Artus transforms a huge, abandoned hall into a living room with sofas, coffee tables and standing lamps. Actions happen all around the settees where the audience sit cozily. There is only one, diverse space that involves the audience and the performers alike. The audience become part of an evolving myth, receiving an interwoven mosaic of symbolical yet personal images that ripple in one’s mind long after the performance with their punctuality, depth, humour and unusual solutions.

Inspirations of the performance:

1. Homer - Joyce: Odyssey - Ulysses and the myth of eternal return
Homer's Odyssey sailed the seas for 20 years, Joyce's Ulysses roamed the streets of Dublin for one very long day. Artus condenses this seemingly neverending journey into a performance. As Joyce writes, Artus creates: the inner journey evokes a series of visionary moments that come together at the very same time from different points in time and space.

2. Ephemer Works
‘Ephemer Works’ is a pub-performance series, each episode of wich is a new performance, a premier that is created within a single intensive day. We create absurd and poetic moments with a casual, informal, but still concentrated frame of mind. Ulysses’ Living Room was developped from the open rehearsal period of the Ephemer Works series.

3. Earth Boat
Land art with live installation

4. Gábor’s One-Day-Turn
‘I was standing on the top of the mountain and slowly turned around my axis. I simply turned around. I made just one turn, but I did this in a day, in 24 hours. The turn took as much time as the Earth once turns around its own axis. I stood there for one whole day, I moved, turned slowly, tuning in to and becoming one with the Earth.’
While turning the world got recomposed:
Direct reality and visions coexist.
Earth is not under my feet but it surrounds me.
Noise is the part of Silence.
I am not standing here, but everywhere.

5. Antinomy
The Company researches unity hidden under the surface of contradictions, wanting to comprehend and represent this typical pattern of our existence with unique scenes of depth and humour.
Creators and performers: Antal Bodóczky, Martin Boross, Márton Debreczeni, Krisztina Ferencz, Balázs Fischer, Gábor Goda, Bea Gold, Gábor Kocsis, Ágoston Nagy, Csilla Nagy, Gáspár Téri, András Tucker, Melinda Virág
Directed by: Gábor Goda
Supporters: National Cultural Fund of Hungary, Ministry of Human Resoruces, Vylyan Vinery

Extracts from critics
Krisztina Ferencz  - Rite in theatre:

Thouhgts on Ulysses’ Living Room, a performance by Gábor Goda
The communal dance theatre performance, Ulysess’ Living Room, is itself postmodern coming to life. It represents the statios of men in condensed metaphors, numerous stages of existence of numerous types of people, presenting these to the audience in a ritual form. The mythology of travel evokes a series of metaphors, symbols and their opposites and contradictions as well. The performance really takes the audience to a sphere where we participate in rites and rituals most naturally.

The word „participate” should be taken literally, as this piece breaks away from the traditional teathrical setup, the performers doing their actions in front of, behind and next to us, breathing, moving so close, sometimes touching us or whispering something to us. The scene is intensive, performative (the expression derives from John L. Austin, 1955), its layout in space on one hand creates little islands amidst the audience and on the other hand creates the possibility of a never ending circulation, coming-and-going for performers and some objects alike.

A living room can create a company around a table, even though there are a lot of foreign people brought together in an intimate setting. Sharing a common, homely space, the warm, friendly atmosphere makes people more open for reception (…) one of the essentials here is to actually is to be able to bring the audience in this intimate mood, an open mindset, where we can let go the ’desire to understand and interpret’.

Goda-turn to everyday heroes - Csaba Kutszegi on Ulysses’ Living Room

If one visits Ulysses’ Living Room by Gábor Goda, will be part of a unique experience: in front of one’s eyes, a myth evolves from everyday lives of common people. I have never experienced anything like this – that from me, my everyday routines, a myth can be created. Presumably, Goda succeded in such a quest as he has been experimenting with myths for years.

But Ulysses doesn’t have a living room, does he? - Sándor Márton Varga’s notes on Ulysses’ Living Room
The Artus production – unlike Homer’s - is the story of one day. Like Joyce’s. The modern Big Bang.
(Paralellisms) references are recognizeable, dear Antal Szerb, but in your posterity, no-one teaches noone what is the real thing. It seems as though young Telemachos would be appearing, who – according to the James-Lange principle – is teaching us the communication of the six basic emotions. It feels as if we could all find refuge on Calypso’s island under the wings of our personal Nausicaa. As if Hades would be taking us with him to the underworld, as if we could be fighting Cyclopses and Scullas, as if though we were hearing the syrenes’ songs(…)

Every Odyssey has their own Penelope as every Leopold Bloom has their Molly and evrey Ithaka and every Dublin is at the same time Budapest (…) This Artus piece is not a bluff, it is rather a report on the present that makes us feel like crying and laughing at the same time. We can clink glasses wishing good health to each other but we might also feel ashamed in Ulysses’ Living Room passed on to us, when, after the great applause we set out on our journey to follow the smell of wine in the nightlife of the capital.

Artus: Ulysses' Living Room
Date and time: 2013. 05. 12. 20h
Venue: Artus Studio
Address: 1116 Sztregova u. 7, behind Fono Buda Music House

Source: Artus Company