Spring Weekend: Sunflower at Bohemian National Hall

Saturday, May 11 at 4 pm Sunflower by Andrea Pass, translated by Patrick Mullowney, directed by Adrian AleaStage reading, Talk Back & After PartyIn Sunflower, a young couple with a dysfunctional marriage and illness taking over their lives, faces loosing their home. Familiar situations, and scenes from contemporary life, become a series of revealing snapshots through the eyes of adults as well as children.The play is set in a small town and involves ordinary characters: the young idealist teacher, the friendly caretaker, three young teens, the handsome doctor, the hopeful shop assistant, the troubled woman in the psychiatric ward. They all bear witness to the story of this three-person family. The father and the 10-year-old, Janka, are trying to cope with the increasingly erratic behavior of the mother. Sunflower is a vibrant tableau of everyday life, vulnerable and burdened with financial problems, broken families, and taboos and shame surrounding mental illness.The Playwright:Andrea Pass is a playwright and director. She graduated as a theater historian from the University of Veszprm, Hungary and spent time in Nancy and London on scholarships during her studies. She worked as an assistant to Bla Pintr and Viktor Bod while she studied script-writing and earned a degree in theater pedagogy. She was awarded the prestigious Istvn rkny Playwrights Grant for young playwrights on two occasions. Three of her works have been published in print, one of them recently in the Polish Dialog theatrical magazine. Her work deals with social issues while also exploring the human condition, strongly believing in the transformative power of theater.