Point of No Return - There is no turning back, #1 - 2024

An essay by theatre critic Tamás Jászay on the situation of the independent Hungarian theatre scene

How did it come to this? This is a question that audiences, theatre professionals and critics ask themselves every day in the face of the disappearance of the Hungarian independent theatre scene, which has lasted for almost a decade and a half but is now entering a final phase. A look at the apocalypse or the independent theatres threatened with extinction.

Let's start outside the theatre. In October 2023, Gábor Reisz's third feature film "Explanation for Everything" was released, attracting over 55,000 viewers to Hungarian cinemas within a month. This film, which was not funded by the Hungarian state, won awards in Venice, Chicago and Rome and will also be shown at international film festivals in 2024. The film deals with how a small misunderstanding escalates into a nationwide political scandal. The film builds towards a magnificent, albeit disheartening, climax in which a politically right-wing father and a liberal history teacher try to understand each other's points of view - to no avail. Their futile battle of words brings back many memories of personal experiences for the Hungarian audience: How many times have we tried to convince our friends and relatives since the right-wing government took office in 2010 that the country is going in a very bad direction or, conversely, in a very good direction ... Gábor Reisz brings something new to the narrative of the divided Hungary that millions experience every day. He names the head of government Viktor Orbán and the former opposition leader Ferenc Gyurcsány, who is demonised by the right, and talks about the financier, patron and benefactor George Soros, about migrants, manipulative and biased media, the fear of taking a stand, self-censorship - in short, about everything we experience and how we live: Welcome to Hungary!

This kind of honesty and openness is practically unprecedented in contemporary Hungarian art. During the decades of communism, it was common to convey a hidden message between the lines, and now it seems we are back to the same point. At first I thought it was overcaution on the part of artists or perhaps the reintroduction and perpetuation of highly dangerous self-censorship. In the meantime, however, I sense apathy, disillusionment and resignation among artists: As we will see below, the private sphere is being valorised, public life and politics have become a dark field. I am not saying that this development is going in the right direction, but this turn of events is by no means surprising in view of history.

Although I am disgusted by the war rhetoric that pervades Hungarian public discourse today - the prime minister and his comrades "fighting" against Brussels, "protecting" Hungary from George Soros, etc. - a sketchy overview of the history of the independent theatre scene in Hungary reveals a picture of a decades-long war, punctuated by cease-fires, small victories and major defeats.

To trace the ancestors, we have to go back a long way: Amateur theatre ensembles, which came into being at universities in the capital and in the provinces in the 1960s, are the predecessors of today's independent theatres. In their performances, they worked with authors, themes and aesthetic forms that went far beyond the official line of socialist realism. Their marginal existence is the most typical characteristic of amateur theatre and the language used to describe it is revealing. The term "amateur" or non-professional still has negative connotations, but the term "alternative" that replaced it in the mid-1970s is just as stigmatising. The wording of the Hungarian Theatre Act, which was passed in 2008 and amended several times, also speaks volumes: institutions and groups are divided into three categories: "national", "priority" and "other". Independent theatres are listed under "other": So they will never have national or priority status ..

Although the term "other theatre" ("másszínház"), which emerged in the second half of the 1990s, has not really caught on, László Bérczes' precise definition shows the essence of the independent existence of this form of theatre. "No matter what name we give to the other theatre (marginal, radical, alternative, avant-garde, oppositional, etc.), it will always designate a theatre that contradicts the prevailing authority or positions itself, regardless of whether this theatre is located within the institution or outside it" (author's emphasis). When it comes to free or independent theatre, it is important to understand that its name is actually a euphemism: we are talking about the area most vulnerable to current cultural policy, the area of extreme dependence.

The theatre financing system in Hungary is so complex that it is difficult to understand even for those who are involved in it. I will therefore only go into it briefly: Thanks to George Soros and the Open Society Foundation, independent theatres have had access to modest financial resources via calls for tenders since the mid-1980s. After the regime change, the Ministry of Culture introduced an annual operating subsidy in the mid-1990s: This funding system, which is to be radically reformed from 2024, does not, strictly speaking, encourage the creation of new productions. The latter are made possible by the project grants established in 1993 as part of the National Culture Fund, whereby ridiculously small amounts are awarded for new productions. Although it is widely known, it must be emphasised once again: Culture cannot exist in East-Central Europe without state funding. It is therefore worrying when the new Minister of Culture talks about the fact that in future there should only be project funding - i.e. no continuous support for independent theatre work.

Everyone living in Hungary today knows the feeling of the "point of no return" when politics has crossed a certain line. 2023 will probably be a turning point in the history of independent theatres: Their already low annual operating grants have been reduced by forty per cent (!) without consultation or explanation by the Ministry of Culture. This unexpected decision is a death sentence for independent theatre groups that are already on the verge of burnout and closure. When Réka Szabó - director, choreographer and head of the group "The Symptoms" (Tünet Együttes), founded in 2003 - announced in February 2023 that she would be closing her ensemble, it was clear that this radical but necessary step was in fact only the beginning. The director's open letter is both a self-critical vision and a prophecy: "Many decisive moments and important people have recently fallen into insignificance due to the cynical manipulation of politics and our collective indifference, which feeds on many sources."

In fact, several groups announced their demise in 2023 and the following list is by no means exhaustive. After ten years of existence, the FAQ Theatre, a company consisting mainly of young people experimenting with new forms of dramaturgy, bid farewell to its audience with a funeral ceremony. The Narrative Kollektiv (Narratíva Kollektíva), founded a few years ago, started with ambitious plans by a young generation of directors and is now on the brink of dissolution. In contemporary dance, the permanent company is a rule that confirms the exception: The Ziggurat Project, which experimented with technology, public spaces and interdisciplinary means, has ceased operations.

For some time now, there has been an emergency in the field of theatre education: the work of this professional group, which aims to empower young people to think critically, embrace democracy and a culture of debate, is presumably considered dangerous by the government and is therefore not supported. Their work is prevented by constantly decreasing funding opportunities. The internationally renowned Proton Theatre under the direction of Kornél Mundruczó, which has developed its performances with the help of the Trafó Theatre in Budapest and with international co-production partners, is unable to continue its work. The director has now practically given up making theatre in his home country. In the summer of 2023, the Proton Theatre announced an action entitled "The Olympics of Surviving", a sad irony with reference to the Theatre Olympics, an international festival that took place over several months in Hungary and was generously supported by the government to the tune of millions. Mundruczó and his virtual team are now caught in a vicious circle: In order to (possibly) receive an operating subsidy from the ministry in 2024, they have to stage a new production and perform their repertoire, but the radically reduced subsidies no longer even allow for basic operations.

Outsiders may think that the disappearance of independent theatres would only hurt a few, but cultural statistics prove otherwise. According to data from 2021, seventy registered companies in the independent theatre sector presented 5,350 performances to over 710,000 (!) spectators. We can say that the independent theatres are popular and their performances are in demand, and that the average state funding of around 9.4 million forints (equivalent to around 25,000 euros at today's exchange rate) per group was recouped in full in the same year. However, most independent theatre initiatives do not have their own venue and therefore do not have to pay for the infrastructure and logistics costs of their own venues. While in the 1980s and 1990s only a few theatre houses with permanent ensembles and repertoires (e.g. the Katona József Theatre in Budapest) represented Hungarian theatre culture outside the country, this changed fundamentally at the beginning of the 2000s. Europe and the world became aware of the work of the independent Hungarian scene, including Viktor Bodó, Kornél Mundruczó, Béla Pintér, Zoltán Balázs, also born in the 1970s, mainly thanks to the Chalk Circle Theatre (Krétakör Színház) under the direction of Árpád Schilling.

The 2010s brought new changes: Schilling left Hungary in 2018 and both Bodó and Mundruczó moved their theatre work abroad. Viktor Bodó's internationally recognised company, the Sputnik Shipping Company (Szputnyik Hajózási Társaság), was dissolved in 2015. Speaking of successes: The case of Béla Pintér is a unique example of the aforementioned movement between the periphery and the centre. His ensemble Béla Pintér and Company, which has been active without interruption since 1998, has been at the centre of attention of audiences and theatre professionals for many years. Its annual premiere became a real social event, there were months-long waiting lists for some of its performances and its career is characterised by a series of awards and invitations to festivals. Pintér's performances are his main means of communicating the mental state of contemporary Hungary: In his rare public appearances, he attracts attention with incisive open speeches in which he does not conceal the responsibility of politicians. But what is the situation today? The past four years have been extraordinarily eventful. Since 2020, the country, the region and the whole world have lurched from one crisis to the next with little hope. Nevertheless, a new generation of young theatre professionals in their twenties and thirties has emerged who think and formulate theatre from a different perspective than their older colleagues. Their near future will be characterised by low-budget or no-budget productions with small teams and easy travel. International co-productions can be a way out of this hopeless situation, as can productions in which the structure and dramaturgy are determined by the actors themselves, and local versions of the projects can be realised anywhere. With a few exceptions, the age of fixed ensembles, groups and collectives is probably over for good: Nowadays, plays are mainly created on a project basis and in flexible collaborations.

As I have already indicated, this generation is not concerned with (current) politics. Their primary focus is on the private sphere, which does not mean that they turn a blind eye to current Hungary. They often report on the state of public affairs by telling personal stories and using documentary theatre forms. Family and historical traumas, distorted memory politics, gender stereotypes or the situation of minorities are also addressed in some productions. At the same time, plays based on classical theatre texts that indirectly reflect the present have not disappeared from the scene. At the other end of the scale of new formats from a younger generation are productions that shift the traditional role of the audience and sometimes demand their active participation. Freeszfe is currently important for a young generation of theatre. It is a Budapest-based partisan institution for students and teachers who have voluntarily left and/or been expelled from the University of Theatre and Film Arts (SZFE) after protesting against the reorganisation of higher education in Hungary, against the foundation of state universities, which is referred to as a model change in government discourse. As a result, Hungary's smallest university organised the largest series of protests to date with a strong national and international resonance, which also included performative elements: The university's main building was occupied and defended by students for months, and their protest was finally ended by the pandemic decree. The newly founded Freeszfe works professionally with a minimal budget and is trying to break new ground in theatre education.

When a foreign journalist asked me a few months ago to name the golden age of independent theatre in Hungary, after a brief hesitation I named the second half of the 2000s as the best years of Krétakör, Szputnyik, Maladype, Béla Pintér. The right-wing government since 2010 has led to a clear break in the independent theatres, which were already very promising and recognised. And although today, as I write this article at the end of cold November 2023, on the surface almost everything is still good in terms of independent theatre companies, performances and audiences, I am much more pessimistic about whether a new golden age will come. I hope I'm wrong.

Tamás Jászay, born in Szeged in 1978, is a Hungarian theatre critic, publicist and university lecturer. He works for numerous theatre magazines and newspapers, including as editor of the online culture portal Revizor. He was co-curator of the 6th dunaPart Edition 2023, a platform for contemporary Hungarian performing arts.