Lilla Szauer: Pelléas and Mélisande

In December 2022, I woke up in a ten-bed hospital room full of people who didn't want to wake up that day. Time passed very slowly. I would always set a time to wait and then set another time to wait, because nothing ever happened. For breakfast I had sugary tea and a slice of Parisian roll with bread. The people lying around me had no clothes on, just nappies, and were tied to the iron bed with some kind of wooden leg. During the visit, one of the women in nappies turned to me. She resembled my mother to a fault.

Pelléas and Mélisande is based on this experience: Maeterlinck's mystical characters find themselves in the same hospital room where I woke up. It is a story of return and of a love triangle, the third part of which is the pain that can lead one to end one's own life. But can the two loves be compared? And what if we just have to die to go on living?

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https://trafo.hu/programok/szinhaz_pelleas_es_melisande_2

Cover photo by Gergő Ofner