The play by Matei Visniec premiered in Chicago at Trap Door Theatre company in March 2016, directed by Maladype artistic director Zoltán Balázs. The artistic director of Maladype Theatre is visiting the Windy City upon the invitation of the American workshop's founding director, Beata Pilch. After the debut, the performance received one of the most notable recognitions of American critics, a nomination for JEFF Awards, opening the door to many more performances. At the end of the season, the play did received the JEFF Awards for Original Music. The unanimous public and professional success encouraged the company to consider a multi-station European tour already last year, and they eventually begain their fundraising campaing in 2017. The company arrives in Budapest with such history on 8th of in June as a guest of Maladype and the play’s director; it then will also be showcased at the SIBIU International Theatre Festival as well as Baia Mare, Brasov and Constanta.

Background:
The relations between Maladype and the US theatrical life became closer during the Hungarian Showcase of Spring 2013 where Zoltán Balázs's direction of King Ubu earned a major success. The smashing performance was followed by an American tour in 2014: the company celebrated the 100th anniversary of King Ubu at Touchstone Theatre in Bethlehem, PA, while the also “globe-trotting” EggsHell was staged at Trap Door Theatre in Chicago.

The director met the Romanian-born playwright, who now lives in France, in 2011 at the SIBFEST International Theatre Festival where Maladype performed Büchner's Leonce and Lena, a play with scenes of multiple variations. During the Matei Vișniec-days organized at the Maladype Base on Mikszáth Square in December 2013, the world-renowned artist traveled to Budapest to meet with Hungarian audiences and to see The Story of The Panda Bears Told By a Saxophonist Who Has a Girlfriend in Frankfurt performed by Maladype actors inspired by works of fine art. The idea of staging the playwright's visionary absurdist play Dada Cabaret penned on the centenary of Dadaism in international collaboration in the 100th year of the movement was born during this visit. Co-produced with Gábriel Gábor Farkas and his orchestra, the play is set to have its premiere in Fall 2016, featuring the author himself in many of the scenes.

About the play:
The young Soviet writer Yuri Petrovsky receives the State Prize, directly from Glorious Comrade Stalin himself, for his short stories on building socialism. The Writers' Union picks him out for a special task: they mandate him to give ideological training to the insane. So, he explains the story of communism through a series of short narratives to the patients of a mental institution. His commanders' instructions were: “Use all of your talent and patriotism so that our mentally ill can also feed on the hope that the Great October Socialist Revolution kindled in the hearts of workers of the world...".

About Trap Door Theatre:
Beata Pilch's main mission is to present contemporary European works. Her theater is characterized by the combination of old traditions and modern tools to illustrate the absurdities in today's modern society. The theater company established its permanent home in Chicago in 1994, where American audiences have since enjoyed more than seventy of their performances.

Writer: Matei Vișniec
Translation: Jeremy Lawrence, Catherine Popesco
Director: Balázs Zoltán

Set Desinger: Aaron O'Neill
Costume Designer: Rachel Sypniewski
Music Composer: Danny Rockett
Dramaturg: Milan Pribisic
Makeup Desinger: Zsófia Ötvös
Lighting: Richard Norwood
Assistans of director: Emily Lotspeich, Gary Damico

CAST:
Beata Pilch
Nicole Wiesner
Simina Contras
Dennis Bisto
Michael Garvey
Pavi Proczko

The play is performed in English with Hungarian subtitles.

Reviews:
„No wonder this production, the company’s third Vișniec offering performed by mostly Trap Door regulars, fires on all cylinders for 75 engrossing minutes. Director Zoltán Balázs’s angular, stylized staging is hilarious, perplexing, and harrowing—often all at the same time.”
Justin Hayford, The Chicago Reader

“Thankfully the best part of Trap Door’s great Fairytale Lives of Russian Girls, Simina Contras, remains an absolutely mesmerizing stage presence, even when it’s only her disembodied voice calling out bets on the patients’ window-watching game. I would go to any show advertising her participation. Similarly, Pilch is magnetically maniacal in multiple roles, the director of the loony bin turned full on loon. Despite the flaws, Director Zoltán Balázs creates extremely spellbinding vignettes in what amounts to a sort of slow-motion work of contemporary movement art. Aaron O’Neill’s simple set of cascading doors provides a perfect ethereal counterpart for the insanity.“
Clint May, Chicago Theater Beat

„Balázs has developed a physical acting method that can build and communicate a story without words. It is a beautiful thing to watch.”
Christopher Kidder-Mostrom, Theatre by Numbers

More links to reviews of the performance:
http://chicagotheaterbeat.com/2016/03/22/how-to-explain-communism-to-mental-patients-review-trap-door-theatre/
http://theatre1234.com/?p=1804
http://www.newcitystage.com/2016/04/13/review-how-to-explain-the-history-of-communism-to-mental-patientstrap-door-theatre