Helga Lázár

Is human nature prone to war or peace? To answer this question, Napoleon and Francis of Assisi send a declaration of war—without indicating a sender—to the small mountain republic of Dunkelstein. In no time, its inhabitants replace the motto “No more war!” with “Long live war!” Ernst Toller’s astute play Nie wieder Friede, written in exile, dissects the collapse of pacifist ideals in the face of nationalist warmongering. Helga Lázár stages this rarely performed comedy as a grotesque end-time variety show, as virtuoso puppet theater about an eternal cycle of destruction and reconciliation.

Helga Lázár (1993, Tatabánya, Hungary) is a puppeteer, puppet theater director, and set designer. In her own projects, she explores the border between physical and object theater and experiments with newly developed puppet techniques. Her work has been shown at FITZ – Zentrum für Figurentheater, Stuttgart; 6szín, Budapest; Internationales Figurentheaterfestival, Erlangen; Jurányi, Budapest; Staatstheater Stuttgart; Theater Aachen; Theater und Orchester Heidelberg; Hungarian State Opera, Budapest; and Vojtina Puppet Theater, Debrecen, among others. Lázár lives in Leipzig.