Török-Illyés Orsolya: Obiectiva Theodora, subjectively

Kitchen theatre

Kinga Illyés, an iconic actress of the 1970s and 1980s, was a defining figure in the Hungarian intellectual circles in Transylvania. Her apartment in Târgu Mureș became a legendary meeting place and refuge, where important personalities of the era regularly gathered. Between 1968 and 1989, the Romanian secret services continuously wiretapped her under the code name Theodora. In 2014, actress Orsolya Török-Illyés, Kinga Illyés’s daughter, requested nearly 3,000 pages of documents from the Securitate archives, which reveal a period of human life unfolding with the most natural dramaturgy, through uninterrupted surveillance. Based on these documents, Orsolya Török-Illyés and film director Szabolcs Hajdu created a radio play entitled Obiectiva Theodora: excerpts from the surveillance file of a Transylvanian actress.

At the invitation of pulzArt, Orsolya Török-Illyés is preparing a performative event that seeks, together with the audience, to make this historical trauma more comprehensible and bearable by focusing on an individual’s fate.

“When we lose someone important to us, even twenty-one years later, their absence can become painfully tangible in the most unexpected, simple, everyday moments. A few weeks ago, while eating soup at a wedding, I suddenly tasted the flavor of my mother’s broth. A few months ago, while teaching acting students in Târgu Mureș, I looked up and saw the window of her former room. A light went on, and for a moment I believed she had come home. Now I would like to stretch such a moment into nearly two and a half hours, with Obiectiva Theodora, subjectively.” Orsolya Török-Illyés

Date (two performances):
11th of October, Saturday, from 16:00 to 19:00, duration: 150 min
12th of October, Sunday, from 14:00 to 17:00, duration: 150 min

Meeting point: Székely National Museum, at 16:00
Ticket price: 20 lei