213 E 82nd St, New York, NY 10028
Organized by the Liszt Institute New York a special theater performance will take place on November 3, from 5PM at the Hungarian House of New York featuring the monodrama PALI - The Life Monologue of Mrs. Pál Maléter performed by Hungarian actor Zsófia Szamosi.
Pali – The Life Monologue of Mrs. Pál Maléter encounters the memoirs and life story of a real life person, Judith Gyenes the wife of Pál Maléter, who was arrested and executed for his involvement on the 1956 uprising. The monodrama tells the story of their love, their marriage, her husband’s involvement in the revolutionary events and his tragic journey to his execution. The monodrama is based on 12 hours of interviews with Judith Gyenes, which are sometimes heartbreaking and sometimes humorous. Her story-telling and history-telling can be understood more as a stream of emotions made up of subjective impressions and moods. The sole performer of the production is Zsófia Szamosi, the Jászai Mari Award-winning actress from the 2017 Oscar-winning film All and the Cannes award-winning film One Day.
The play won the Best Monodrama Award at the annual MOSTfest (Monodrama and Studio Theatre Festival) in 2020, and has been successfully performed abroad, with invitations from the CHB (Collegium Hungaricum Berlin) in 2021 and the Liszt Institutes in Paris, London and Helsinki in 2022.
Director: Anna Lengyel
Playwrights: Judit Garai, Anna Hárs, Anna Merényi
The event will be conducted in Hungarian!
"56 - for me it is still a miracle. What was the pinnacle of my life is worthy of a human being. It's strange to say it like that, because I lost a great deal, the greatest thing a man can lose. I lost everything! Yet I look back on it and think it was beautiful." /Judith Gyenes/
About Zsófia Szamosi
After graduating from the University of Drama and Film (Budapest), Zsofia performed on stage with the famous traditional Comedy Theatre. Four years later, she joined Béla Pintér Company, regarded as one of the most significant and most inventive independent theatre groups in Hungary. She was awarded Best Actress in 2011 at POSZT festival and received Jászai Mari Award in 2012. Recently she has appeared in various theatrical works as well as movies and TV series.
She has a major role in Strangled, the most successful Hungarian thriller of the last years, and a lead role in two seasons of the HBO Hungary series In Treatment.