’Aisa: a study of rites, a full moon rite, a rite against gravitation, an Eastern-European butoh verse. These are the names that have been used over the past twelve years to describe this play, which we are going to present for the second time at THEALTER International. We have taken it all around Europe and Hungary. We have performed it in a quarry (where it was possible to project fifty-metre-tall shadows on the stonewall), in private apartments, in the street, in public squares, in parks and also in theatres, like in 1989 in Leningrad, or in May 2000 in Nancy. We performed it in the street on the bank of the river Loire several times (there the audience forded the river by torch-light), in the beginning in R. Club, and then in Banán Club on Csillaghegy, which then became our haunt. This short list probably makes it clear: each performance has its own aura, its own story — thus we should speak about thousands of layers which form integral parts of the life of the play, that is the history of the past twelve years. Of course, Aisa has changed a lot in its details but, on the whole, in its tone and direction it has remained as it has always been: strict choreography with maximal freedom for the actor, improvisation made possible by the lyric butoh attitude, soul-work, soul-music, body-music. The first 20-25 performances were done in complete silence. Zoltán Krulik was followed by András Monori, but now it is Szabolcs Szőke’s music that helps the play and the audience to find their place, associations and way in the dreamlike space of the play. For this is what Aisa is and has been ultimately all about; the inner road, which we take together with the actor-guide within the space and time of the play (and hopefully beyond that, too). Thus the play is only an outer shell, the audience has to find the essence within their own inner space. This way Aisa is more than just a theatrical performance, it is collective and individual dream-work, a collective and individual sinking into a world which cannot be described in words.’ Gábor Csetneki