Plays from Contemporary Hungary: ‘Difficult Women’ and Resistant Dramatic Voices
A unique collection of five contemporary plays from 21st-century Hungary, translated into English for the first time.
Written by some of Hungary’s most highly prolific and commercially successful dramatic voices, these plays are being produced in their native Hungary by theatres that do not adhere to Viktor Orbán's values and offer a counterpoint to the commercial Boulevard Theatre scene of Budapest.
Translator and theatre-maker Szilvi Naray champions these unheard voices through her performable and dramatically engaging translations. The plays are aimed at micro-budget productions and offer a special opportunity for students and small theatre companies alike to engage with these witty, politically irreverent plays, finally in English.
Each of the selected playwrights has been in direct conflict with the Hungarian government and has been demonised by the state-controlled press. The five plays are thematically threaded together by their common use of strong leading female protagonists with an overarching theme of the family unit. Through the edited introduction the themes and feminine translation strategy discusses how the plays offer a microcosmic lens for understanding the paradox that today’s Hungary exemplifies, making this a necessary study into the world of contemporary Hungary through drama.
Szilvi Naray is a translator/director and academic author. She specialises in contemporary Hungarian drama. Her last full-scale production was the critically well received production of her translation of PRAH written by Gyorgy Spiro. She publishes on translating literature and drama and most recently about the Hungarian translation of The Second Sex.
György Spiró is a dramatist, novelist and essayist who has emerged as one of post-war Hungary's most prominent literary figures
János Háy is a popular short-story writer, poet, essayist, and playwright.
Krisztina Tóth is a Hungarian writer, poet and translator