Co-production of The Symptoms and Trafó House of Contemporary Arts

A sweeping stage mix about encounters, escape tricks and prejudices. About how we are not at all as special as we would like to believe, and that this is all right.

We stand in the doorway and look at the by-passers carrying their stories locked inside. Each day is an expedition. We step outside and join the endless transport of human stories.

Some of the rehearsal took place in a rehearsal room; other parts were rehearsed in public areas. The creators kept Moszkva square in Budapest and its passers-by under close observation. The performance consists of an extended and stratified reading of one minute of contemplating a public area, with ourselves as the point of reference. The personal stories of the five actors are intertwined with the stories of public-space pedestrians the same way a DJ mixes his different sound samples.

We are in search of ourselves in the crowd. We aren’t only witnesses of the change but part of it. Let’s dance.

The performance searches for a common ground beyond commonplace, where we can get closer to understanding another human being through the stories we tell about ourselves. This search is cast into the form of dance and text with lots of music and contribution by a DJ, all in a style that humorous and self-ironic, as well as hyperrealistic without discounting abstraction. The members of the audience may easily recognize themselves in the gestures, movements, and stories on offer, as they would in a pop song.

Commonplace is an artistic collaboration between The Symptoms and director Petra Ardai / Space Theatre (NL). The collaboration started with the short performance I don’t remember being raised like this in 2012, a piece of human statistics and subjective inventory. We spare no effort in relentlessly continuing to chart relationships between the individual and the community. What are moral values anyway? How does one avoid indifference?