála Péterfy, Zoltán Bezerédi, Ervin Nagy, Ferenc Elek, László Katona, Sándor Terhes, Eszter Csákányi, Lilla Sárosdi, Ági Szirtes, Péter Scherer, Annamária Láng, Ernő Fekete, Ferenc Valter, Gábor Rácz, Andrea Moldvai Kiss, Ferenc Lengyel, Gergely Bánki, Károly Hajduk, Judit Rezes, Péter Takátsy

Music: Gergely Vajda
Choreography: Pál Frenák
Lights: Pethő József
Prompter, assistant: Judit Fenyvesi
Dramaturgy: Anna Veress
Production manager: Balázs Erős
Directed by Árpád Schilling

Photo: Dorottya Szabó

PRESS

• István Sándor L.: Közben. Ellenfény, 01. 02. 2006.
   
• Péter Molnár Gál: Előtte-utána. Színház, 13. 01. 2006.
   
• Sándor L. István: Schimmelphenniget rendezni – Joint interview with Tamás Ascher, László Bagossy, Géza Bodolay, Árpád Schilling, Ellenfény, 2006/8
   
• Előtte-utána. Pesti Műsor, 12. 01. 2006. (interview)