At the beginning of the year, Theatre Y had big plans to celebrate its upcoming 15-year anniversary. But once the realities of the pandemic set in and shows, tours, and theater festivals were canceled, the company had a clean slate of time and still wanted to celebrate its birthday.
“Now that we are in this period of isolation, choosing from his body of work and sending something out weekly felt even more appropriate because András has a great deal of experience with a crisis of this scale, which most Americans are not professionals at,” Lorraine says.
Raik, who enjoys reading poetry out loud, says he wrote his own version of the text so he could better resonate with it. He says that the poem speaks to aging, getting older, and wanting to leave a mark on society, which he interprets to mean that Visky wants to be remembered for his work, similar to Beckett. “I, in the poem, felt that I want to leave something behind like those words on the page,” Raik says.
Visky credits Theatre Y for exposing his work to American audiences and theaters. Now he doesn’t feel like an orphaned playwright, he says. In turn, Lorraine feels it is a gift to be working with a living playwright and is confident in her company’s 15-year work. “The task for the company now is to find the Viskys of the rest of the world,” she says. “I am sure they are abundant and grossly underknown.” v
Through 7/24: new videos released every Friday at 7 PM, theatre-y.com, F.
