Wandering the World, Wondering How to Return Theatre & Performing Arts

Monodrama in One Act – When Diary Notes Grow into Literature

From London to South America, from India to New Zealand, her travel journals eventually grew into her 2024 novel, Itt sem fogunk élni (~We Won’t Live Here Either), which traces a young woman’s coming-of-age through her diary entries.

In 2025, Boglárka Berecz and Mátyás Dögei adapted the book for the stage, with Péter Vargyas composing its music and writing the lyrics. Thus was born the monodrama Wandering the World, Wondering How to Return–a sensitive and humorous theatrical piece that takes the audience through this intimate journey of self-discovery.

Throughout Anna Torner’s creative path – moving between writing and acting – her blog posts evolved into works of literary merit, while acting became a defining part of her life.

Join us for this special performance, which aims to offer us all relatable touchstones and answers.

Synopsis

It takes one hour to fly from Budapest to Târgu Mureș. Travelling through England, Asia, and South America – sometimes by bicycle, car, train, on foot, by bus, ship, truck, ferry, tractor, boat, or motorbike – alone, but never completely alone, the same journey can take five years.

The journey matters more than the destination. I move like a ghost through a Parisian apartment. Pink ponies in London. In the junky quarter, I swim across the canal with you. We cycle around Southeast  Asia and New  Zealand. Without you, I hitchhike on Mexican trucks, my Christmas dinner is green banana boiled with callaloo leaves, and I rewrite the rules of wild camping. Don’t look for happiness outside. I try what’s worth trying in Colombia, dance at a Kichwa celebration in Ecuador, travel through Peru with Tata, and get close to the Big Dipper itself. Without you. Home is within you. By the time I return, maybe my phone will finally ring.

The performance runs 1 hour and 15 minutes and will be performed in English.

Director: Boglárka Berecz
Dramaturg and musical director: Mátyás Dögei
Performed by: Anna Torner
Live music and vocals: Péter Vargyas

When a young woman gathers her savings and buys a one-way ticket to Mexico – and keeps going, farther and farther still – she can be sure to stumble upon a thousand little stories along the way. She sleeps in roadside motels, trucks, tents, and pay toilets. Cooks banana soup in a Rasta hut in Belize, finds surrogate parents in Peru, argues with soldiers in the Indian mountains, and ends up in a quarantine hostel in New Zealand. She babysits, fries doughnuts, tends bar, and shears sheep. She makes friendships for life. Sometimes she curses the very idea of living in the moment – and herself. Because what are a thousand adventures compared to a fulfilled love? Then she’s off again, speeding into the sunset on a truck bed. Or moves into a flat on Dob Street, Budapest. And then moves on once more, always farther – until… What does it really mean to arrive?
Anna Torner travelled the world for five years. Her novel – born from blog entries and perhaps letters never sent – is both a travelogue and a diary, written for those who keep searching, with endless curiosity, for their own path.
Leonidasz Purosz, editor of Itt sem fogunk élni (~We Won’t Live Here Either)

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