Prometheus'22 wants to be a meditation of the condition of the intellectual in the 21st century. In the digitalized and powerfully manipulated news network and social media truth became over-relativized and even fact-checks can end up being considered as fake news. In an extremely ideologized and divided world, where dialogue became almost impossible and debates are reduced to extreme reactions, hate speech became a daily routine, often fueled by governments which support extreme political ideas. In these conditions the role of the intellectuals – scientists, doctors, artists – becomes more difficult but also more responsible, that of observing the world with an objective eye and share their knowledge to the people even with the risk of being persecuted in the same way as Prometheus has been in the mythological time.
The performance tries to approach to the myth of Prometheus from a more ironic perspective exploring its significance in the context of our contemporary world.
Gábor Tompa
Gábor Tompa graduated in stage and film directing from the 'I. L.' Caragiale Theatre and Film Academy in Bucharest in 1981, was the student of some outstanding, founders of the world-famous Romanian school of stage directing, such as Liviu Ciulei, Mihai Dimiu, and Cătălina Buzoianu. Since 1981, Gábor Tompa has been directing at the Hungarian Theatre of Cluj, in 1990 he became the artistic director of the theatre and he undertook the management of the theatre as well.
He founded the Faculty of Dramatic Art in Cluj and has run its directing programme since 1991. He has been a guest lecturer at the Académie Théâtrale de l’Union, Limoges, Schauspielschule Freiburg, Brunel University, London, and Institut del Teatre Barcelona. He has staged more than 80 plays and produced another 80, directing in Romania and in other countries worldwide, including France, Germany, Spain, the United Kingdom, Austria, Hungary, Ireland, Canada, Serbia, the Czech Republic, South Korea, Luxembourg and Portugal.
He has won the UNITER’s Best Director of the Year Award six times and received the UNITER’s award for Best Performance of the Year in 1989 for The Bus Station by Gao Xing Gian and in 2009, for Three Sisters. In 2002, he received the UNITER Award for Excellence for the many achievements of his career. His film, Chinese Defense, won the Best First Feature Award at the International Film Festival in Salerno, Italy in 1999 and was officially selected for the 1999 Berlin Festival.
He is the author of several volumes of poetry and essays on theatre, such as: A hűtlen színház. Esszé a rendezésről [The Unfaithful Theatre. An Essay on Stage Direction], Bucharest, 1987; Óra, árnyékok [Clock, Shadows], poems, Bucharest, 1989; A késdöfés gyöngédsége [The Tenderness of Stabbing], studies, Cluj, 1995; Aki nem én [He Who Is Not I] poems, Mentor, Târgu Mureş, 1995; Készenlét [Alertness] poems, Héttorony, Budapest, 1990; Lidércbánya [Mine of Nightmares] poems, Pallas Akadémia, Miercurea-Ciuc, 2004, and Címke-függöny [Label-curtain – Gábor Tompa’s private theatre dictionary], Bookart, Csíkszereda, 2010; Van még könyvtár Amerikában? [Are There Libraries Left in America?], poems Kalligram, Budapest, 2020.
From March 2006 to April 2008 (when the Hungarian Theatre of Cluj joined the UTE), he was an individual member of the European Theatre Union. Between 2007 and 2019, he has been Head of Directing at the Theatre and Dance Department of the University of California, San Diego. In May 2018, he was elected President of the European Theatre Union.
