Artistic Discoveries in European Schoolyards

Mna kedys´ (Once it hit me...)

Once it snog me... is a story of four teenagers Saša, Bela, Dre? and Eman.

The play takes place amongst the fourteen year old classmates in year 9, at a secondary school. The characters meet up at school, after
school on the estate, or at home. The play opens with a scene of a school poetry recital, a long standing tradition at Slovakian schools.
Students recite their texts, and their individual attitudes expose the nature of the characters, who try to survive puberty. Hippie
environmentalist Sasha, who wants to rescue the world, is in love with Eman, a hip-hop clown. Dirt acts as though he’s a sexually experienced
adult, he is in love with Sasha. The gloomy poet Eman loves Bela. Bela, a model, loves herself. All of these characters are talking about their
everyday life, problems with love, parents and growing up. On Emans 15th birthday they are all planning to explore the adult world- the pub
world. When they are kicked out of a bar because they are not yet 18, they decide to go to the pub at the train station. There, they make a
video which shows how drunk they are and then run away without paying. The girls split up from the guys and stay the night at a disco,
where older guys are buying them drinks. Sasha hates the attention they pay to Bela and runs away leaving Bela alone. The school teacher
discovers the video from the previous night on youtube and that Sasha and Dirt are not at school. They are hanging out at Dirt’s apartment.
The friendships between guys are marked by jealousy, love and lies.
‘The word has tempted me’ was first staged as a site-specific production in a regular secondary school classroom. The audience, pupils, get
involved in the story by literally following the actors around the school, stopping at different places according to the plot (classroom,
cloakroom, hallway). They have a unique chance to peek into spaces they would normally not be allowed (e.g.: boiler room, the toilets
belonging to the opposite sex…) but above all, they get to see how their daily school environment can change into a theatre site and how the
space opens up to new meanings.
Actors do not have any specific props and have to prepare different stage design made specifically for each school.
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