Proton Theatre’s new production premiered at the Iván Fischer Apartment Theatre in February and has since visited the Gyula Castle Theatre. On 31 May, it will return to its first venue, where Lili Monori’s subjective, honest and unique vision will whisk us back to the ’60s (with dinner included).

“Although we had supposedly come to see a one-woman show, we soon realised that what we were watching was not in the least bit confined to this genre. Monori wasn't acting out a role, and though the title of the monodrama is Ten Minutes of Poetry, and the poem she recites indeed lasts no longer than that, she then proceeded to unveil her true self. As she is in life: both an actor and a ‘civilian’. An actor in civilian mode,” writes Gyula Balogh in the first review of the performance to appear. [Népszava]

The performance begins with the strange story of Zsuzsa Rakovszky’s poem A Friday Night, or, more precisely, with the story of reciting this poem. In this unconventional poetry recital staged by the Proton Theatre, Lili Monori’s diary entries from 1962 meet both our present time and a crucial moment in world history. The thoughts she recorded in that year reflect both on the moment in time she was living through and the desires and dreams of a young girl at the beginning of her career as a performer and actor.

"I discovered the diary I was keeping when I was sixteen. My grandmother had given it to me. I found what I wrote in it on 27 October 1962. I was studying at a school that taught shorthand and typing, and people were standing on big lorries in the streets of Budapest shouting ‘Hands off Cuba!’ and ‘Cuba has the right to live!’ And I recorded all this back then. The newspaper wrote that World War Three almost broke out that day. I also wrote that if there was radiation, I would no longer be an actress...” [Lili Monori - Új Szó]

Lili Monori is “perhaps most widely known from Márta Mészáros’s memorable award-winning film Nine Months, in which the actress actually gave birth to her own child in front of the cameras. While one can certainly call her daring, she is of course much more than that. Always pushing the boundaries of acting, she was a member of the ensembles of both the Thalia Theatre and, in Kaposvár, the Csiky Gergely Theatre. Then, together with her husband, Miklós Székely B. – who here sits beside her at the Iván Fischer Apartment Theatre as a kind of silent raisonneur – she founded an experimental theatre in a basement in central Budapest to stage productions. More recently, she has worked with Dóra Büki and Kornél Mundruczó as a member of their Proton Theatre company. Here in Hungary we have seen less of her, as she has been travelling a great deal with Proton Theatre, touring Europe and participating in festivals and various co-production projects. Now you can catch her a couple of times in this apartment theatre on Andrássy Avenue, opposite the Opera House.” [Népszava]