Amateur, Self-Active, Dilettante: Changes in the Naming of Non-Professional- Theatre During the Kádár Era

Abstract

They have been called self-active, amateurs, simple dilettantes, but also alternative: nonprofessional theatre has been called by many names over the last two hundred years. In my study, I examine the changes in ‚’terminology’ during the Kadar era, drawing on Reinhart Koselleck’s conceptual history, but I also look back to earlier periods, since the changes in the terminology of the non-professional theatre field between 1956 and 1989 cannot be understood without a knowledge of the antecedents. Indeed, from 1945 onwards, it meant something very different to call a group a working-class amateur theatre group or a dilettantes group.

Whereas in the Rakosi era and at the beginning of the Kadar era under review, the authorities still claimed the right to name non-professional theatre groups – and thus also to define their field of activity –, by the end of the 1960s, and the beginning of the 1970s, the right to name them had been lost, actors themselves and the critics who followed their work were already trying to ‘name’ the increasingly professional companies, which were going down radically different paths from the professional theatre style.

The authorities, be they the state party or the ministry, also sensed this process and, although they fought against this development and professionalisation in the early 1960s and 1970s, by the end of the 1980s they were powerless to stop it.

Cover photo: Fortepan / Péterffy István