URBANRABBITs was a circus-theatrical co-production between the French CNAC (Centre National des Arts du Cirque) and Krétakör. It premiered under Árpád Schilling’s direction on December 17, 2009, at the school’s headquarters in Chalons-en-Champagne, roughly 200 km east of Paris. In January 2010 the production set off on an international tour in the course of which we performed it almost 80 times in France, Italy, Malta, Romania, Serbia, and Hungary.

The production’s narrative – the fruit of close to three months’ workshopping – drew on the 16 artiste’s personal stories. The ‘city rabbits’ metaphorised quotidian skirmishes between men and women; acrobatic elements offered a unique, poetic language for these struggles. Artistes’ principal aim is to astonish audiences. The youths in our production, however, renounced the circus convention of repeating failed tricks. On these nights audiences could experience the human body’s unboundedness and its vulnerability simultaneously. In accordance with Árpád Schilling’s artistic credo, the performance’s aesthetic was condensed and simplified: performers wore their own rehearsal clothes, and produced no independent scenery and set: the theatrical space was constituted by the students’ own circus tools. Nevertheless the production embodied the ideal of total theatre, as, from the realist theatre’s toolkit to impressive circus spectacle, the performers drew on a range of theatrical genres, and they themselves played music, sang, and danced.

Download the PRESS MATERIAL (in French) here

CAST

Performed by Audrey Louwet, Benoit Fauchier, Coline Garcia, Damien Droin, Gehlker Fragan, Jean Charmillot, Jérome Galan, Joris Frigerio, Julie Tavert, Kilian Caso, Marion Collé, Matthieu Gary, Matthieu Renevret, Rémy Bernard, Vasil Tasevski

Directed by Árpád Schilling
Music: Lawrence Williams
Artistic collaborator: Adél Kollár, Vittecoq Marc
Technical team: Auffray Alexis, Julien Mugica, Pierre-Yves Dubois

Photo: Péter Fancsikai, Máté Tóth Ridovics

PRESS

• András Sztrókay: Játék a sátorban. Színház, 01. 10. 2010. 
  “Schilling discovers the essence of circus together with the audience. He plays more than once with the question “Why?” – which it really isn’t customarily to raise in the circus. “You’re an idiot” —cries an acrobat standing on the ground to one suspended up high after the latter throws down the rope he climbed up on. Later, when the new rope is discovered, he offers a solution too: “Come down instructively.” Schilling expected precisely this, instruction, from the acrobats; it’s with this that he palpably wanted to imbue the stunts. And he succeeds, even if that particular lesson is not at all a tangible, palpable thing – as the story doesn’t quite come together either. Rather it’s the series of associations, feelings, and ideas which are interesting – and the genuinely trans-artistic toolkit which the performers deploy."
   
• Ki a színházból!, Népszabadság, 21. 06. 2010.
  “The acrobat acts as if he risks his own life – sometimes even does so. The actor performs someone else’s fate. Under Árpád Schilling’s leadership, the acrobats demonstrate not only their skilfulness but also their personality. They play themselves, that is they play a young boy or girl, who – hanging from a hemp rope or balancing on a wire, turning in a ring, twisting themselves into ribbons, scrambling on bicycles, falling from heights or finding new rope in a seemingly hopeless situation – does nothing but search for a companion. Essentially the same thing happens in the two sections between the acts dubbed Prologue and Epilogue. The title of the first here in Hungary is Parisian habits, the second Solitudes, but both are about the same thing, the latter. More precisely they aim at the same thing. Because the text is simple, concise, sometimes really just signals. They lead spectators to what the movements, sometimes meagre mimicry and extensive music richly express. A great two hours. Don’t believe it? Go see it. And if you do too. Can still be seen this week."
   
• László Valuska: Lejönni az egekből látványosan. Index.hu, 24. 06. 2010.
   
• Mauro Alvoni: Raffinati funamboli per il circo giovane di Urban Rabbits. La Nouva Ferrara, 13. 05. 2010. 
   
• A circus of poetic fantasy. Times of Malta, 08. 04. 2010.
   
• kadarm: Már megint csinálják a cirkuszt. hvg.hu, 08. 06. 2010. (interview)
   
• Schilling Árpád a Bázison. Est.hu, 07. 06. 2010. (interview)
   
• David Gwenola: Urban Rabbits. szinhaz.hu, 27. 11. 2009. (interview)