We are young, and we only care about the future. We don’t care about any desertification, natural disasters, pandemics, oppressive political regimes, global economic crises, destroyed cultural institutions anymore – we want to find our own reality! We’ve been getting bored of the images of chaos and destruction for too long, so let’s move on! If we no longer have myths, we’ll create our own mythology, and we’ll go back to the past for the future, like the members of the Visceral Realist poetic movement in the Mexico City of the 70s.

 “The most significant Latin American literary voice of his generation”, says the New York Times about Roberto Bolaño, who published his 600-page-long novel The Savage Detectives in 1998, which made the vagabond poet a world-famous author in no time. The story, blending biographic elements with a world of unrestrained fantasy, provides a glimpse into the life of an underground poetic movement, which, through the drift of love and poetry, parties and manifests, sexual adventures, and literary reformations, unfolds into a world-wide and decades-long, crime-like trip. The story follows the two young founders of the revolutionary Visceral Realist movement, who, together with a teenage boy and a fugitive prostitute, flee to the Sonoran Desert to look for their great spiritual predecessor, the revolutionary poetess, who had mysteriously disappeared in the desert decades ago. They are looking for redemption in their quest in the scorching landscape of violence and decay, but they are to face themselves and their limits at the end of the road. According to Bolaño, The Savage Detectives is a love letter to his generation.

Radnóti Tesla Laboratory is a recently opened, second venue of Radnóti Theatre, aiming to produce innovative theatrical productions, and the performance The Savage Detectives reflects this endeavour too. Together with the ensemble of Radnóti, Kristóf Kelemen based this new theatrical adventure on Bolaño’s monumental novel and his contemporaneous manifesto, enabling the creators to talk about their generation, the apocalyptic atmosphere, and the passionate will to live life to the fullest, in entertaining and dramatic scenes, with crazy characters, in a playfully experimental way. The production is further enriched by additional film sketches recorded by the director, in which famous performances, characteristic of the era captured in the novel, are referenced, like those by Marina Abramović and Francis Alÿs. Among them is the sketch in which Artistic Director of Radnóti Theatre, Adél Kováts pushes a block of ice across Budapest in the summer heat, resonating richly with our general condition, the seemingly vain but also passionate desire to create in the age of global crises.

Venue: RADNÓTI TESLA LABOR | Kazinczy Street 21., II. floor

Running Time: approx. 2 hours 15 mins (no interval)

The surtitles will be visible from Seats 33-144.

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