András Visky & Matéi Visniec: Challenging boundaries of cultural specificity

Invited comparative essay about two major figures in Hungarian and Romanian playwriting, discussing their work in a transnational context.

This chapter focuses on two renowned playwrights who started their careers in the 1980s and came to prominence after the fall of the Iron Curtain in attempting to offer snapshot of the current Romanian and Hungarian theatre scenes, therefore, the blurring of boundaries is key. ‘Barrack Dramaturgy’ attempts to foreground deeply ingrained cultural memories, or memories that are not personal to us yet still attached to us, and reconfigure these as if they were our own. Visky taps into personal and collective memory to evoke the past, and although inspired by local events, his plays contain a global dimension that transcends geographical and cultural boundaries. Coming to prominence precisely in the period of transition from a socialist to a market-oriented regime, both playwrights show awareness of the complexities inherent in economic as well as political and cultural change. The play explores a gradual deployment of menace that blurs the boundaries between actual and imaginary situations, and is among Visniec’s works.