German premiere

This woman seems to be everything all in one: mother, witch, whore and saint. She keeps digressing from a supposed cooking show and the excessively long kitchen table gradually changes into a witch’s laboratory. Using strange ingredients, the woman prepares a meal and searches for refuge in the company of the people.

»Ipsum – önmagadat« (»Ipsum – yourself«) is about the famous papyrus scrolls that are about two thousand years old and were found in caves on the cliffs of the Dead Sea; the so-called »Qumran scrolls«. These contain religious content that had been completely forgotten.

György Árvai, native of Budapest and born in 1959, studied costume and stage design in Budapest. In 1984 he founded the experimental theatre group Természetes Vészek Kollektíva (The Collective of Natural Disasters) that combines dance, performance, film and music. The company has developed more than one hundred plays and shows them at numerous festivals and on four continents. At the 1st euro-scene Leipzig 1991 it gave a guest performance with the solo »Living space« by Yvette Bozsik and György Árvai.

Ágens, native of Budapest and born in 1965, studied cultural administration and film studies in her hometown. Since 1992 she has been active as singer of contemporary music, director and since 2000 also as opera composer.

»It is rare to experience a theatrical event at which smells pervading across the stage and music that is so intensive it is almost visible … are integral elements. Árvai develops his productions like an alchemist … There is nobody else in this area who produces such great diversity and complexity« (Tamás Halász, www.kultura.hu, Budapest, 16.02.2008).