The Hungarian Professional Theatre in Greater Romania, 1918–1930

Extract

In this article Pompila Burcică traces the work and legal conditions in which Hungarian theatre professionals – company directors and actors – operated as a national minority of middle-class status in Greater Romania after 1918. Their attempts at representing Hungarian culture in the public space, as revealed in their business correspondence with the Romanian state, placed theatre professionals not at the vanguard of a collective action on behalf of a minority and its cultural life, but at the forefront of civic engagement and individual private initiative that led to economic recovery and development, thus illustrating the array of civic choices and economic opportunities for minorities holding Romanian citizenship in a nation state. The article focuses on two issues: the work environment for minorities that helped them adjust professionally and negotiate and exert a civic identity in the new nation state; and the degree to which a cultural field such as theatre was actually treated as an economic entrerprise, free of political interference. These civic and economic concerns accounted for the success of these theatre entrepreneurs, operating their businesses under the control of a paternalistic state.