Research Group for the Old Hungarian Drama

The research group was founded in 1980, when István Kilián, Géza Staud and Imre Varga published an invitation in Magyar Könyvszemle asking help for study Hungarian school dramas. In this time there were only a few dramas known, so the research needed hard work in libraries, archives, cloisters, etc.

Since this, scholars of different disciplines (history of literature, music, education and theatre, ethnography, etc.) have collected and published a lot of old school dramas of Hungary, Transylvania, and the northern and southern region of old Hungary. At the end of the 80s Géza Staud edited the data base of Jesuit school dramas in four volumes, Imre Varga edited the data base of Protestant school dramas. In 1992 István Kilián, Márta Zsuzsanna Pintér and Imre Varga collected the Franciscan (Observant), Pauline and Minorite (Conventual) school dramas and records of Catholic Seminary performances and István Kilián edited the bibliography of Piarist dramas in 1994. The home of the group is the Institute of Literature of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and Miskolc University.

A lot of drama texts have been published in the last twenty years too, enabling us to study the whole drama tradition of this region. In 1989 Imre Varga edited the Hungarian Protestant School Dramas in two volumes. These were the first volumes of the series “Old Hungarian Dramas, 18^th Century”. He edited the Pauline School Dramas in 1990, an. d the texts of the Hungarian Jesuit school dramas in two volumes between 1992 and 1995. In 1989 István Kilián edited the Hungarian Minorite School Dramas. These are critical editions for researchers, lecturers and students in universities. But showing these dramas for the other readers was as important as publish these texts in critical editions, so in 1995 Júlia Demeter edited a collection from old Hungarian school dramas in a very representative and joyful book, which contains 11 drama texts. Now István Kilián, Júlia Demeter and Katalin Kis publish the texts of the Hungarian Piarist dramas and a larger group works on the Franciscan dramas. We hope, that the first volume of these texts will publish at the end of this year.

It is an interdisciplinary group, so we are interested in the theatre, education, art, culture history, too, so we are so happy if we find records or can help publish records from these themes, too. E. g. in 2000 István Kilián and Éva Knapp published The Sopron Collection of Jesuit Stage Designs, which is a wonderful, representative album contains many pictures of 18^th century stage designs.

Different monographs were published in this theme, too. First István Kilián wrote a book about the Minorite drama traditions in 1992. Next year Márta Zsuzsanna Pintér published a very interesting study about Franciscan school dramas, and Imre Varga wrote a book about the Protestant dramas in 1995. The last monograph is a thematic work about Hungarian historical dramas written by Márta Zsuzsanna Pintér and Imre Varga in 2000. We hope that István Kilián’s new book about Hungarian Piarist school dramas will publish in this year.

We are interested in the European drama tradition and the background of this, too, so there are conferences about European and Hungarian dramas in every third year organised by the Research Group for the Old Hungarian Drama, too. For these conferences, we invite many lecturers, researchers from the Great Britain to Slovakia, from Germany to Romania, etc., because we would like to attach our studies to the European trends. On the other hand the members of the group have papers in international conferences in abroad, e.g. István Kilián and Czibula Katalin had paper in Rome in 1996, Júlia Nagy in Alcalá de Henares in 2000, Júlia Nagy and Csaba Kedves in Birmingham in 2001 and István Kilián, Júlia Demeter and Katalin Czibula in Gdansk in 2001.

Our products: