HUNGARY: Arts Crisis Continues

This video may be "read" in English

through YouTube's caption function.

Colleagues in Hungary tell a story of funding cuts to independent companies in Hungary due to budgetary maneuvers and bureaucratic delays. At this point, the FESZ Secretariat says, it appears there will be no funding in 2012, which has led to the suspension of work by companies such as Pintér Béla Company, Krétakör, and Sputnyik under the direction of Viktor Bodó. FESZ is an acronym for an independent theatre association. A video released on YouTube by the FESZ Secretariat recounts the difficulties of companies and the impact on individual artists. Spoken in Hungarian, the video has captions available through YouTube's caption service.

Readers of this site may recall postings from 2010 that addressed the ongoing crisis in Hungarian theatre. The press release from FESZ is reprinted below, in shortened form. Szilvia Nagy may be contacted for more information at fesz2012@gmail.com.

BLEEDING INDEPENDENT THEATRES

DRY IN HUNGARY

The Hungarian independent performers’ scene has been facing serious hardships every year as subsidies received from the state have been erratic or delayed.

Organizations still waiting for subsidies for 2012 had to face the fact that cuts announced by the Hungarian Department of Economics on October 5 also endanger their regular yearly support.

On November 8, the official government website announced that there would be further cuts from the already adjudged (and already decreased) operational subsidies.

Up to this date, the companies concerned still have not received any official declaration on the rate of these cuts. A short announcement let independent performers know that this rate would be even higher than the one mentioned on the government’s website: instead of by one third, support will be cut by 36.51 percent.

By now, most of the independent companies are on the verge of not being to function any further: according to FESZ’s (Association of Independent Theatres) survey, almost half (45 percent) of the organizations waiting for support have no reserves. If subsidies are not awarded by the end of the year, the proportion of independent companies without reserves will grow to 90 percent. One third (32%) of the companies have already had to take out loans in order to be able to carry on with their operations.

The Hungarian government’s unlawful course of action, through the delays and cuts in funding, one-sidedly impairs the freedom of artistic expression and also violates citizens’ constitutional right to self-education, access to culture, and the possibility to choose from a palette of different cultural products and experiences.

In our grave situation, we ask for the solidarity of the international public. Publish and broadcast it through your media, let your audiences know, that post-Soviet Hungary’s most lively and progressive artists, who have therefore also been the most ardent supporters of a democratic value system, are forced to discontinue their operations from January 2013.

Critical Stages: Sixth Edition Online

Yun-Cheol Kim, president of the International Association of Theatre Critics (AICT-IATC), writes that the latest edition of Critical Stages is online and ready to stimulate discussion of numerous issues in theater criticism today.

"In particular," Kim writes, "the Special Topic section is abundant with moving articles on how the 3/11 earthquake and tsunami disaster has affected the theater scene in Japan. We all know how calmly and courageously the Japanese people have been as they have dealt with this natural disaster."

Kim goes on to note that the Special Topic articles remind us of the commitment of "our Japanese colleagues, critics and practitioners," who have shouldered many burdens as Japanese society has begun to rebuild.

Critical Stages also focuses on Kapila Vatsyayan, the respected Indian scholar and artist who received the Thalia Prize in Warsaw. In recognizing Vatsyayan, the international association has selected a woman and a non-Western honoree for the first time. Vatsyayan's acceptance speech, originally delivered on recorded video at the Warsaw Congress in March, Kim writes, "elegantly justified IATC’s decision" to honor her with the Thalia, which is given to those who have "significantly influenced our critical thinking with their writing."

In addition to the Special Topic essays and reportage on the Thalia Prize, the sixth edition of Critical Stages also features interviews with prominent directors, actors, and playwrights from Bulgaria, France, Italy, Romania, and the United States. The performance review section includes nine pieces on contemporary theater in Azerbaijan, the Baltic countries, Canada, France, Finland, Hungary, Italy, Korea, and Romania. Also included are two intercultural essays by French authors on Korean and Japanese performances. Three recent books are reviewed in this edition, including a French perspective on Mark Brown’s survey of interviews with Howard Barker across three decades.

WORLD CONGRESS: “Theatre Beyond the Theatre”

Tomasz Miłkowski

The Polish section of the International Association of Theatre Critics has announced the colloquium theme for XXVI World Congress of AICT-IATC to be held in Warsaw, 26–31 March 2012. Organizer Tomasz Miłkowski, who is president of the Polish section, issued the following call for colloquium papers:

Theatre Beyond the Theatre

As the art form evolves, theatre performance appears to escape the theatre space. Artists create work designed to be performed outside theatre buildings. Frequently they stage work in open spaces, postindustrial areas, desolate locations, and in the streets of our cities, as they depart the traditional theatrical building.

Even when artists produce their work within the theatre building itself they often seek nontraditional spaces such as cellars, attics, technical rooms, or corridors. This shift in production practice seems to be more than a marginal phenomenon. It is a change that appears to draw the audience into closer proximity with the artists.

As these new production techniques develop, theatre artists frequently employ modern techniques including electronic media that may give live performance the feel of a video game. Artists also draw from new performance techniques and employ visual media in their productions. In doing so, they create a new world of theatre influenced by light and music that occasionally renders literature tangential.

Perhaps this marks a return to the origins of theatre itself when actors, singers, and storytellers presented directly to their audiences in city squares, on streets, and in meeting places not created for theatrical purposes.

Is this a victory for visual culture and/or mass culture, or is it a transitional phenomenon? Are we critics able to describe this phenomenon and give it a name? How do we address this dramatic, spatial, and aesthetic reconsideration of contemporary theatre?

WORLD CONGRESS: Warsaw 2012

Warsaw’s Old Town

During its meeting in Tbilisi, Georgia, the executive committee of the International Association of Theatre Critics (AICT-IATC) announced the dates and location for the group’s XXVI World Congress.

For the third time since the IATC was founded in 1956, Warsaw, Poland, will host the most significant gathering of theater critics from around the globe.

Combined with the XIX World Congress held in Gdansk, in 1998, Poland has proven an exceptional and gracious host to theater critics. The congress and its related events will be held March 26–31, 2012. The American Theatre Critics Association will be officially represented by Jeffrey Eric Jenkins, a member of the international executive committee, and by the association’s chair, Jay Handelman, and vice chair, Jonathan Abarbanel. Additional information on the XXVI World Congress will be posted as it becomes available.

UPDATE: Statement on Robert Sturua

FROM the Executive Committee of the International Association of Theatre Critics (AICT-IATC)
Following our meeting with Robert Sturua at the Rustaveli National Theatre in Tbilisi on September 29, the executive committee of the International Association of Theatre Critics, makes the following statement:

As lovers of the theatre and supporters of freedom of expression, we have been deeply disturbed by the removal of Sturua from his post by the Georgian government. Like so many people around the world, we feared that the government had used certain statements attributed to Sturua as a pretext to punish a critical voice from within the artistic community.

Needless to say, however, as internationalists, we were also concerned about the xenophobic remarks that had been attributed to Sturua. At our meeting with him yesterday, Sturua was very honest about what he said in May of this year, and about his motivations. He expressed regret for the particular phrasing that he used and was at pains to distance himself from anti-Armenian or any other xenophobic beliefs; indeed, he put strong emphasis upon the important contribution that Armenians have made to Georgian culture over many centuries.

We welcome these statements by Sturua, which we believe are entirely genuine. Indeed, as is widely accepted, prior to this episode, there has been nothing in Sturua’s theatrical work or in his public life that might suggest any xenophobia on his part.

Having met with the director, it is obvious to us that this matter could have been resolved between the Georgian government and Sturua without the director of Georgia’s National Theatre being removed from his position.

Robert Sturua is a theatre director of high international standing. We hope that, even at this late stage, the Georgian government will recognize its error in removing him from the Rustaveli Theatre, and, in the spirit of freedom of expression and artistic excellence, invite him to take the position of artistic director once again.

ARTS CRISIS: Georgian National Theatre

Georgian Director
Robert Sturua

Georgian theatre critic Irina Gogoberidze reports from Tbilisi that internationally renowned director Robert Sturua was dismissed from his position as artistic director of the country’s most important theatre, Shota Rustaveli National Theatre on August 9. In a letter to members of the International Association of Theatre Critics (AICT-IATC), Gogoberidze wrote that Sturua was fired for “xenophobic” statements that he has made in the past.

Gogoberidze notes in her letter, however, that the government’s “real reason behind this decision was political.” According to the Tbilisi University professor, “Georgia’s government was very displeased by Robert Sturua’s critical public statements, interviews and his performances.” Among the links below, readers will find a May 2011 news article from the Georgia Times in which Sturua refers to government officials as “half-morons.”

International artists have clamored for Sturua to be returned to his position with Vanessa Redgrave, Alan Rickman, and Thelma Holt writing in a letter published online August 28 by The Guardian (UK), “We have never seen any evidence of xenophobia on his part whatever. We cannot believe that this is the real basis of the decision, or that such a charge should be used as a pretext to remove from the Georgian theatre one of its universally acknowledged living treasures.” Georgia’s minister of culture and monument protection, Nikoloz Rurua, responded in a letter published September 6 by The Guardian:

I agree with the authors that Mr. Sturua has made a significant contribution to the arts in Georgia and beyond, but they may not be aware of his recent remarks. In various interviews, he made derogatory remarks about minorities and suggested it was unacceptable to have a member of an ethnic minority (specifically, Armenian) as president of our country. It is correct that nothing in Mr. Sturua’s work suggests xenophobia, but he has not retracted his comments.

In a commentary published online August 23 by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Ghia Nodia, a Georgian former minister of education and science—now a professor of politics at Ilia State University in Tbilisi—acknowledged that Sturua’s firing might “inevitably” appear as if “political scores were being settled” and that Sturua’s “xenophobic comments merely served as the pretext” for action because the director is “widely known to openly oppose the government.” Nodia also draws parallels to Western democracies where public figures who receive their salaries courtesy of the taxpayer “would not remain in office very long” after making similar comments.

Gogoberidze calls for international “friends and colleagues” who have seen Sturua’s work, which includes 19 plays from the Shakespearean canon and a well-regarded production of Brecht’s The Caucasian Chalk Circle, to offer “support . . . in the fight against political persecution of artists.”

The Executive Committee of the International Association of Theatre Critics is scheduled to have its fall meeting in Tbilisi during the Tbilisi International Festival of Theatre at the end of September and beginning of October. ATCA International will provide additional reports from the festival.

RELATED LINKS
International Protests at Director Sturua’s Dismissal Leave Georgian Authorities Unmoved (Report by Salome Modebadze on Georgian goverment reaction to international protests of Sturua’s dismissal, The Messenger [Georgia], 8 September 2011)

Rally in Support of Robert Sturua Takes Place in Tbilisi (Report on protest by Rustaveli Theatre company members of Georgian government’s actions against Sturua, Trend News Agency [Azerbaijan], 31 August 2011)

The Fall Of Robert Sturua Sets A New Standard In Georgian Public Life (Commentary by Ghia Nodia on the website for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 23 August 2011)

Director Robert Sturua: Georgia Is Ruled by Half-Morons (News article in Georgia Times, 25 May 2011)

YOUNG CRITICS: Seminar in Latvia

From MARK BROWN, Adjunct Director of Seminars (AICT-IATC)

The International Association of Theatre Critics (IATC) is pleased to announce a young critics’ seminar to be held in conjunction with the Baltic Drama Festival in Riga, the capital of Latvia, November 18-24, 2011. The performances to be seen include work based on classic Latvian fiction, an exploration of the Latvian “national experience,” as well as visiting works from Estonia and Lithuania. The Latvian hosts invite IATC to hold one seminar group, working in the English language. The seminar will be open to a maximum of 10 participants. Applications are invited from English-speaking professional theater critics between the ages of 18 and 35 years; please attach to your application a brief (one-page) CV, two or three examples of your writing as a professional critic and a letter of recommendation from your national section of IATC. Applicants must be members of the American Theatre Critics Association. Applications will be submitted by the American Theatre Critics Association’s International Committee chair.


The rebuilt House of Blackheads in Riga



Successful applicants will be responsible for the cost of travel to and from Riga and the cost of any visa required for entry to Latvia. The Baltic Theatre Festival generously offers participants free hotel accommodation, meals and tickets for performances. Partial travel grants may be requested from the Foundation of the American Theatre Critics Association.

 
The seminar will be led by Mark Brown, an experienced theatre critic from Scotland. Completed applications must be received by the ATCA International chair by September 5, 2011. Successful applicants will be contacted as soon as possible in order that participants can make arrangements for travel and, where applicable, visas.