Színházi „átállítás” – a pesti magánszínházi mező önszabályozó működési modelljének válsága (1936–1944)
“Realigning” the Theatre: The Crisis of the Self-Regulated Operational Model of the Private Theatre Sector in Pest (1936–1942)

Summary/Abstract: Based on the analysis of the material at the archives of the Association of Theatre Directors in Budapest, the study explores the various stages as well as the internal and external perceptions of the process of perceived prestige loss. The main research questions raised by the author include how the executives of the association, primarily businessmen and theatre directors from the Budapest elite, interpreted the increasing pressure by the authorities which disrupted and gradually rendered impossible the operation of private theatres. How did they see the municipal authorities’ involvement in the theatre sector which had flourished according to the rules of market economy in the past? What type of responses did they have when the passing of the first anti-Jewish bills and the establishment of the Chamber of Theatrical and Cinema Arts abolished their former platforms of negotiation and mediation? How did these events transform their formerly loyal attitudes toward the authorities? The study also touches upon the parallelism between the idealistic, Utopian ideas emerging in the late 1930s and those present after 1949. In both of these cases, directing the “increase of cultural demand” at the theatre industry, stressing the necessary elimination of the commercial character of the sector, and bringing social factors to the forefront, were the strategies that justified state intervention. At these junctures, the unquestionably real problems of the private theatre model were thought to be solvable by central regulation, the re-education of the audience, and supplanting the former “elite” of the sector.

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