REX

Kirill Fokin

Hungary • National Theatre, Budapest

Director: Valery Fokin

Performed in Hungarian. On MITEM with English translation. Please note that the performance uses powerful lighting effects!

1 hours 50 minutes, without breaks.

'And your life - is the ultimate sacrifice humanity asks of you.'

The play's protagonist is Livey Kaplan, the legendary UN Secretary General who in the course of his long life united all of humanity in a single state. But instead of the unity he had hoped for, the world plunged into even more terrible historical cataclysms leading to the failure of Kaplan's utopian project. The ex-politician is 129 now and wishes to die, but ceasing to exist is not that easy in this odd society, and Kaplan is forced to live in solitude, secluded from the world, looked after by an android servant assigned to him. The play consists of a series of peculiar encounters and dialogues gradually revealing the protagonist's controversial role in history, his private life and complex personal relationships. He wants to defeat his nemesis, Lazar Chomsky, and to get back his kidnapped daughter Samantha. In the maelstrom of great ideas and deeds, the individual finds it increasingly difficult to preserve his true feelings and the poetry of existence. Is survival possible? Can human civilization persist?

A celebrated young author with several volumes of short stories and novels, Kirill Fokin has also established himself as a playwright in contemporary Russian literature. He is mainly interested in the various paths along which human society develops, which he depicts in his plays mostly through fictional alternative realities. REX is one of the most important plays in his collection Drama Futuro, published in 2021, a satirical dystopia that raises serious philosophical questions about the future of our civilisation, the globalisation of humanity and its consequences. The production is directed by the author's father, Valery Fokin, a prominent figure in Russian theatre and artistic director of St Petersburg's Alexandrinsky Theatre. Thanks to his guest performances at MITEM (Zero Liturgy, Marriage, Schweik, The Comeback) and his Crocodile at the National Theatre, Hungarian audiences have already been introduced to Fokin's unique world of visionary theatre.

LeeWei Kaplan (former UN Secretary General)

Lajos Ottó Horváth

Sam (android, Kaplan's "assistant")

György Csák m.v.

Lazar Chomsky (US presidential advisor)

Dénes Farkas

Emma (Kaplan's wife)

Ágota Szilágyi

President (woman)

Andrea Söptei

Samantha (Kaplan's daughter)

Lili Lujza Battai e.h. m.v.

Jack

József Kovács S.

Cassidy

Kinga Katona

Diva

Nelli Szűcs

and the acting students of the Rippl-Rónai Faculty of Arts of Kaposvár University:
János Bence Bognár, Kata Duma, Péter Juhász, Benjámin Dominik Kerék,
Anna Gizella Kiss, Róbert Dávid Krauter, Júlia Mikita Dorka, Ákos Balázs Puskás, Ilka Sipos, Anett Soós, Márk Wettstein, Ábel Tamás Winkler

Contributes from a video recording:

Jamato

László Tóth

Moderator

Ödön Rubold

Choreographer

Igor Kacsajev

Set and costume designer

Alexey Tregubov

Video designer

Aszja Muhina

Music

Anton Lakhontov

Translater-dramaturge

András Kozma

Prompter

Szilvia Kabódi

Stage manager

Ágnes Lovass

Assistant director

Ákos Sándor Trimmel

Director

Valery Fokin

Gobbi Hilda Stage

Valery Fokin

Fokin Valery Vladimirovich. Russian world-renowned Russian director. Artistic director of the National Drama Theater of Russia (Alexandrinsky Theater). People's Artist of Russia, winner of four State Prizes of Russia.

People's Artist of Russia, winner of four State Prizes of Russia, Honored Art Worker of Poland. Since 2003 he has been the Art Director of Alexandrinsky Theater. Since 2006 - member of the Presidium of the Presidential Council for Culture and Art. President of the V. Meyerhold Theatrical and Cultural Center - since 2011. Chairman of the Guild of Russian Theatre Directors 2012-2020.

Valery Fokin has received numerous Russian and foreign awards and prizes, the most recent being the Order of Merit for the Fatherland, First Class - "For Great Contribution to Development of National Culture and Art, Lengthy and Fruitful Activity," the Order of the Rising Sun, Golden Rays with Neck Ribbon for his contribution to development of the Japanese-Russian cooperation in theatrical art, the French National Order of Arts and Letters.

From 1970 to 1985 V. Fokin was the director of the Moscow Theatre "Contemporary".

From 1985 to 1991 he was the head of the Moscow Theatre named after M. N. Ermolova. The first productions of the young chief director put the theater among the most popular.

According to unanimous recognition of the press, the first program for Fokin at the Theater of them. Yermolovaya Theatre, the first production of Fokine's play Speak Out... was to mark a turn to a new theatrical way of thinking in the Russian theater. For this performance in 1987, Valery Fokin was awarded the State Prize of the RSFSR in the field of literature and art.

From 1975 to 1979 he taught at the GITIS (Moscow State Theatre Institute), and from 1993 to 1994 at the Cracow High Theatre School (Poland) and the Toen Theatre (Japan). Led master classes at European directors' courses in Spain, Sweden and Bulgaria.

Valery Fokin has been the Chairman of the Commission on the Creative Heritage of V.E. Meyerhold since 1988. In 1991, on the initiative of the Commission on Creative Heritage of V. Meyerhold and with the support of the Union of Theatre Workers of Russia and the Union of Architects of Russia, the V. Meyerhold Centre was established. The CIM was given the status of a state unitary enterprise by the Moscow Government in 1999. In 2000 Valery Fokin was awarded with the State Prize of Russia for educational activities - for preserving, studying and developing the artistic heritage of V. Meyerhold and creating the V. Meyerhold Theatre and Cultural Centre". The new CIM building was opened on February 12, 2001. Valery Fokin was the Director and Artistic Director of the CIM from its foundation until September 2011, and has been its President since September 2011.

In 2002 he staged Nikolai Gogol's “The Inspector General” at the Aleksandrinsky Theatre (together with the CIM), the play was awarded the State Prize of the Russian Federation, the

Golden Mask Award of the Russian Federation, and the Golden Sofit Award of the St Petersburg Theatre. Since 2003 he has been Artistic Director of the Alexandrinsky Theatre.

He has presented about a hundred theatrical productions in Russia and abroad.

During the years of his artistic direction V.V. Fokin has become the artistic director of the Alexandrinsky Theatre. Over the years of Fokin's artistic management Aleksandrinsky theater became the leading dramatic theater of Russia, initiating a number of large-scale national and international projects.

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