Hope and euphoria: Hungarian cultural workers look to the future
On how Hungarian cultural workers are feeling following April's election.

The Stage has just published my article on a new production of Death of a Salesman in Istanbul, directed by Rufus Norris, former artistic director of the National Theatre of Great Britain, and the reason for my recent trip. Willy Loman was played by Halit Ergenç, who is an enormous star in Türkiye, and the theatre was the size of small aircraft hanger. Did Norris pull it off?

In a welcome break from writing about funding cuts, governmental over-reach and the erosion of freedom of expression, this week’s newsletter is about Hungary and how theatre artists are feeling after the ousting of Viktor Orbán.

When Péter Magyar delivered a resounding victory for the opposition Tisza party in the Hungarian parliamentary election it marked both the beginning of a new chapter for the country and the end of the Orban regime. It was a moment of celebration and relief. After 16 years, it was over.

The night of the 12 April was one of “disbelief and euphoria” for Tamas Jaszay, theatre critic and editor-in-chief of the critical portal Revizor. “In just a few hours, a toxic relationship that had lasted 16 years came to an end.” For theatre theoretician Sylvia Huszár, it was a night of “joy and hope.”

“It was definitely one of the most memorable nights of my life, “ says Gábor Thury, a dramaturg and curator now living in Berlin. “I don’t live in Hungary, but I went home for the elections, we waited for the results in a bar and cultural space called Auróra that opened for this evening. It is closed now, but for 10 years it had been a very important hub in Budapest for counterculture and community and protest movements, it was also regularly harassed by the authorities. in a way it was symbolic to wait for the results there with friends, then we went on to celebrate on the streets.”

As cultural workers emerging from 16 years of Orban rule there were plenty of reasons to celebrate. Under Orban, says Thury, “conditions for Hungarian theatre makers varied strongly according to their proximity and loyalty to power.”

“Most of the national theatres and municipal theatres,” he says, “had artistic directors loyal to those in power. They were political nominees, often lacking institutional experience. In some cases, these theatres just did very classical, apolitical theatre; in other cases — as with Attila Vidnyánszky, artistic director at the National Theatre in Budapest — theatre was taking part in Fidesz’s ideological ‘culture war’.”

Budapest has already voted against Fidesz - Orban’s party - in 2018, he says, and elected a progressive-green mayor as well as an opposition city council. “Thus, Budapest-funded institutions could keep their integrity and independence, but the funding was thinner and more fragile than in other municipal theatres in Hungary, since Orbán and his government punished Budapest for being opposition-led, raising extra taxes for the city and withdrawing funding. Compared to the region, Budapest is an extremely underfunded capital city.”

Conditions for the independent scene were even more stretched. “The period after 2010 was an era of continuous decline and deliberate financial strangulation for the independent scene,” explains Jaszay, (You can read more about the ways in which the country’s independent scene was suffocated, in Jaszay’s very thorough article for Critical Stages.) “Excellent creative groups disappeared; major artists moved abroad, or, if they stayed in Hungary, left the profession altogether,” he says. “Independent companies had to apply for funding year after year, and that funding was not enough to guarantee their annual operation. Most of them switched into survival mode, while the rest are left fighting among themselves for the state money poured into the system.”

“Beyond the material and structural destruction, Fidesz is also responsible for the miserable mental climate of the country that developed,” he adds. The psychological toll of living within a system like this is significant. It is exhausting and draining to work under such conditions. It can be tough to find the emotional bandwidth to engage in creative work.

”The cultural climate under the Orbán regime meant that independent arts producers were fighting simply to survive—the price of preserving creative freedom became constant financial uncertainty,” explains Huszár. Since 2018 she worked as the creative producer of theatre director Zoltán Balázs. Maladype Theatre, the company of which he is artistic director, has also struggled to survive due to lack of funds. “We decided that the way out of this new situation was to create co-productions both at home and abroad.” In 2023, they organized their first international co-productions in collaboration with the MESS International Festival and the Sarajevo War Theater.

To secure government support as an artist under Orban, it was necessary to display loyalty. “The government consciously and openly supported only artists loyal to it,” says Jaszay. It’s not that there wasn’t money for culture, far from it, it was more how, and to whom, it was distributed. He describes how Péter Fekete, the former state secretary for culture – and former magician – once bought advertising space in foreign newspapers to proclaim that, proportionally to GDP, Hungary spent the most on culture in the European Union. “Even if the claim is numerically true,” says Jaszay, “the devil lies in the details: the past sixteen years were dominated by prestige investments and symbolic cultural politics, while decision-makers suffocated grassroots initiatives at birth.”

By way of illustration, in 2023, Hungary hosted the Theatre Olympics, a major international event featuring work by companies including Complicité and Cheek by Jowl and funded by a 4.5 billion forint grant from the Hungarian government. It was an outward display of commitment to culture made by a government intent on smothering any form of dissenting voice. Here’s the article I wrote at the time in The Stage.

Now Huszár reports feeling re-energised. Whereas she had previously considered leaving the country altogether because the situation was becoming untenable. “Now, suddenly, hope has appeared; the country—which is my home, my work, and my family—has opened up.”

For Thury, after the initial euphoria abated, anger set in. “So many lives and careers were destroyed during these years, so many people had to struggle because they raised their voice and believed in democratic values, so much unfulfilled potential I saw around me: people who left the country, opportunists who got the positions instead of talented and hard-working people. I just thought these 16 years were way too long, for my generation this was the whole of the young professional stage of our lives.”

Their relief is tempered by political reality. As Jaszay points out, “on paper, the new Hungarian parliament consists entirely of right-wing parties: apart from the Tisza Party and Fidesz, a few representatives of Mi Hazánk [Our Homeland, an extreme far right party] also made it into parliament.”

Culture was not a big talking point for Tisza in the run up to the elections and barely warrants a mention in their campaign material, according to Jaszay “This does not surprise me: for politicians in the 21st century, culture belongs among the things that do not matter,” he says. What Tisza has promised, however, is “the immediate abolition of extremely centralised operation, manual control and the distribution of money based on party loyalty; it promises to restore an open and fair application system, from the appointment of theatre directors to the development of film projects, and also significant wage increases in the cultural sector.”

At this moment, he says, “it may be too early to make a definitive statement about Tisza’s ideas concerning culture, since the process of handing over the ministry is still ongoing. It is encouraging, however, that Zoltán Tarr will head the newly established Ministry for Social Relations and Culture, which means that after many years culture once again has an independent ministry.”

Tarr, a minister from the Reformed Church and, as such, somewhat of an outsider in the cultural scene, has made some promising points, says Thury. “They want pluralism in the arts, and political views won’t influence funding decisions.” (Although, he adds, Orbán and Fidesz would have claimed the same). Tarr was also realistic, though: “there won’t be money for everyone who did not get funding in the previous years. It is still a moderate, liberal-conservative government, with more liberal and more conservative positions, but the direction is still unclear, especially as to how they will position themselves in some of the big symbolic discussions of the Fidesz-era - like LGBTQ+ rights and representation.”

Ervin Nagy, the secretary of state responsible for culture, and thus for theatre, is a famous actor who was, until recently, a company member of one of Hungary’s most renowned theatres, József Katona Theatre and has experience of working in the Hungarian independent scene, with all the associated struggles. He is that rare thing, says Huszár, “a politician who is highly respected by the film and theatre communities.” (And we haven’t even seen his dance moves yet). He has emphasized that he wants to start a dialogue as soon as possible with professional associations. “These professional organizations,” says Thury, “whether they are for theatre, film, or visual art, have already been mobilized since the elections and have already started to coordinate — and some of them already did so well before the elections.”

At the same time, Hungary’s National Cultural Fund (NKA) has been gripped by scandal. (One of the many scandals that have come to light in recent weeks; as Jaszay says “skeletons are still falling out of the closet every day.”) The NKA is one of the most important state-funded institutions supporting Hungarian arts and culture. It was once genuinely independent, though, as this Revizor article shows, this eventually ceased to be the case and distribution of grants was increasingly made on an ideological or political basis. It recently emerged that a sizable proportion of its funds it had distributed had gone to further Fidesz’s interests in the election. 17 billion forints, a sum equivalent to almost 50 million euros, had been spent, Jaszay explains, “on tasks that were never carried out and/or were entirely unnecessary and unjustified, often openly amounting to campaign financing.” The new minister of culture has now launched an internal investigation within the institution. (There’s an overview of the unfolding scandal here). While some of the 17 billion forints has been repaid by the beneficiaries, Jaszay describes that as “small change.”

As a result of the scandal, Attila Vidnyánszky resigned from his position on the board of the NKA. Vidnyánszky, an ally of Orban’s, remains in his role in the National Theatre, though has not yet announced its 2026/2027 season. “Following the change in government, his position and cultural influence were visibly shaken,” says Huszár. (Vidnyánszky previously offered to resign following the serious injury of two actors during a performance of Romeo and Juliet he directed, only for his resignation to be refused). “I very much hope that he disappears from the Hungarian theatre scene as soon as possible,” says Huszár.

“Fidesz and Orbán understood cultural politics as creating their own cultural hegemony, their own national culture,” says Thury. “They spent so much money on it, but it did not really work out. There was neither much audience for it, nor were these works well received by anyone outside their bubble. In the end, despite all their efforts, they did not have much influence on what is considered to be good art in Hungarian society and what the audience is interested in.”

Looking to the future, Thury “would like to see a government that is not punishing and pressuring those who do not share its political views, or who dare to criticize it. A system that values critical thinking, experimentation and taking risks.”

Huszár feels that ”first and foremost, we should help those experimental theatres operating outside the established system—which have been active for years—to remain viable, because they are writing theatre history both here and abroad. At the same time, we must create a future for the younger generation. Independence and freedom must remain fundamental rights for creators.” Ultimately, she says, “the change must take place not only in society, but also within ourselves.”

“I am very optimistic,” says Thury, “although I know that it will be a long process. Hungary had reached a low point, and each Orbán government showed that it was always possible to go lower, morally and culturally. It will need time to process how these 16 years of hate could have happened, and why there was not enough resistance and solidarity in Hungarian society to end this sooner. There is so much damage in society; it will take a lot of work and negotiation to start healing and start some reconciliation within society.”

Jaszay is somewhat less optimistic, “since the state coffers are practically empty.” Those voters, he says, “who suddenly imagined that Péter Magyar’s victory would bring about paradise will be disappointed.” (Freemuse also sounds a note of caution).

“The new prime minister has taken over a country in an extremely poor state,” he says. “With his brand-new team, assembled from experts rather than politicians, he does not want to restore the pre-2010 order, but to restart Hungary. Thirty-six years after the fall of state socialism, and 16 years after the beginning of Fidesz’s dictature, I see this as an almost impossible mission, but I sincerely hope that, this time, I will be wrong.”

Natasha Tripney, Jun 03, 2026