This project strand offers short residency opportunities in partner cities for 30 emerging artists. Each UEO city partner will send two artists on a residency to another partner’s city of a different art form, thereby seeking to enrich their professional practice through inter-disciplinary residencies. Artists are chosen on the basis of having demonstrated an interest in the hosting city’s Arts & Society contemporary European theme. They must also practice a different art form from that of the hosting city’s public event. The project offers the emerging artists the opportunity to travel without the pressure to produce work and ideally to experience UEO’s public events.
Hunor-József Varga: (director & actor) will travel to Copenhagen
Cluj’s other artist, Mihai Gligan, will travel to Oulu
Artist’s Statement
As a multidisciplinary artist (I am an actor, currently a MA student in theatre directing and specialised in movement theatre) I really like risky shows, theatre projects that are made in non-conventional spaces, performances that take the actors out of the theatre and put them in a space that doesn’t have the same rules as the stage in the theatre. Together we can identify and create the rules of the game, an infrastructure, we can create a convention that we dive into as a team and create a final product that is new for everyone and takes a risk. I am happy to have the opportunity to be part of the Ulysses. European Odyssey, which engages arts is so many forms, all activated and based on revisiting Joyce’s masterpiece, from so many artistic and social angles.
This residency will give me the opportunity to directly experience the point of view of one of the project’s partners and then to be able to participate to the artistic proposal of Create.Act.Enjoy Association in Cluj, as I believe that it is very important for the public in Cluj to have the experience of participatory theatre, that is not usual, not often seen. The risk of absolute presence that is born together with the PARTICIPANTS (which is a very important word), who do not just watch or listen to a show but participate in an event. Because of these closesness the actors become more vulnerable, more carnal and visceral than on the theater stage. And this will always be different, it will always have a freshness and there will always be an unknown that is born in the present. That is the beauty of the theatre, for me obviously.
Artist’s Biography
Hunor-József Varga is a 25-year-old actor and an emerging director. He finished his bachelor’s studies at the University of Theatre and Film (Cluj-Napoca), where he studied acting. In 2021, he was admitted to the Master’s degree in theatre directing at the Romanian department. He currently lives in Bucharest, where he participates in an international programme at the Bucharest National Dance Centre, where he works with choreographers and dancers such as Laura Aris, Galina Borissova, Jan Burkhardt, Marta Coronado, Igor Koruga, etc.
After finishing the faculty, he worked at several theatres, starting at a national theatre in Hungary, after which he acted in the independent sector in Cluj-Napoca. He became a member of the independent company Váróterem Projekt from Cluj-Napoca, where he currently works. His performances include: A Five-Room Apartment, a devised-theatre-based show; Bertóti Johanna: Carol, the little crow, directed by Visky Andrej; Fishez, directed by Sipos Krisztina; Timelapse, an online interactive video installation about family; Elysium, directed by Benedek Zsolt; Euripides: Alcestis, directed by Andrej Visky; Sixth Day, directed by Varga Hunor-József; Terrain of Meeting, a co-production by Academia Ruhu (Poland) and Shoshin Association; Under Construction, directed by Sipos Krisztina; Streetwalker, an open-air ready-made gallery, a co-production of Kud Ljud (Slovenia) and the Shoshin association.
As a director, he is interested in physical and movement theatre and wants to research this theatre genre. His first directed show was Sixth Day, a movement theatre performance produced by the Váróterem Projekt independent theatre.
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