A ROOM OF ONE'S OWN [?]

Written by Szandi Vass and Orsolya Fodor, inspired by the eponymous work, life, and writings of Virginia Woolf

In 1928, Virginia Woolf was invited to give a lecture titled Women and Fiction. From this lecture came her essay A Room of One’s Own. Now, in 2025, we evoke this lecture in the form of a staged lecture performance, relying solely on facts, completely stripped of any personal perspective.

“For my belief is that if we live another century or so—and have five hundred a year each of us and rooms of our own; if we have the habit of freedom and the courage to write exactly what we think; if we face the fact—for it is a fact—that there is no arm to cling to, but that we go alone and that our relation is not only to the world of men and women but to the reality, and the sky, too, and the trees or whatever it may be in themselves—then the opportunity will come and the dead poet who was Shakespeare’s sister will put on the body which she has so often laid down.”
— V.W.

Cast
Virginia – Anna Hay
S. Judit – Zsófia Tóth

Creative Team
Translator / Literary Consultant – Ferenc Réder
Set / Visuals – Nóra Vermes
Costume – Judit Bárány
Dramaturg – Szandi Vass
Lighting, Sound – Krisztián Balázs
Video – Réka Nagy
Composer – Petra Szászi
Assistant – Judit Tóth
Director – Orsolya Fodor

Photo: Judit Horváth

Review:
Klára Nagy: Transgenerational Rage
https://szinhaz.net/2025/06/12/nagy-klara-transzgeneracios-harag/?fbclid=IwY2xjawK3aXlleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHt11hWw2hWRR9AcXsBMvHrwHm_SiQo4O9PPctDPAaAP7bVa2qfvAJi2nLTmD_aem_bpsB5vqlPq98FSxuNmwrAA

Judit S.'s Room / Room of Judit S.
performative installation
2026, FANTAZMA – Exam Exhibition of the Second-Year Doctoral Students of the Hungarian University of Fine Arts, Feszty House, Hungarian University of Fine Arts

Judit S.'s Room is a performative installation constructed through a dialogue between Virginia Woolf’s 1928 essay A Room of One’s Own and a contemporary, fragmented state of attention. The work is both a reconsideration of Orsolya Fodor’s lecture-theatre production and a trace of an artistic process unfolding between 2021 and 2025, moving between author and character, directorial and performative positions, and between Orlando and Judit S. This movement is not only literary or dramaturgical but also concerned with identity: it renders visible the possibilities, conditions, and limitations of artistic personae and their capacity to speak.

The space is simultaneously intimate and public: a site of creation, expression, and the struggle for attention, where a room of one’s own is not a given framework but a condition that must be continually produced. A recurring motif is the duality of white and red luminosity. Following Virginia Woolf, white signifies the space of articulation and intellectual clarity, while red represents suppressed, often invisible affect and potential. These two qualities do not exclude but rather presuppose one another: expression is built from what frequently remains unspoken.

Judit S.'s Room may be understood as a literary and performative rereading, a reenactment, and a research space for an artistic voice in continuous transformation.

“For my belief is that if we live another century or so—I am talking of the common life which is the real life and not of the little separate lives which we live as individuals—and have five hundred a year each of us and rooms of our own; if we have the habit of freedom and the courage to write exactly what we think; ... then the opportunity will come and the dead poet who was Shakespeare's sister will put on the body which she has so often laid down.”
— Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own