OUR GROUP

WELCOME!

An amateur company at Attila József University in Szeged, Hungary at the Institute of English and American Studies. The group was founded in 1994 by Klára Bódis, senior assistant professor at the Institute based on the following principles:

-Have a forum for young and creative people
-Educate a new theatre loving generation
-Teach young people the basics of Drama in Education and Theatre in Education
-Stage each new play with a new crew so that more and more people can be part of the creative process
-To help disadvantaged and handicapped children with donations from the ticket sales.

For the last two years founder director, Klára Bódis, has turned to alternative and experimental ways in theatre making. The group performed pieces written by students (published by JATEPress Szeged, 1997) entitled First Attempts. The most recent production, Our Group's Rib Kaleidoscope was staged on 4th May, 1998, at the University Club; some of the pieces were devised by the group members and looked at women's problems and the attitude to childbirth, pregnancy and anorexia. In December 1998 the group performed scenes from twentieth century plays. This production shows the signs of experimentation again with cross-dressing. The money from ticket sales was offered to help the flood victims of Carpathia.

The guests of the group Carinda Bohus and Niels Otto Pedersen participated in the production. As a result of this in the second semester of 1998/1999 they are running their own drama workshop at JATE.

In 1999 there were two productions, one in each semester.

Timea Fejes, a young colleague, who took a role in an earlier production, has staged Christopher Durang's The Actor's Nightmare. The production has been invited to the Francophone College Theatre Festival in March 1999.

Julia Szarvas, a member of the group has received the Kathleen Heaslip Wodala Award this year. This award is given to outstanding students every year. Julia, among others has redirected an earlier Our Group production; she worked hard with students for the sake of the performance.

Ever since the group came into being, several courses have been offered to support the activity and productions of the group. Visiting professors regularly come from the UK and the United States to teach courses. Among others, Jessica Neemann (Knoxville, Tennessee) taught a course on improvisation, Joel Houck (Baltimore, Maryland) on experimental theatre and working with puppets. Brian Woolland (Reading, UK) is a regular visiting professor for the group. He has been teaching the following courses: Drama Writing through Rehearsal, Improvisation, From Text to Stage. His play, 'Getting over You' was staged by the group for the first time in Hungary on 21st February, 1996. He came to Szeged to comment on rehearsals and also saw the premier of his own play.

The group celebrated its fifth birthday in October in the university club in front of an enthusiastic audience.

Plans:

To go on experimenting with the language of theatre; maintaining the contact with the partners abroad. To incorporate Theatre Studies in the curriculum of the Institute. To find links with different organizations with the help of which performances may be done for charity.

Klára Bódis has created a foundation - Színház a nyelvoktatásban Alapítvány (Theatre in Language Teaching) - in order to help talented students in their studies abroad and support the activities of the group and in general to promote drama teaching at the Institute. If anyone is interested in supporting this foundation in any way,

please contact: