The Martin E. Segal Theater Center presents
GIANNI
At the Segal Theatre Film and Performance Festival 2024
A film by
Budapesti Skizo, Theater Tri-Bühne
Theater, Film, Mime, Multimedia, Opera, Other
This film will be available to watch online on the festival website May 16th onwards for 3 weeks.
About The Film
Country
Germany
Language
Italian, with English subtitles
Running Time
55
minutes
Year of Release
2023
The idea of GIANNI (originally: dzsanni) emerges from the vision of amalgamating theatre, film, and
digital art to give rise to the innovative genre of Live Film. In the performance, we bring Puccini’s classical
opera to the stage as a theatrical play set in a lavish scenery. Simultaneously, we are live-producing —
recording, editing, and streaming — a film of the ongoing play onto a dimmable canvas integrated into
the scenery. The artists employ voiceless lip-syncs to synchronize with the original opera in Italian, while
subtitles are streamed onto the screen. The interplay of various art forms, genre characteristics, and
cutting-edge technologies creates a dynamic and exquisite experience. GIANNI opens up new
experimental avenues in the realms of performing arts, film production, and worldwide distribution of
theatre.
TEAM & CAST: Performers: Gianni Schicchi —— Gergely Váradi Lauretta —— Natalja Maas Rinuccio —— Manuel Krstanovic Zita, La Vecchia —— Dominika Rezes Gherardo —— Sebastian Huber Nella, Maestro Spinelloccio —— Stefani Matkovic Betto di Signa —— Aki Tougiannidis Simone —— Mihály Bánki Marco, Ser Amantio di Nicolao —— Florian Dehmel La Ciesca —— Silvia Passera Buoso Donati —— Stephen Crane / Creative technicians: Technical operations, stream, and camera Patrik Macsuka Soma Varga Lázár Todoroff / Set design and costumes: Rebeka Zita Artim, Kudar Máté, Renáta Balogh / Director, Editor: Dániel Máté Sándor
About The Artist(s)
We are a group of young theatre artists and creative technicians with the ambition of creating a distinctive
artistic language in theatre. In 2020, our studies at SZFE, the University of Theatre and Film Arts in
Budapest got disrupted by the pandemic and the politically motivated ‘model changing’ of the institution.
In response, we founded an association called Budapesti Skizo Group in 2022, renting our own creative
space in the old factory building of 4K (Kobanya Contemporary Cultural Center), Budapest.
Since 2020, our group has created two live film
performances: Budapesti Skizo and dzsanni (later:
GIANNI). Budapesti Skizo was played on 20 m² in
an apartment during the pandemic, from where we
live streamed the performance on YouTube. In
contrast, dzsanni premiered for an audience of 400+
people in a 250 m² storage room, complemented by
the vast inner yard of the abandoned salami factory.
The production involved 14 actors, a 60-piece
symphony orchestra, 12 opera singers, and a
technical crew of 5 people. After the initial premiere of dzsanni in June 2022, we hosted
the Live Film performance an additional 13 times in our studio at 4K for a predominantly young audience of 60-80 people. To offset our rental costs, given the lack of funding, we collaborated with external partners to provide a more comprehensive cultural experience, including beer and wine tasting events, as well as a book reading. In addition to the live performances, we released the recording of dzsanni on a theatrical streaming platform called eTheatre between 27 and
30 October 2022. Moreover, we organized two screenings in Germany one of them at SETT2023.
In 2023, László Bagossy, the artistic director of Theater tribühne,
invited us to create GIANNI, the second version of
dzsanni, tailored for German audiences in Stuttgart. This marks a significant milestone for our group, as, after three years
of continuous work and development, we have had the opportunity to experiment and expand our technical apparatus within a professional framework. This advancement allows us to perform, record, and broadcast in full synchronization to any part of the world. The result of our cooperation is a theatre repertoire piece in the spring term program of Theater tribühne.
Or partnership with László Bagossy is characterised by the Renaissance Workshop method, fostering mentor-student relationships and autonomous group work among creative contributors with diverse knowledge and physical locations — all united by a collective creative vision. As part of this working method, our group participated in the creation of 100 Songs at Theater tri-bühne in October 2023.