Hungary: Plays

Though in this century Hungarian playwrights Ferenc Molnar and Istvan Orkeny have had their plays produced in professional and university theatres in America, in recent decades Hungarian plays largely ceased to be translated and performed here. DramaContemporary: Hungary introduces a newer generation of writers, Gyorgy Spiro and Mihaly Kornis, in addition to Istvan Csurka, Geza Paskandi and Andras Suto who have had longer careers in theatre there. These plays reflect the social realities of Hungarian life, particularly themes of identity crisis, the role of the intellectual in society, and for Transylvanian authors Suto and Paskandi, contemporary political problems transposed into historical, allegorical settings. English-language audiences, increasingly interested in the drama of Central European life itself will find important and universal themes at the heart of these plays which outline the impulses of a society now in transition.