Open-Gate Theatre
2007. okt. 9. Szerző: tartkapuszinhaz
About Us…
The legendary Open Gate Theatre – full of festival prises and TV and other Big Shows – today works in Kispest – Budapest. The script below is the formerly writting about the history of the company…
Our theatrical company was founded in Budapest, 2005. February, in the V. ward of the National Institute of Psychiatry and Neurology. The head physician of this ward is D. Magyar Iván György.
Let us say some words about the history of this institute. It has been the Hungarian centre of mental sicknesses for 139 years. At the same time it has been and it is the methodical, instructive and research centre of the Hungarian psychiatry. The institute is famous of its art-therapical activity which is functioning undinimishedly until the closing of the institute.
Our patients have the chance to make a prove of their talents in the most various ways of the arts. With our help they free and form the essence, substance of the slumbering, timid, timirous and unsure powers of their soul. They can choose making ceramics, glass-paintings, pictures in the pastel and drawings in the frames of various therapical groups.
We have founded the Open-Gate Theatre for our patients who show interest in literature, music, having good performing ability, longing for acting. Our aim and mission was to give some peace to our fellow-creatures who are mentally tired with the curing power of the verses, the music and the beauty of words.
Our performers were recruited from our patients. In the beginning we produced our performances, themes of which renewed monthly, only among the walls of our institute to the audience of our patients and colleagues.
With regard to the increasing interest, shortly we had to choose wider space to our performances. Our initiative set out from our mental ward and after some months we were given the possibility to show us in the chapel of our institute wich can hold 200 peoples. Subsequently, we were striving for stepping out from the walls of our hospital and we accepted numerous respects.
We produced our rhyming-musical performances, which had various themes, but always describing human relations, in pension-homes, prisons, open-air theatres.
In the year 2007 we were participants of several theatrical events. Among others we took part in the II. Budapest Fringe Festival in the frames of Budapest Spring Festival- organized every year. Moreover we had the chance to appear in the most famous festival of the professional theatrical world, the National Theatre Meeting of Pécs, owing to the kind acknowledgements of a well-known home dramatic critic.
On this year’s conferences of Hungarian psychiatry and psychotherapy we presented our professional work in the frames of workshop.
As our institute is closing down, we would like to continue our activity at a hospital pointed out as successor-institution.
Our aim is, among others, to be able to show the multi-coloured activity of our company not only inside of our national boundaries but beyond them too. We receive your interest with love.
In English language:
mivan@chello.hu balkaylaszlo@gmail.com
In German language :
balkaylaszlo@gmail.com kaszasnora@tartkapuszinhaz.hu
With respect: the company of the Open-Gate Theatre The leaders of the company:
Director: Balkay László, art-therapist
Dramaturge: Lőrinczi Attila, literature-therapist
Art-secretary, PR-manager: Kaszás Nóra Mária, psychopedagogue
We are also in Facebook
PR-manager and news informations: Péter Nemes
E-mail: laserpeti71@gmail.com
Text by Elizabeth Drobni member of theatre