Bulyovszkyné Szilágyi Lilla és a magyar színházi diskurzus
Lilla Bulyovszky and the Hungarian Theatrical Discourse

Summary/Abstract: By looking at the career of Lilla Bulyovszky (1833–1909), a Hungarian actress who also gained fame abroad, the essay explores what is revealed and what remains hidden in the dominant nationalistic theatre history discourses of the era concerning the criteria of talent and national acknowledgement. By approaching heterogeneous facts related to the actress’s life, the presentation draws attention to the ruptures and tensions of her life history, to the invisible terrain between what was ‘recounted’ and what was ‘lived’. Such points of rupture were her leaving of the Hungarian National Theatre of Budapest for various German stages, but also her return to Hungary in 1875, when, although she enjoyed quite a fame she wasn’t given any contract in her home country. Throughout the analysis I will argue that, on the one hand, 19th century theatrical discourse as well as 20th century Hungarian theatre historians set the performances on Hungarian stage as the exclusive conditions for achieving Hungarian celebrity status; as such, emigration for professional purposes was highly depreciated. On the other hand, the microhistorical approach of using various source documents reveals that the possibilities and consequences of individual choices relate not only to the professional actress’s life story but also to the plurality of contexts. What interests me are the opportunities and consequences related to individual choices made by a well-known actress in the celebrity-building conditions of the period. Her career as reflected by the discourse of the Hungarian theatre serves as a picture of the expectations and criteria set for acclaimed actresses in the Hungarian society beginning with the second half of the 19th century.

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